Richard Beckhard's seminal work on team building has influenced researchers and practitioners to focus on the importance of providing teams with a clear sense their goals and objectives, the roles expected of individual members, the procedures and processes through which team members interact with one another, and the interpersonal relationships and potential conflicts that develop among team members
Team conflict is generally defined as team members' awareness of discrepancies, incompatible wishes, or desires that are perceived to be irreconcilable. Research on conflict wishes teams has established that not only is conflict an essential group process with regard to team effectiveness ,but that conflict is multidimensional, including or cognitive and or emotional dimensions. Some research suggests that this form of conflict is essentially unavoidable in teams, but that task conflict is functional and generally focused on judgmental differences about how best to achieve common goals and objectives. Affective conflict involves disagreement that are interpreted as, or become, personalized. Though this form of conflict is generally dysfunctional for work teams,affective conflict can emerge from individuals misinterpretation of conflict,or a failure to recognize the difference between cognitive and emotional conflicts.As with trust among team members discussed above,demographic differences among members can lead differences in interpretations of the task and relational processes that occur in workgroups,resulting in conflict between team members.In-group members may hold negative expectations and stereotypes of out-group members, making them more likely to interpret out-group members perspectives as diverging from their own, giving rise to intra team affective conflict.
Conflict is very common in teams. It happens when what you do, say or achieve is frustrated by what others do or say.