Managing Conflicts & Difficult Situations

The management of conflicts and difficulties is one of the most misunderstood, time-consuming and poorly handled of leadership responsibilities. Most leaders, managers and supervisors regard ‘conflict’ as something negative. However, if it is used and managed well and occurs in high-trust cultures, conflict can be a powerful source of sustainable competitive advantage. This course, as a result, has been specifically designed to help leaders and managers to control and reduce negative conflict, build high-trust organizational cultures and deal proactively with difficult situations using highly effective techniques.

The Managing Conflicts & Difficult Situations training course incorporates the latest research from the Harvard Negotiation Project, Emotional Intelligence (EI), personality research and cutting-edge communication and influencing techniques. To date these specific skills and the training approach described has been used in more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies.

This Managing Conflicts & Difficult Situations training course will highlight:

• Your natural personality preferences for thinking, feeling, speaking and behaving that may trigger conflict – or help to manage it
• The default conflict-management strategies you use – both helpful and unhelpful
• The nature, types and causes of conflict and difficulty – inter-personal and strategic
• Highly effective strategic and verbal techniques to address conflict and difficulties at both the individual and organizational level
• How to structure your meetings, presentations and communications to reduce negative conflict and encourage healthy debate

What are the Goals?

The Managing Conflicts & Difficult Situations training course is designed to help you to:

• Identify the common types and sources of conflict in your workplace
• Appreciate your own and other’s personality profiles and preferred conflict approaches
• Understand the predictable emotional triggers and responses to conflict
• Differentiate between assertive, passive and aggressive behaviours
• Deal with difficult people and situations

At the end of this training course, you will learn how to:

• Understand the root causes of conflict in the workplace
• Determine people’s preferred conflict styles
• Adopt the most effective skills and techniques to swiftly address the issues
• Feel confident, competent and in command when handling difficult situations
• Hold those ‘crucial conversations’ with others regarding their contribution, behaviour or attitude.

Who is this Training Course for?

Leaders, managers and team leaders/supervisors who need to take charge of – and resolve – conflicts or difficult situations that could have a negative impact on performance, effectiveness and relationships. The Managing Conflicts & Difficult Situations training course would also benefit junior/middle managers new to their role, or with experience but little previous training.

How will this Training Course be Presented?

The Managing Conflicts & Difficult Situations training course will use a range of approaches to learning, including experiential group activities, individual exercises, mini-case studies, role plays and discussions. Graphical materials and stimulating explanations will be used to introduce underlying models. A key part of the learning process is sharing the different experiences you will bring to the training course, as well as experimenting with novel – and sometimes challenging – practical techniques. An MBTI-type (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) profile will be used to give you an insight into how your personality can contribute to creating or resolving conflicts. In addition, the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode profile will reveal what your default conflict-management strategies are.