When your virtual team faces conflicting opinions, encourage the teams to switch on their cameras. Non verbal cues are golden in a conflict situation and could be worth more than 1000 words.

Para garantir a harmonia em uma equipe virtual, promovo um ambiente de diálogo aberto e transparente, onde todos possam expressar suas opiniões. Facilito discussões para alinhar expectativas e identificar pontos em comum, sempre com foco nos objetivos da equipe. Quando surgem conflitos, busco mediar de forma imparcial, incentivando a colaboração e o respeito mútuo. Acredito que, com uma comunicação clara e o foco em soluções, é possível manter o ambiente saudável e produtivo.

To ensure harmony in your virtual team when facing conflicting opinions, encourage active listening so everyone feels heard. Identify common goals to refocus the team on shared objectives. Facilitate constructive dialogue, promoting respectful discussions without personal attacks. Frame disagreements as opportunities for collaborative problem-solving, encouraging hybrid solutions. As a leader, mediate by clarifying points and suggesting paths forward. This promotes respect, open communication, and teamwork, ensuring conflicts are resolved while maintaining harmony.

Communication is key Bring everyone for an on-camera call. Ask each one to put their point across while everyone else can write the pros and cons of the same. Discuss all pros and cons for each opinion and get the final resolution for each point to which everyone agrees. Thus you give a chance to everyone to speak and get a better outcome. Often such discussions lead to great results and produce improved suggestions which we had not even thought about when deliberating alone.

Conflict can be seen as an opportunity and allowing each one to voice their opinion or view and share pros and cons, respectfully, is important. Once the views are shared and collected, put that on table and get everyone to deliberate each option openly and agree collectively on what works or at least assess a higher degree of acceptance. Having a voice is important and empowering the team to make the decision is equally important for bringing the team together.

Manter a harmonia em uma equipe virtual, como o ambiente no qual opero, requer várias práticas que se aplicam também a equipes humanas. 1. Comunicação clara e consistente: A comunicação é chave para evitar mal-entendidos. 2. Empatia e adaptabilidade: Entender as necessidades e o contexto do interlocutor é importante. 3. Coordenação e alinhamento de objetivos: Em uma equipe, todos devem estar cientes dos objetivos comuns. No caso de uma equipe virtual, definir metas claras e manter todos alinhados é essencial para evitar redundâncias ou falhas de comunicação. Essas práticas podem ser adaptadas tanto a times virtuais quanto a ambientes presenciais para promover um clima de respeito e cooperação.

There's so much emphasis on the team leader to create a psychologically safe environment in their team - as if you can establish it by decree. Psychological safety is everybody's goal and responsibility. The team leader's objective is to ensure everyone has the tools and awareness (via clear communication and goal alignment) to contribute to it - tools such as ego management, active listening, radical empathy, belonging and trust... I don't think a democratic decision-making process is right for every team. What really matters is that everybody's opinion is heard and, particularly when dissenting from the decision made, recorded. It's ok for someone to make undemocratic decisions. It's not ok for them to ignore your opinion.

Conflicting opinions are good, and necessary for growth and innovation. Create space for differing opinions by cultivating a culture in the team that distinguishes between task conflict and relationship conflict. People should feel safe to disagree on tasks, knowing that conflict there will not bleed over to interpersonal relationships. Just because a person doesn't like your idea doesn't mean they don't like you. They give you feedback on your idea to help you make it better.

Respect is the key element that should prevail. As a leader, I have experienced that it is important to lay a foundation of respect amongst co-workers. Diversity is important, as its a building block towards a multifaceted dynamic, therefor one can expect different opinions, which can breed conflict, however by controlling conflict with respect for each workers' opinion, they feel validated, and growth can stem from conflicting opinions. Understanding as an operative is just as important. Finding understanding eventhough you might not agree, is a key to diffusing unnecessary conflict. Through understanding and respect, people feel validated, and this will result less conflict.