Conflict Resolution Skills

Many organizations have assumed that workplace conflict is always destructive.  So, they have often believed that conflict is best dealt with by managers or even via policies and procedures. After all, conflict creates workplace stress and leads to many performance problems, generating very real organizational costs! 

However, savvy organizations have embraced the fact that when conflict is understood and harnessed, it can be leveraged to add value to teams and even enhance performance.  With the right knowledge, skills, training, and practice, conflict can be productive and make organizations better! In this highly interactive course, learners will discover the connection between individual conflict response and team-empowering conflict resolution skills.  

Participants will explore conflict’s visceral dynamics and the nuanced behaviors we individually engage in to communicate and respond to conflict. Learners will apply techniques for transforming unproductive conflict responses into productive ones.  Additionally, learners will use a systematic method that prepares them to objectively dissect real-world conflict, while practicing many strategies for resolving it.  They will also develop proactive conflict approach plans, which they can transfer back to their own workplaces.

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for anyone interested in improving the way they respond to and manage workplace conflict.

Each participant practices building personal mastery in:

• Achieving a personal conflict paradigm shift
• Aligning conflict stakeholder’s expectations
• Agreeing on specific path to conflict resolution Identifying demands versus needs in the context of a common objective
• Neutralizing potential resistance and surfacing assumptions
• Addressing barriers and generating solutions
• Agreeing upon a win/win solution
• Developing a plan to implement the solution
• Harnessing the value from the conflict and celebrating the results

At the end of this program, you will be able to:

• Recognize the organizational costs of conflict
• Explain our physical and mental responses to conflict
• Communicate proactively and effectively with different types of people during conflict
• Replace unproductive conflict responses with productive ones
• Use the Conflict Resolution Diagram (CRD) process and conflict resolution approaches
• Relate team stages of development to shifts in conflict
• Develop a proactive conflict approach for your organization
• Create a conflict resolution plan for a real-world scenario

Overview

Getting Started         

• Introductions and social agreements        
• Course goal and objectives        
• Opening activities  

Conflict Facilitation Readiness         

• Conflict responses and perceptions          
• Conflict basics          
• Conflict and organizations         
• Dynamics of conflict  

Conflict Styles and Communication          

• A look at the color energies model         
• Conflict through the color energies and DiSC® lens          
• Communication with opposite color energies

  Individual Response to Conflict         

• The anatomy of conflict         
• Recognizing unproductive conflict responses        
• 4 steps to productive conflict          
• Choosing productive conflict responses  

Team Performance and Conflict        

• High-performing team relationships          
• Conflict and project team performance          
• Conflict Resolution Diagram (CRD) and process

Conflict Facilitation – Preparation

• Recognizing context and stakeholder needs         
• Using team conflict resolution approaches          
• Preparing for Crucial Conversations®  

Conflict Facilitation – Clarity         

• Exposing assumptions and biases          
• Defining the conflict and using the CRD  

Conflict Facilitation – Action        

• Proactive conflict management         
• Conflict facilitation practice  

Summary and Next Steps         

• Review         
• Personal action plans