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[edmyers15]

Discussion Post Week 5

When creating the Google Drive using the formatting of Booth’s craft of research I continued to find articles that were related to conflict resolution and presented my ideas and thoughts in the Google Drive to record my data. What I found in my research regarding team building and conflict resolution inside the workplace was that they were much more important than I thought. In an article from the Irish Veterinary Journal stated regarding meetings that “develop a practice of bringing of staff together on a regular basis. This doesn’t have to be for long—30-40 minutes but it can be a very worthwhile investment of you and your employees’ time” During these meeting you can discuss the progress of the employee as well as making sure that there is an opportunity for the employee to bring up any issues that they are having in the workplace. This as a boss will demonstrate that there is an ‘open door’ system in the company. In this open door system it will show workers that there is a system that was implemented to make workers feel like their opinion is valued. I think that this makes a good and distinct point that can direct me towards my thesis. What this presents is a point that having a good and open communication system to have problems addressed and be able to have open communication with other employees in the workplace. What this will make is a better work environment as well as a more productive system that will yield better results in the workplace if there is a system implemented for handling the problems that could arise in the workplace. Another good point that this article brings up is that a focus of food work practices needs to be addressed to the workers or employees in a company by the person who is in charge. The Irish Veterinary Journal states that “ensuring that every employee has a written contract with a job description which is clearly outlined and agreed between you and the employee. I think that this idea was very important to implement in the workplace because without this contract there will be no benchmark or set of ideas that are expected that enable to evaluation of performance. In other words, it is not possible to evaluate somebody if there are no set of principles to follow. Establishing that written contract in a formal agreement is serious and professional enough to hold people accountable for their actions in the workplace. Establishing this system of contracts will enable setting up those meetings regularly to meet upon the performance at hand and keep that opportunity open for employees to express their thoughts and feelings about what has happened in the period from the meeting before. An important thought in this to keep in mind is that scheduling these meetings regularly is important because if one of your employees has a problem with the system that they are working for that is preventing them from working and the next meeting isn’t from a month from now then the employee will most likely wait until the problem is addressable in the workplace. But keeping in mind that system of a ‘open door’ system it is important to have the door open for problems that are in that sense immediate so that they can get solved right away. Because as a manager or a person in management you would rather deal with the problems now than wait and deal with them later. I have been learning a lot in this research process and I am excited to see where this research will take me in the future.

[edmyers15]

Discussion Post 4

My current research process started with me getting on JWULINK and going to the library page to find articles that were related to my topic, conflict resolution/ team building strategies. What I was finding in my research was that there were a lot of empirical studies that were surrounded on the conflict resolution strategies for families and friends but there was limited research on the workplace and the real strategies for team building and conflict resolution in that environment. What that let me know right away was that the research I wanted to do would be useful because there was not a lot of studies specifically focused on the workplace. My research problem is figuring out what studies and resources would be useful in order to yield the best results for the workplace. What I realized about my topic was that I was finding a lot of different things when I would research team building or conflict resolution so a term that I thought would focus my research more and be more encompassing of both of those terms together would be problem solving I feel like within problem solving you will have to rely on the team building and conflict resolution strategies that would work and again would be more encompassing. The reason that it is so important to research and develop good team building and conflict resolution strategies is because in each field of work there aren't too many that don't require you to interact with a customer or co-workers. The workplace is a environment that brings all different kinds of people together from different backgrounds, with different beliefs, ideals and morals and views of conducting behavior. When people from different backgrounds and cultures are placed in a environment together, people start to notice these differences among people and it is important to develop a culture in the workplace that is all encompassing and inclusive of everyone. When dealing with people that have different backgrounds they are going to differ in beliefs and ideals from others and that may create conflict in the workplace. However, implementing conflict resolution strategies to deal with the times that people are going to have differences is crucial because these problems are going to happen inevitably. If these problems are not fixed then a company culture / work environment is uncomfortable and will not yield the best work performance out of employees. Where team building comes into play with this is that you have to implement team building strategies to develop a rapport with employees so that they feel comfortable to approach these conflicts and feel like they have the correct resources to get the problem solved. The importance in the team building strategies is that they create a company culture, a happy work environment is one that people are Co existing with a higher goal in mind and don't let the individual differences come into the way of the work trying to get done. Implementation of the conflict resolution and team building strategies builds a company culture that there is a higher goal in mind and successful companies are those that get there workers focused on the company goal and create a successful company culture that produces the best work performance out of employees.

[edmyers15]

Discussion Post Week 3

What I wanted to focus my research on is the importance of team bonding and conflict resolution. The reason I want to research this topic is because universally most jobs require you to talk to or interact with other people. In most of these cases when you are bringing two or more different people with different beliefs and ideals together they are going to encounter conflict. When these people encounter conflict it is important to understand that there are other people in this world who have different beliefs and ideals from yours. In noting so, an effective work environment should be one in which these people are able to co-exist with each other in spite of these differences in sight of the higher goal being the work environment. What evidence I expect in this topic is what is already expected, that people need to talk out and resolve these issues right at that moment. Another hypothesis that I presume is that there are going to be articles and evidence that supports that people are supposed to all get along with each other and have meaningful strong relationships. I feel like what is expected on team bonding is that everyone should have a valued effective position in the greater group of the “family” and everyone is supposed to get along with each other. But unfortunately that’s not the case in most instances, people don’t always get along and there isn’t always a sense of family in most organizations currently in the workforce today. With keeping this in mind, organizations still have to get along and form relationships with each other in order to maintain a positive work environment but the trick in this is to find a way that people can openly express themselves and their differences in the workplace. I see some challenges in this way of thinking that people have to maintain relationships together because if two people just don’t like each other sometimes the correct solution is for them to just leave each other alone. Those two individuals don’t have to have a meaningful relationship together as long as they are maintaining their work performance. Some questions that I have for my research are: What are some ice breaking or group gathering activities used in the workplace today if any? What are the problems with the current strategies? How can they be improved? I feel like through studying the history on conflicts that people have been having at work will lead me to that result. The process of my finding that I went through of addressing my topic really brought a lot of good ideals to my head because I feel like asking myself the questions that the book was asking me really questioned on if it was a good enough topic to write on and make a strong claim for. I am studying what best conflict resolution and team bonding strategies can create the best environment for people to thrive. In order to come up with better strategies to be implemented and maintained to provide a more sustainable and enjoyable work environment where people can intermingle and get along.

[edmyers15]

Journal entry 1

What I think I would be interested in writing about is conflict resolution/ team building. What interests me in this is that majority of the jobs that there are in the fields of work require these to be a integral part of what’s going on in the core principals of the company. What I would like to research is finding a good set of strategies and principles to implement that would allow for stronger relationships from bosses to workers. The gap in management from the employees to management is a important difference that would allow for the development of a better work environment that would allow for more longevity and production from employees. A step in finding this first that I'm going to investigate is finding the experiences from employees to find out what potentially they feel is not getting addressed from management.