Background
The world of volunteer Search and Rescue (SAR) is deceptively high pressure, as these groups are tasked with assisting police agencies with searching for the lost and missing. Often, high achieving, opinionated volunteers are attracted to the field, lured by the promise of excitement and making a tangible difference. The amalgam of pressure and personality often lead to conflicts that fester if not handled promptly and with diligence. A recent difference of opinion between the President of an Atlanta-based SAR organization with one of the senior team members presents an excellent example of workplace conflict and how it can be better mitigated with particular conflict resolution techniques. In this particular conflict, the organizational President, who will be called John, and a senior team member, who will be called Susi, allowed a conflict to impact a training session and influence potential new members. As President of the team, John is expected to fulfill several important roles and is ultimately responsible for the performance of the organization. Of his many tasks and responsibilities, John’s most important function is the maintenance of the teams computer programs. John regularly insures that the team’s licensing is up to date, that the programs utilized are the best available for the organizational mission and that team members are properly trained. John’s expertise in this area is augmented by his professional work in the IT sector, which in the case of this particular conflict also had a negative impact as he has little empathy for individuals who do not understand technology. Susi has been a member of the SAR team since shortly after its inception and is therefore expected to fulfill a mentorship role for new members. Her tenure with the team reflects many years of experience with both the principles and methods of SAR, along with an equal amount of time utilizing the teams software. Yet, Susi often presents with difficulty utilizing much of the team software and needs repeated instruction on how to best use the programs. The conflict in this case was precipitated by Susi requesting John’s help with the team’s software during a training event. John was impatient and failed to adequately help Susi, as he felt she should be one of the team members who were able to help newer members learn the software because of her length of time …show more content…
It is likely that differing instrumental values played a significant role in this conflict. Prause defines instrumental values as “a mode of conduct that an individual seeks to value” (2015). In the case of John and Susi, the instrumental value at the core of the conflict was the personal mastery of all facets of SAR. Additionally, differing viewpoints on the organizational citizenship behavior expected of senior members of the team contributed to the issue (Zia, 2013). Zia (2013) identifies organizational citizenship behavior as the unwritten rules of the organization that are essential to its performance. For example, the expectation that senior members of the team take a mentorship role within the organization, transiting away from needing the assistance of other members. Regardless of the underlying source of the conflict, whether it be a failure to adequately define roles or a simple personality conflict, the leadership impact of this conflict cannot be …show more content…
Given the visceral nature of both participants differences in the conflict, it is unlikely that a resolution technique such as avoiding or accommodating would be successful (Zia, 2013). Avoidance of the issue would likely have cause the ill feelings to fester for longer and resulted in a poorer outcome in the end. Furthermore, as both parties had valid points of contention, it is doubtful that either would have been able to accommodate the others viewpoint(Zia, 2013). Yet, there are other conflict resolution techniques that would have resulted in a better incident