Work Conflict

While collaborating with a group you are bound to run into some difficulties that will need to be worked out.  Everyone will always have their own opinion on the best way to resolve the problem but group work becomes difficult when one resolution cannot be decided on by the team.  This can be hard because people have different personalities, have not worked together before, or have bad group work skills; regardless, in order to maintain the efficiency of the team they must be able to resolve conflicts. 

I will talk about a time at my work this past summer that I have talked about before in previous blog posts but it also applies to this prompt.  I worked for a logistics company this summer which had a 400,000 square foot warehouse where all the of our product was stored.  About half way through the summer we had run out of space for product but kept needing more space because our cliental was expanding.  With the squeeze of space we bought an empty warehouse right next door to ours which expanded our storage space by 50%.  The conflict comes into play because we mainly distribute food products so our warehouse has to meet very strict FDA requirements and we needed the new warehouse ready for product in a timely manner.  The new warehouse had been vacant for many years so there was a lot of cleaning/fixing up to do.  It was too costly to the company to hire more employess or an outside company to fix the warehouse so we had to deal with it internally.  Being on the low man on the totem poll of the company it was mine and a few other intern’s jobs to fix up this warehouse to standards. 

I took a leadership position in the situation because I knew we had to get our regular work at the logistics company done on top of keeping up with the time table to fix the new warehouse which would be difficult to balance.  With no air conditioning in the warehouse and many hours of physical labor ahead of us I knew I needed to motivate the other interns to work efficiently on this project so we did not have to spend any extra time on it nor get yelled at by the managers.  I broke up all the work we had to do into smaller sections to make things more organized with short term tangible goals to keep morale high.  Early on we each found our weaknesses and strengths for the renovations and would each individual focus on our strength so each person was working as efficiently as possible at the task.  Setting up this system was a preventative move by myself to avoid future conflict because working efficiently, staying organized, and communicating is the easiest way to avoid causing more conflicts.  The work was very knit picky because the warehouse had to be essentially spotless to meet FDA standards but we had to find the perfect balance of working fast to get meet the deadline but also do careful work so the end job goes beyond standards. 

Due to the system I created and the execution by my team it led to us getting the new warehouse ready well before the deadline and met all FDA and company standards.  In this conflict we were lucky that more unexpected conflicts did not arise because one of the hardest things to overcome is to fix a new problem right when you think you have fixed the old problem.  Having organization and a systematic plan will enhance your chances of resolving the conflict because it eliminates uncertainty in the direction you want the resolution to go.  Due to my work throughout the summer and being able to conquer this unexpected challenge, I was offered a full time position at the logistics company for the following summer because they said one of the most valued attributes an employee can have is team work and problem solving skills.