[meaubry]

Conflict avoidance on a collaborative project; require some fundamental groundwork to be established well ahead of the time the project starts. That groundwork includes developing a basic organizational foundation with a well-documented mission/vision, structure, and most importantly - roles & responsibilities of all participants defined.

Once established, these need to be reviewed and agreed upon with the entire team - at the beginning of each season. Changes discussed and agreed upon, with participation from all factions within the organization (leadership, mentors, instructors, students, and parents) as needed.

2 things that will ultimately destroy any collaborative project include –
1) mistrust and, 2) miscommunication.

Once the authoritative organizational structure and collaborative project plan is defined, along with roles and responsibilities indicating whom will be doing what, everyone needs to review it - and work within it.

Trust each other, and trusting in the plan - cannot be understated.
Trusting each other allows team mates to do what they are responsible for, on or ahead of time, to the best of their ability. Trust also allows those responsible to be able to request help – if needed or wanted.

Trusting each other means, having faith that those responsible will take their job seriously and meet the deadlines outlined in the project plan – without intervention to assure it gets done. Plans and timing on collaborative projects must be flexible, and must be constantly reviewed and revised. Open, timely, and truthful communication is critical to achieving this.

Trust means having faith in those that are in authoritative leadership positions, to perform their role and responsibility in performing conflict resolution. Have faith in that organizational structure and the role that they play. Open, timely, and truthful communication is critical to achieving this.

To assure more collaboration, and less domination - make sure the roles and responsibilities are well defined. Have the organizational leadership help communicate to the rest of the team – expectations relative to how “things should be done – as well as, how conflicts will be resolved”.

Understanding what is expected, plus roles and responsibilities – should have taken care of the “not reading the rules” issue. But, make sure the issue is not one of “not understanding the rules” instead of not reading the rules.

One way to address this issue is to accomplish it collaboratively, as well as individually.

I found it is better to do that at the start of the project. One should not address a problem or challenge, without first trying to understand the requirements for successfully achieving the goal.

Best of luck in the competition this year,
Mike