Conflict Management Strategies

Make conflict resolution part of a healthy work environment While differences and disagreements between people are inevitable, conflict is not inherently corrosive. It can be part of a productive work environment provided it is skillfully managed.

In this program, you will gain key insights on workplace conflict and learn ways to manage, resolve or deescalate it. Assess your personal style and approach to conflict, and practice new skills for managing conflict on both individual and team levels. Anticipate and prevent conflicts when possible, and resolve them in a fair and considerate manner. Leave with an action plan for applying your learnings to conflict situations in your workplace.

The program focuses on the individual dynamics of conflict resolution, including conflicts between managers and workers as well as between co-workers. It does not cover legal or contractual conflicts (e.g. collective bargaining) or broader societal conflicts like aboriginal land claims.

Benefits for you

• Increase your awareness of how you respond to conflict and adapt your conflict response style to particular situations
• Identify behaviours and language that tend to provoke conflict
• Develop collaborative skills and communication habits that will help deflect and/or resolve conflicts
• Recognize powerful unstated conflicts and make them explicit, so they can be treated
• Use time-tested third-party techniques to assist others in resolving conflicts
• Structure a conflict management process in ways that reduce or resolve conflict

Takeaways

• Adapt your conflict response style to particular situations
• Respond more effectively to the emotional content of conflict
• Develop collaborative and communication skills to better help avoid and resolve conflicts
• Frame and set boundaries around conflict
• Mobilize third-party techniques to help others resolve conflicts
• Design and implement team-based conflict management and employee advocacy systems

Program content

• Sources and types of conflict
• Alternative ways of responding to conflict: aggressive, assertive and problem-solving responses--how do you tend to respond?
• Managing conflict resolution: surfacing inexplicit conflict so it can be treated, developing and facilitating an effective conflict resolution process
• Communication: obstacles to communication, using collaborative language, listening with empathy, speaking assertively
• Making conflict resolution a strategic organizational objective
• Making conflict OK: avoiding reactance, learning from conflict, reducing the corrosive impact of conflict while fostering its creative potential

Special Features

You will develop personal and team conflict profiles, and design a plan for better managing conflict at both levels. You’ll also apply conflict resolution practices to your own work situation.