Managing team conflict through perspective taking

Research has consistently demonstrated that affective conflict leads to poor team outcomes. However, it has proven difficult to limit the occurrence of affective conflict in work teams. Several studies have demonstrated that unhealthy affective conflict seems to routinely emerge along with the healthy debate (i.e., cognitive conflict) that is expected and encouraged in team discussions. This co-occurrence may be due to team members misinterpreting healthy debate as personal attacks. The present study investigated perspective taking and team member schema accuracy as potential mechanisms by which to prevent these misinterpretations. Using Olsen and Kenny's (2006) dyadic SEM approach, an actor partner interdependence model which included perspective taking, team member schema accuracy, affective conflict, and team performance and effectiveness was tested to examine the hypothesized relationships between the variables of interest. The results indicated that, as hypothesized, perspective taking, assessed via a second order factor approach, was positively related to team member schema accuracy. Also, team member schema accuracy was negatively related to affective conflict, which was in turn negatively related to team effectiveness. Affective conflict fully mediated the relationship between team member schema accuracy and team effectiveness. Finally, behavioral training of several behaviors related to perspective taking appeared to lead to better team member schema accuracy compared to the control condition and may thereby provide a means for decreasing the occurrence of affective conflict in work teams.