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School of Life & Soft Skills

Conflict Resolution: teams and families

Step 7 of 8 in The Commons

Next in your path: 9.2.3 Advanced Speaking: stories, Q&A and tough rooms

What you'll be able to do
  • Read team and family conflict research with its sizes, settings and limits in mind.
  • Map a conflict before you act: people, issues, interests, history, power and warning signs.
  • Help a team prevent bad conflict with a team agreement and a climate where people can speak up.
  • Run a structured problem-solving meeting between two or more people.
  • Handle family conflict in a way that protects children and teens.
  • Repair trust after a conflict, and know the edge cases: power gaps, culture, safety, and when to refer to professionals.
Words in this course 44Open the Vocabulary Hall
01

Before this course, and what research says about teams and families

In simple words

When two people argue, it is like two cars bumping. In a team or a family, it is more like a traffic jam: many cars, and one bump can slow everyone. To fix a jam, you first look at the whole road.

Before this course: Difficult Conversations: feedback and boundaries (course 9.7.2). You already know how to plan a hard talk with the three conversations, give feedback with SBI, set boundaries and pause when you are flooded. Here we go from one conversation to whole systems: teams and families, where many people and many relationships are involved.

Key facts
  • Three kinds of team conflict. Researchers separate task conflict (disagreeing about the work itself), relationship conflict (personal friction) and process conflict (disagreeing about who does what, how and when).
  • Newer team evidence is more complex. In course 9.7.2 you met De Dreu and Weingart (2003). A later meta-analysis by de Wit, Greer and Jehn (2012) combined 116 studies covering 8,880 groups. It found stable negative links between relationship conflict and group outcomes, and between process conflict and group outcomes. Unlike the 2003 review, it did not find a strong negative link between task conflict and group performance.
  • When task conflict looked better. In the same review, task conflict and performance were more positively related when task conflict was only weakly tied to relationship conflict, in top management teams, and when performance meant decision quality or financial results. Plain meaning: arguing about ideas seems less harmful when it does not turn personal.
  • Families: how parents handle conflict matters. A review by Harold and Sellers (2018, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry) reports that children are affected by how parents express and manage conflict, across a range "from silence to violence", and whether the adults live together or are separated.
  • Parent and teen conflict. A meta-analysis by Laursen, Coy and Collins (1998) found that how often parents and teens argue goes down from early to late adolescence, while how intense the arguments feel goes up from early to mid adolescence. It found little support for the common idea that conflict rises and then falls.
  • Limits. These studies show averages and links (correlations), mostly from some countries and settings. They do not prove that one change will fix your team or family.
TypeExampleWhat research suggests (on average)
Task"Should we launch in May or June?"Not strongly harmful; can be useful if it stays impersonal
Relationship"She always looks down on me."Linked with worse group outcomes
Process"Why do I always do the boring jobs?"Linked with worse group outcomes
Step by step
  1. Choose one team or family conflict you know well (school, work, sports, home).
  2. Write each disagreement in it on its own line.
  3. Label each line: task, relationship or process.
  4. Circle any task disagreement that has turned personal.
  5. Write one sentence on what the research says about that type.
  6. Write one limit: what the research cannot tell you about your case.
  7. Check: every line has a label, and you wrote one limit.
LESSON 01Before this course, and what research says about teams and families
LESSON 01 / ANIMATED LESSON / AI VOICE00:00 / 01:00
Read the video script
[Host] "A team fight is rarely one fight. It is usually three kinds mixed together."
[Text on screen: Task · Relationship · Process] "Task: what we do. Relationship: how we feel about each other. Process: who does what and how."
[Text on screen: 116 studies, 8,880 groups] "A big review found relationship and process conflict were linked with worse group outcomes. Task conflict was not strongly harmful on average."
[Host] "So keep the debate about ideas, and stop it from turning personal."
Try it now

Take one real conflict and split it into task, relationship and process lines. Write which line you would work on first and why.

ClaudeStuck? Copy a ready-made prompt for Claude

Copy this, open Claude, paste it, and Claude will walk you through the lesson step by step.

For a grown-up: Claude is for adults (18+). Copy this, paste it into Claude, and use the answer to explain the lesson to your child.

I'm learning "Conflict Resolution: teams and families" on The Future Market. Lesson 1: "Before this course, and what research says about teams and families".

What the lesson teaches:
- Three kinds of team conflict. Researchers separate task conflict (disagreeing about the work itself), relationship conflict (personal friction) and process conflict (disagreeing about who does what, how and when).
- Newer team evidence is more complex. In course 9.7.2 you met De Dreu and Weingart (2003). A later meta-analysis by de Wit, Greer and Jehn (2012) combined 116 studies covering 8,880 groups. It found stable negative links between relationship conflict and group outcomes, and between process conflict and group outcomes. Unlike the 2003 review, it did not find a strong negative link between task conflict and group performance.
- When task conflict looked better. In the same review, task conflict and performance were more positively related when task conflict was only weakly tied to relationship conflict, in top management teams, and when performance meant decision quality or financial results. Plain meaning: arguing about ideas seems less harmful when it does not turn personal.
- Families: how parents handle conflict matters. A review by Harold and Sellers (2018, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry) reports that children are affected by how parents express and manage conflict, across a range "from silence to violence", and whether the adults live together or are separated.
- Parent and teen conflict. A meta-analysis by Laursen, Coy and Collins (1998) found that how often parents and teens argue goes down from early to late adolescence, while how intense the arguments feel goes up from early to mid adolescence. It found little support for the common idea that conflict rises and then falls.
- Limits. These studies show averages and links (correlations), mostly from some countries and settings. They do not prove that one change will fix your team or family.
- Type - Example - What research suggests (on average)

The exercise I'm working on:
Take one real conflict and split it into task, relationship and process lines. Write which line you would work on first and why.

I'm stuck. Please:
1. Explain the main idea in plain, simple words with one everyday example.
2. Walk me through the exercise one small step at a time. Ask me what I've done so far before giving the next step.
3. Don't just give me the final answer. Help me do it myself, and check my work when I share it.
I'm a parent helping my child (about 8 years old) with a lesson called "Before this course, and what research says about teams and families" from the course "Conflict Resolution: teams and families".

Here's what the lesson says:
When two people argue, it is like two cars bumping. In a team or a family, it is more like a traffic jam: many cars, and one bump can slow everyone. To fix a jam, you first look at the whole road.

The activity:
Take one real conflict and split it into task, relationship and process lines. Write which line you would work on first and why.

Please explain this so an 8-year-old understands: short sentences, a fun everyday example, and no hard words.
Then give me 3 simple questions I can ask my child to check they understood, and a way to do the activity together, one tiny step at a time.
Open Claude
Sources
  • de Wit, Greer & Jehn (2012), "The paradox of intragroup conflict: a meta-analysis," Journal of Applied Psychology (PubMed): pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21842974/
  • Harold & Sellers (2018), "Interparental conflict and youth psychopathology," Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (PubMed): pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29574737/
  • Laursen, Coy & Collins (1998), "Reconsidering changes in parent-child conflict across adolescence: a meta-analysis," Child Development (PubMed): pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9680687/
My notes
02

Map the conflict before you act

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.

03

Build teams that handle conflict well

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.

04

Run a structured problem-solving meeting

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.

05

Family conflict, children and teens

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.

06

Repair and forgiveness after conflict

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.

07

Edge cases: power, culture, safety and when to refer

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.

++

Final project

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??

Quiz

  1. What are the three kinds of team conflict in this course?

  2. What did de Wit, Greer and Jehn (2012) find about relationship and process conflict?

  3. Did the 2012 review find task conflict strongly harmful to performance?

  4. What does a conflict map show?

  5. What did Mathieu and Rapp (2009) find about team charters?

  6. What is team psychological safety?

  7. Name three steps of a structured problem-solving meeting.

  8. According to research on families, what matters most for children?

  9. Which factors were linked with forgiveness in the 2010 meta-analysis?

  10. When should you not hold a joint meeting?

  11. Why can a power gap make an agreement weak?

  12. What should you do if someone is in danger right now?

EX

Final exam

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.

CE

Certificate

This lesson is part of full access: every course and every level for one payment.