Responding to Conflict: Strategies for Improved Communication

Increase your success by proactively improving your conflict management skills.

Conflict in business is all too familiar—particularly under increased business pressures. Still, most of us lack basic conflict management skills. Rather than react to conflict on a purely emotional level, you can learn how to manage disputes and disagreements in a positive manner, or even avoid them altogether.

Your immediate takeaway:

• Recognise the causes of interpersonal conflict.
• Evaluate conflict situations and then choose the appropriate strategies and tools to manage and/or resolve these conflicts
• Develop greater awareness of your emotional triggers and how to control them
• Create an action-plan around the implementation of your new skills

This conflict management training course combines proven-by-practice methods with new insights and ideas that will grow your conflict management skills. You will gain a wider perspective through breakout sessions, exercises, and case applications.

How will you benefit?

After participating in this programme, you will grow your conflict management skills & competencies and be able to:

• Recognise the underlying causes of conflict
• Map conflict using a five-step approach
• Identify ways to develop flexible responses to personal and professional conflicts
• Practise applying models, techniques and strategies to manage your interpersonal communication behaviours in conflict situations
• Implement strategies to improve your communication and effectively respond to conflict

During the programme you will:

• Network and learn with a diverse group of peers from different industries and countries in an international environment
• Develop a personal action plan to implement back at work
• Learn and practise new skills using real-business-world examples and exercises over 2 interactive days

What will you learn and practice?

The Responding to Conflict: Strategies for Improved Communication is a 2-day hands-on training programme, highly interactive with exercises and role plays. The programme will be led by an experienced facilitator with former management experience in international companies.

Responding to Conflict: Strategies for Improved Communication Course Outline:

• Developing Conflict Awareness
  • Recognising the difference between disagreement and conflict
  • Understanding the five levels of a conflict
  • Exploring barriers to conflict management and resolution
• Responding to Conflict
  • Identifying your own feelings and actions in response to conflict
  • Applying the P-U-R-R Model to demonstrate understanding
  • Utilising the validating process
  • Distinguishing between listening for thoughts and listening for feelings
• The Role of Trust in Minimising Conflict
  • Describing the 4 Cs as the cornerstones of building trust
  • Knowing how trust is lost and regained, and how transparency validates trust
  • Identifying interests behind positions
• Conflict Strategies
  • Identifying your preferred strategies for responding to conflict
  • Understanding the five conflict strategies
  • Exploring appropriate strategies to minimise/manage conflict
• Moving Beyond Conflict
  • Knowing why relationship conflict and content conflict should be handled differently
  • Turning potential disagreements into discussion by applying the Model to Disagree
  • Identifying and practising assertiveness tools and strategies
  • Detoxifying emotional statements and devising alternative ways to express the message
• Dealing with Difficult Behavior
  • Explaining the difference between difficult people and difficult behaviour
  • Understanding how to handle passive behavior
  • Developing a strategy for handling passive or aggressive behaviour
• Mapping the Conflict
  • Mapping a conflict using a 5-step approach
  • Exploring a given conflict from various “viewing points”
  • Separating interests from positions in a specific conflict
  • Selecting a conflict strategy appropriate to addressing a specific goal
  • Implementing a chosen conflict strategy
• Thunderstorms
  • Applying skills to address emotionally tense conflicts (called Thunderstorms)
  • Using skills to address an intra-group conflict case study
  • Planning for future development to effectively respond to conflict