Identifying Potential Areas of Conflict. In completing a plan of care for clients, including Amal, it is important to unearth your “unconscious bias” or potential areas of conflict that may surface when working and interacting with individuals of different cultural beliefs, backgrounds, and social/personal values.
It is essential to become aware of our biases and understand the impact of unconscious bias before working with diverse/vulnerable clients/patients.
The first step in addressing unconscious bias is to examine your personal beliefs, values, attitudes, and perceptions. To begin, review the information provided at the weblinks below:
https://diversity.llnl.gov/about/bias
The impact of unconscious bias in healthcare: How to recognize and mitigate it
Use the information found on the websites linked above to explore and explain your answers to the following questions in a Word Document. All answers should be completely in your own words. Your response should be at least 250 words in length.
1. Define the term “bias” and describe the two types of bias.
2. Explain how understanding bias will help you make appropriate referrals and find suitable resources for your client (in this case, Amal).
3. Looking back at the Identifying Client Characteristics Chart you completed in Week 2, identify at least two (2) significant differences that exist between you and Amal. These differences might include religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identification, socioeconomic status (SES), etc. Detail how these differences might relate to bias and/or impact the care that Amal receives.
4. Summarize some strategies that you (as an individual working within the human and social services field) can utilize to minimize the impact of bias.
Identifying conflict
Individuals have different objectives
A successful team has to have a clear objective so that everyone is working towards the same goal.
Two different people working towards two different goals will have difficulty communicating with each other, as they’ll each believe themselves to be right.
There is an unhealthy level of competition
Competition can be a wonderful motivator, but not if the team members in competition are taking themselves too seriously, find themselves arguing over information, and suddenly become unproductive.
Competition occurs on the corporate level as well, with different departments vying for resources as they become available.
Their roles are not clearly defined
When you first start a new project, it’s important to make sure each member of the team understands his or her tasks and how they will contribute to the overall outcome.
If these roles are not clearly identified, individuals will start to feel as though other members of the team aren’t pulling their weight, or they might perceive their teammates as being overly critical of the tasks they do perform.
The workflow has been disrupted
Sometimes one part of a project can not be completed without another part being finished first.
If the group completing the first tasks is late, or turns in shoddy work, the second group will be further delayed.
This will almost always lead to resentment and a disgruntled, uncomfortable workplace.
There was a breakdown in communication
Sometimes pieces of information are relayed incorrectly in error. In some cases, an employee may withhold a piece of information to purposely sabotage another.
Regardless, communication errors are a major cause of conflict in the workplace.
It’s important to make sure all information is relayed as efficiently and effectively as possible so that no one person relies on another for critical data.
These are just a few of the reasons for conflict in the workplace, but they’re also some of the main causes.