The Authority Guide to Conflict Resolution

A revolutionary approach to effective collaboration

Jane Gunn

• Publisher: The Authority Guides
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781912300075
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Conflict Resolution

Turn conflict into collaboration and differences into opportunities. Capture and harness the positive energy that different personalities and approaches bring to conquer the problems that can harm teamwork, productivity and engagement in your business. In this practical Authority Guide, mediation expert Jane Gunn will teach you all the essential skills you need to constructively manage change, challenges and crisis. Develop a deeper understanding of conflict and how to transform it, as you unlock the secret to true collaboration and promote a culture of respect, cooperation and success.

1. What is conflict?

Do you ever feel that you could do your job more effectively, grow your business more successfully or enjoy your life more if only people didn’t get in the way? Or perhaps you’ve wondered why dealing with other people is not as simple as you would like it to be?

In the workplace, you may feel that you are constantly firefighting and struggling to deal with people who see things differently from you.

All the relationships that we’re involved in, whether at work or at home, are bound to run into conflict from time to time. Although this is frustrating and can be a drag on your time and energy, conflict can be a good thing because it provides us with an opportunity to review the way things are and make changes for the better.

A shoe factory sends two marketing executives to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying:

SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES.

The other writes back triumphantly:

GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY THEY HAVE NO SHOES.

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Before you go any further in the book, list some issues that are currently affecting you and that you wish could be easily resolved.

‘Work/life would be easier if ________.’

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If you’re going to build an effective business culture, or create a happy and fulfilling relationship, you need to be able to do three things:

• Acknowledge and actively manage conflict
• Understand why conflict can be a magic ingredient that helps keep your business and relationships on track
• Use the skills and mindset of collaboration

What is collaboration?

Collaboration is about getting people to work together towards a specific goal or aim. In organisations, whether large or small, people are increasingly discovering the need to collaborate more effectively – both internally that is within and between departments, and externally with their stakeholders. In other groups too, perhaps a family, club or social organisation, there is a need to work collaboratively and to be less competitive and adversarial in our approach when it comes to solving the inevitable problems and challenges.

We live and work in a world of increasing interconnectedness and rapid change, and because of this there is a growing need to improve the way people work together. Getting collaboration right promises tremendous benefits, but despite the number of initiatives and millions of pounds spent on trying to improve collaboration, very few organisations are happy with the results. There are several reasons for this but the primary one is that breakdowns in collaboration and teamwork almost always result from fundamental differences – in other words, from conflict. When this happens, what people need most is not a strategic goal or corporate vision or training in teamwork. What they need is a fast and cost-effective way to identify and resolve the inevitable conflicts without demonising or blaming others and before any of the dysfunctional behaviours that people instinctively resort to start to manifest.

This is why we need to both acknowledge and actively manage conflict and to see it as the magic ingredient in our efforts to work things out together.

What is conflict?

Take a look at this checklist of some of the warning signs of conflict. Do you recognise any of them?

• Angry comments or behaviour
• Avoiding meeting or talking t...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction – collaborate or die?
• 1. What is conflict?
• 2. The cause of conflict and why we shouldn’t ignore it
• 3. What goes wrong, why and how to talk about it
• 4. Tips and tools for getting it right
• 5. How to avoid future problems
• 6. A systematic approach to conflict resolution
• Conclusion
• Reading list
• About the author
• Other Authority Guides