Hello Everyone,
As you may all know have worked in different departments in the organization I currently work
for right now. I have experienced some conflicts between two department few years ago. We can
define a conflict as a situation in which two or more parties find themselves in an opposition.
This arise from disagreements over goals attain, the methods to be used accomplish the goals, or
even the tone of voice used as people express their positions (Newstrom, 2015, p.288). The
department I was working for which I will call department B depended on Department A to
complete our job efficiently. Department A was the main point of contact when the callers (sick
or ill person) contact us regarding the health issue they may have this can be anything between a
headache to stage 4 cancer. Department A agents are supposed to get the callers information, the
reason for their call and symptoms depending on the condition the callers have, time the callers
are available for a call back. After they get the necessary information department B take over and
work in finding the best service, we offer the callers. Unfortunately, agents in department A were
not fulfilling their job description. They were missing some precious information and that will
lead us to contact the callers back which the callers did appreciate since they provided on the
initial call. This issue created an intergroup conflict between those two departments. Intergroup
conflict is a conflict that happens between different department and cause problems (Newstrom,
2015, p.289). This intergroup conflict had the agents in both departments frustrated, distrusting
agents from either departments and there was a lot of complaints. Our supervisor and manager
were the people who had the power and we raised our concerns to them. The supervisor and
manager were the people who have the power influence others at work. The power the supervisor
and manager had led to schedule meetings to resolve this intergroup conflict and those meetings
helped both departments. Wisestep states that there are some advantages of having conflict in a
workplace because conflicts will create healthy debate and argument, allow the team to work
toward their goals, bring a sense of commitment, remove the stress and anxiety, allow change to
happen faster, and allow the new ideas to be created. These benefits are accurate because during
our meetings these advantages did happen. The leaders were able to schedule a happy hour
between both departments so that we can get to know each other, the leaders of both departments
met once a week to evaluate what mistakes were made during the week and how to be proactive
on preventing the issue to happen again in the future. Mostly agents from both departments felt
less stressed, and there was a better communication between the agents. One personal goal I had
when it came to the organizational politics after the intergroup conflict was to develop certain
skills such as having interpersonal influence, creating useful networks and expressing sincerity