Handling Conflict with Others

Overview/Description
 No one can complete a working career without experiencing conflict, so it is essential for you to handle this conflict in the most effective way. To handle conflict well, you need to build up a repertoire of techniques. These techniques require you to behave differently from your natural instincts at times. Therefore, a good starting point is to establish what your instinctive approaches to conflict are, and where these attitudes stem from. This will enable you to decide on a range of different approaches to conflict, based on a spectrum that goes from being only concerned about your own needs, to only being concerned about other people's needs. This spectrum gives rise to five possible strategies for dealing with conflict. Whatever strategy you apply, some core techniques will make you more effective. These involve three main actions: confronting the conflict, communicating with the other party, and determining an acceptable outcome. Sometimes, the conflict in the workplace just surrounds you, even though you are not involved directly. You then have to learn how to avoid taking sides, or becoming a scapegoat.

Target Audience
 Anyone who has to deal with conflict in the workplace.

Expected Duration
6.0 hours

Lesson Objectives:

Your Attitude Towards Conflict

  • recognize the benefits of examining personal attitudes to conflict.
  • list the common factors that determine attitudes to conflict.
  • match the five instinctive and attitudinally driven approaches to dealing with conflict with their descriptions.
  • identify the five possible approaches to handling conflict.
  • analyze the most effective approaches to handling conflict in a given situation.

    • Conflict Handling Techniques

  • recognize the benefits of applying techniques to handle conflict better.
  • distinguish between the different approaches for confronting conflict.
  • confront conflict effectively in a given situation.
  • apply the correct communication techniques to handle conflict in a given scenario.
  • match each stage of the integrative bargaining approach to resolving conflict with appropriate descriptions.
  • achieve an acceptable outcome to conflict in the workplace in a given scenario.

    • Surviving Conflict

  • recognize the benefits of identifying the techniques used to survive conflict.
  • identify the characteristics of the two techniques to avoid taking sides in a conflict.
  • apply the appropriate techniques to avoid taking sides in a hypothetical conflict.
  • apply techniques to avoid getting caught in the middle of a given conflict scenario.
  • identify the techniques for transforming an atmosphere of conflict at work.
  • apply techniques to transform an atmosphere of conflict in a given work situation.

    • Course Number: COMM0342