It is important to spend some time mapping out the power dynamics that exist in any team you are part of because they will influence any conflicts that occur within the team, often including ones that may appear on the surface to be a simple case of personalities clashing. Understanding how the power dynamics involved are influencing a conflict will help you to more clearly see the options that you can access to deal with it, particularly when assistance from other team members or from people outside the team would be the best strategy to take. This will be discussed further in part seven, conflict resolution strategies from a non-leadership position. 
 
Sources of Power
 
Institutional
In any workplace environment, the most obvious source of power is through the institutional hierarchy of the team and/or organization, and the roles that individuals hold in that hierarchy. A manager has more power than their subordinate because the former sets expectations for the latter’s role, evaluates their performance and at least has influence if not final say over whether or not they remain in their position. This source of power is characterized by being formalized within the context of the team, and can be granted by others (if the team exists in the context of an organization or if the lead is decided by the team democratically) or claimed by a team lead, if they are the ones putting the team together. 
 
Usually this type of power source is the easiest to map out, although there are circumstances when it may be less obvious. For example, someone that holds a senior position in an organization as a whole may not have a position of leadership on a particular team, but if other members of that team have less power than them in the organization outside the team, it will be a factor in the power dynamics of that team. 
 
Expert Knowledge and/or Seniority
Team members who have greater seniority on a team or in an organization and/or who have expert knowledge in an area of relevance to the project also hold relatively obvious power on a team. Team leads may be particularly likely to hold this source of power as well as institutional power. However, in teams where the lead is new to the team or other team members have greater expert knowledge, it can lead to interesting dynamics as a result, either resulting in a positive environment where power is balanced among team members or a negative one where power struggles may occur. This source of power is generally characterized by being something that is slow to achieve but can’t be given to you by others, nor can it be lost once you have it. 
 
Access to Resources
An often less obvious potential source of power on teams is if members on the team have differing access to resources. “Resources” is deliberately vague as this can be very industry- or even team-specific. An example of this might include the financial ability to travel, perhaps to a conference or to meet with collaborators, if the project budget can’t accommodate travel for team members and it is up to individuals to pay their own way. In this example, not being able to travel may mean that some team members are able to build stronger networking relationships with collaborators or future colleagues than others, or may even mean that important project decision-making is made de facto only by those members who were able to travel. 
 
This power source doesn’t have to be solely based on an individual’s personal access to resources, it can also be a factor if a team consists of members from different organizations, and those organizations have different levels of resources. For example, a team member in one organization may be given few duties outside of their work on the team, and therefore will have a lot of time allotted to working on it, while a team member at a different organization may have many other duties assigned to them and may have significantly less time to spend on the team project. The team member with more time available is likely to receive more positive feedback and generally make a better impression on team leads than the other team member, which can impact reputations and future job prospects. 
 
However “resources” is defined, an important characteristic of this power source is that it is determined by factors outside of the team itself and the role that team members hold on that team, and therefore can be easy to overlook. It also can sometimes be ameliorated, for example by making sure that any resources that the project requires are provided for in the project budget and are made available to all team members or by tracking team members’ contributions based on the resources (such as time) that they have available to the project.
 
Socially Constructed Identities
It should no longer be controversial to state that socially constructed identities, such as race, gender, and sexual orientation to name a few, play a role as a source of power in workplace environments. In the United States, the privileged identities that are most commonly sources of power are: white, cisgender male, heterosexual, Christian, lacking a disability, middle-to-upper socioeconomic class, and US citizen. If you hold one or more of these identities, then you have access to privileges that are invisible to you that often translate into advantages in work environments. If you do not hold one or more of these identities, you may experience overt to subtle discrimination and/or harassment as a result, and at the very least this identity or identities has the potential to place you at a disadvantage during conflicts and generally in times of stress for the team. 
 
Until quite recently, this source of power was often the least obvious in work environments (at least to those with privileged identities), and in many cases there were active efforts to obscure it as a source of power. While these efforts have been challenged significantly across society in the past year, there are still many places where it is downplayed and discussing it as a source of power imbalance in a team context would be extremely risky. While this source of power can be extremely influential by itself in some team environments, it is more often a compounding source of power that combines with one or more of the other sources of power above to amplify some team members’ power over others. 
 
Different industries and regional cultures often influence which socially constructed identities are particularly privileged in a given team. Additionally, most people hold both privileged and marginalized identities, which can make it difficult to determine when this source of power is a factor in a particular situation, or how exactly it is playing out. For example, if a conflict occurs between a white woman and a man of color or a straight person with a disability and a gay person without a disability, it may not be immediately obvious which privileged identity holds more power, and is likely to be very context specific. However, because the teams we work on operate within the larger society of the United States, we and our team dynamics are always affected to some extent by the values and prejudices of the larger society and it is important to keep this in mind when thinking about power dynamics on a team. ​

Lack of awareness about teammates’ communication styles  
Misunderstandings and interpersonal conflicts can arise when people aren’t aware of their teammates' communication preferences, particularly if they are very different from their own. These kinds of even minor conflicts can affect the team dynamic and workflow, and are often difficult to resolve exactly because of their seeming unimportance. It is worth noting that while interpersonal conflict has many causes and is impossible to completely prevent, clashing communication styles is one very common cause that can be addressed to help avoid or ameliorate this issue. Consequently, even conflicts that don’t appear to be caused by lack of awareness about communication preferences would likely benefit from addressing this issue.​

Giving and receiving constructive feedback, a critical activity in any team, can take much more energy and time without awareness of communication styles. If communication is severely limited by clashing styles, it may even be eliminated altogether (except for formal feedback processes that exist, and even those will likely be less effective), which will certainly lead to a less productive and well-functioning team.
 
To address this issue and improve your experience on this team, share your preferred communication methods with your supervisor(s) and any other team members that you expect to be working closely with, and ask for theirs in return. This can be done either in one-on-one conversations or, if the opportunity arises, in a group context. It may be particularly helpful to focus on your preferences for giving and receiving feedback, as that type of interaction tends to be the most difficult to navigate when communication is compromised. 
 
Unclear roles and responsibilities for team members
The most common issue arising from this element being missing or incompletely implemented is that decision-making can be difficult and/or prolonged because it’s unclear who has final say in a decision and/or who should be involved in the decision-making process. This can easily lead to people being roped in late or left out entirely, leading to decisions that may be overturned later or resentment and frustration building among team members who feel left out of the decision-making process. A common and easy way to spot this issue is if decision-making processes take much more time than it feels like they should and even when made they are still open to challenge. Another common consequence of unclear responsibilities is that work may be duplicated and/or fall through the cracks, which is very likely to affect the project timeline and cause frustration for all team members.
 
To ameliorate this issue, ask about the expectations for your role and responsibilities from your team lead(s) and/or supervisor(s) from the beginning of the project. A particularly useful question to ask is how you fit in the decision-making process for the team. This is both good to know for yourself, and can serve as a prompt to expose if the team lead(s) or supervisor(s) haven’t considered what the decision-making process will look like in advance. This question is most useful couched in terms such as “how can I contribute to decisions about X”, with specificity about what types of decisions you’re asking about, as often different kinds of decisions require different levels of involvement from non-lead team members.
 
Lack of clear project timeline, milestone and product expectations 
Gauging progress towards goals becomes difficult without predetermined timelines, particularly if there aren’t clearly defined middle steps towards the end goal. The lack of a detailed timeline, particularly in large teams, can obviously lead to delays in producing project outcomes, but also frequently cause frustration and conflict if team members that need to work together or are working on parts of the project that are interdependent have different ideas of when their tasks should be completed. This is especially important for projects that take months or years to complete, but it is still important for shorter-term projects.
 
On an individual level, if a team lead or supervisor has one idea of what the project timeline or products should be and it is not clearly communicated to other team members, then any failure to meet those expectations can lead to an unfair (and potentially unconscious) negative impression of that person and their work. Negative impressions that have an unclear or unknown source can be very difficult to address and correct, unfortunately. For the team member or subordinates part, it is very frustrating to be judged on expectations that weren’t clearly communicated, and it may be difficult to stay engaged and committed to the project, as well as trust the leadership of the team lead or supervisor moving forward.
 
It is always a good idea to set up regularly scheduled check-ins (either actual meetings or through a more preferred communication method), with your supervisor from the beginning of any project, but this is especially important if the project is lacking clear timelines, milestones and/or product descriptions. The frequency of check-ins depends on individual preferences and the type of project, but if you are getting the impression that you are not meeting your supervisor’s expectations or that expectations are frequently changing (especially if those expectations are silent), a good first step is to ask to increase the frequency of check-ins. It is also helpful to ask directly if you are meeting expectations, ideally multiple times over the life of the project. This will both give your team lead(s) an opportunity to evaluate for themselves if you are meeting their expectations and give you that feedback, and will likely demonstrate to them that you want to improve and are invested in the team, which is always a good thing. 
 
Lack of clear conflict resolution processes (or lack of access by all team members to them if they exist)
In a team that lacks clear conflict resolution processes, it is very common for solvable problems and conflicts to persist. Interpersonal conflicts can affect both team cohesion and project objectives, not to mention the health and well-being of the team members involved. An unfortunate potential consequence of conflicts that are not adequately resolved, both interpersonal and project-related, is that reputations can extend beyond the team and the project to affect future interactions and even career prospects for team members. More vulnerable members are particularly at risk for this outcome, with vulnerability defined both in terms of their role in the context of the team and their social identities in the context of the larger culture. 
 
Addressing these types of issues is challenging for any team member, but particularly for those in non-leadership positions. Strategies for approaching conflict resolution as a non-team lead will be covered more extensively in part seven of this series, but in brief, your team lead(s) or supervisor(s) should be the first ones that you can approach for advice and possibly intervention if you are experiencing conflict with a team member. If the conflict is with your supervisor(s) or team lead(s), then seeking advice and possibly allyship from other team members or even mentors outside of the team may be the best recourse. If the team is part of a larger institution or organization, there may be conflict resolution processes that you can access outside the team. It is a good idea to do research about what these processes entail before conflict arises, if possible, as some types of conflict have a limited time window to be addressed through an official process.
 
Lack of universally agreed upon and understood technical and/or methodological processes 
Technical communications (file or code sharing, for example) between team members may require a lot more back and forth, necessitating more time and energy being spent on what should be a straightforward interaction. Files may even be lost or inaccessible to team members who need them if there is no standardized file sharing procedure. If periodic technical and/or methodological reviews are not built into the project processes, then it is up to individual team members to catch mistakes, increasing the chance that issues will arise late in the project timeline simply because the fewer people who review any single process increases the chances that an issue will be missed. Alternatively, if periodic reviews are built in but the technical process for doing them is not standardized, then it may become a frustrating chore for everyone involved and increases the likelihood of procrastinating or skipping it entirely. 
 
If no standardized technical process exists, then you can instigate that conversation with your supervisor(s) and any team members that you interface with on this level. If you have developed preferences from previous work experience for a particular file sharing or task management app, advocate for using that if it's appropriate. The earlier you can have this conversation the better, as sometimes it can be difficult to get buy-in for a new process from team members if the project is already well underway. 

In the context of a team that is larger than 2 people, bringing up missing elements as a group, particularly in challenging team environments, can be both more effective and less risky than doing it as an individual. This approach may require a bit more effort, as it means having conversations with other team members to get them onboard before bringing it up with the team lead(s). In challenging teams, it may also be helpful to evaluate the relative power of the team members who will be bringing this up with you, and ask the one(s) with the most relative power to be the spokesperson. This will be discussed further in part five, analyzing power dynamics in a team context.  
 
Finally, you may encounter teams where more than one of the key elements is missing or incompletely implemented. In these instances, it will likely be necessary to prioritize addressing these lacks rather than trying to tackle them all simultaneously. The prioritization decisions you make will depend on the context of the particular situation, but addressing lack of awareness about communication preferences can be low-hanging fruit in terms of effort, and might make any of the others easier to bring up. Additionally, the project timeline, milestones and product expectations might well exist and just haven’t been written down or made accessible, or they will also be low-hanging fruit and easy to justify asking about. Alternatively, if the lack of a particular element is causing problems for you (or the team in general), like lack of clear roles and responsibilities or agreed upon technical processes, then it may be useful to focus on those first. 

​However you decide to go about addressing these lacks, keep in mind that there is often a lot that you can do to improve your experience of working in a team and sometimes your efforts to improve your own experience will lead to a better team working environment for others as well.

Click here for Part Four: How to approach supportive vs challenging team environments

Working in any team collaboration requires balancing multiple objectives. There are usually constraints of some kind, time and/or money being the most common, that necessitate making choices between which objectives take precedence or receive more resources at any given time. For any individual working in a team collaboration, there are similar prioritization decisions being made, and balancing these types of objectives is critical for our healthy and productive contributions to any team collaboration. 

​The most common competing types of objectives that all of us have to balance are:

1. Your needs as an individual,
2. Team cohesion, and
3. The project objectives
    

Your needs as an individual 

​Your needs as an individual can include objectives like professional advancement, mental health, and work-life balance. These types of objectives are always present although the specific goals may change through time, and many of them can be undefined or unconscious. Keeping these types of objectives at the forefront of your mind at least part of the time is vital for ensuring that your needs are being met in a team collaboration, and to identify and address obstacles that prevent you from fulfilling those needs. You are the only one who can set these types of objectives for yourself, and the first one who should prioritize them. 

Achieving these goals usually requires communicating about them with your team lead(s) and/or supervisor(s), and in a supportive environment that should be sufficient to motivate them to help you balance those objectives with other types of objectives. In an unsupportive environment, you may have to be more creative in working to fulfill those needs. This will be discussed more in part four, how to approach good vs. challenging team environments.  

Team cohesion 

Team cohesion objectives include goals like preserving team harmony, working to resolve interpersonal conflicts that arise, and preserving relationships with specific members that you will likely work with again. These types of objectives are not usually ones that any single team member (including a team lead) can achieve on their own, but anyone can work to help prioritize them. Some industries and organizations explicitly value some of these types of objectives as just as important as project objectives, but many industries and organizations do not. Regardless, team cohesion is vital to any team’s performance and often is highly influential for how healthy the team environment is for its members. 

Cohesion doesn’t require close personal relationships between all team members, but it does require healthy communication and mutual respect between all team members. These types of objectives are often long-term or continuous for the life of the team. Any team member can advocate for them or work towards achieving them although power dynamics within the team will influence how and in what way a team member will be able to contribute to these goals. This will be discussed further in parts five, analyzing power dynamics in a team context, and seven, conflict resolution strategies from a non-leadership position. 
​
Project objectives 

Project objectives are usually the most visible and emphasized for any team collaboration, and include goals like preserving project timeline and producing all project deliverables. The team was constructed with the purpose of achieving these goals, and of course all team members can and should do their part to achieve them. However, these goals should be treated as just one type of objectives of the above three that are valuable to you as an individual and the team as a whole, rather than the only valuable ones as is the case in some organizations and industries. 

​Each of these types of objectives may be top priority for you at different times, but be aware of which one you (and other team members) are prioritizing and which, if any, are being deprioritized, over time. All three are important to maintain in balance, both for you as an individual and to maintain a healthy team dynamic. You may not always be in a position to influence other team members, but you can always control how you personally approach a team project and whether you are keeping all three types of objectives in mind for yourself.

Click here for Part Two: The key elements that make up a great team collaboration