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Conflict Management
Business Challenge:
Conflict can be good. As William Wrigley once said, "If two men in business always agree, one of them isn't necessary!" The challenge is for your team to manage conflict in a productive manner. Do disagreements on your team often degenerate into shouting matches? Do team members engage in passive-aggressive behavior, agreeing in a meeting, but doing a 180 when they leave the room? Are team members avoiding tough issues? How can your team best set the stage for productive conflict and dialogue? How can your team set an example for the rest of the organization?

Solution:

The purpose of the Conflict Management  solution is to help a team be flexible, adaptable, and, thus, effective in terms of conflict management. An EDI facilitator will introduce a tool for effective conflict management that will enable team members to align different conflict handling modes with different types of conflict situations. The EDI facilitator will also show team members how to understand and adapt their own styles to be most effective in different conflict situations. Team members will determine what their own conflict style is via a self-assessment instrument and constructive feedback from their peers. Exercises incorporating real-time business issues laden with conflict will provide team members an opportunity to practice effective conflict management.

Benefits and Outcomes:

  • Increased effectiveness in conflict situations -- including negotiations, peer disagreements, employee performance issues, customer management, etc.
  • Increased collaboration among teams
  • More productive dialogue and a healthy respect for good conflict while minimizing counter-productive behavior (e.g., passive-aggressive behavior, shouting, etc.)
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