101 Tips for Managing Conflict

by Richard Brenner

Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague targets of a bully? Is your team's performance threatened by rivalries and destructive conflicts? Are your projects needlessly complicated because they had to include superfluous features just to keep the peace in your organization?

Skip to the Details: How To Orderonflict isn't necessarily bad — it can be constructive, especially when people with opposing views work together to produce a new position that all can support. Often the results are better than any one of the contributors' initial positions. And conflict can be destructive, too, when oppositional, reasoned debate turns to personal attacks, sniping, exclusion, silence, gossip, or worse — violence and other forms of abuse. 101 Tips for Managing Conflict shows you how to encourage constructive conflict, how to intervene to end destructive conflict, and how to create an environment that minimizes the occurrence of destructive conflict.

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out their differences over reproductive rights In my own experience, and in the course of working with clients in my consulting and coaching practices, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when we try to deal with conflict at work. Some of what I've learned is just good practice and has appeared in the literature over the years. But much is very new, developed in response to the rapid structural and technological change that has swept through today's office.

This tip book is both like and unlike many other collections of ideas for dealing with conflict. Like others, it's packed with ideas and suggestions that will help you deal with destructive conflict once it erupts.

Unlike others, this tip book also provides

Suggestions for changing the way you experience conflict, to help you come to peace even with situations you cannot change
Ideas organizational leaders and managers can use to adjust the organizational culture to make conflict more constructive and a lot less painful for all
Insights that help you understand the systemic sources of conflict

Some sample tips

Here's a sample:

"Personality clash" is a bogus concept: The "personality clash" model of destructive conflict represents some conflicts as arising solely from incompatibilities between two people. Rarely is this the case — the causes of destructive conflict are usually systemic, involving several people, if not everyone, and sometimes people who aren't even present.
Identify performance issues: Bullying behavior is a performance issue that might call for discipline. Tolerating bullying behavior by a subordinate is a performance issue for the supervisor, and it, too, might call for discipline. Tolerating the toleration of bullying behavior on the part of a sub-subordinate is also a performance issue that might call for discipline. And so on.
Avoid the Fundamental Attribution Error: As humans, we repeatedly make the Fundamental Attribution Error — we attribute behavior to character or disposition rather than to situation or context. Consciously try to understand others in terms of the situations they face, rather than their track records, origins, alliances, professions or affiliations.

What readers say

Here's a sample of reader's comments:

You're stuff is brilliant! And -- Thank you for sharing these ideas.
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The articles are great, I enjoy getting them, and you always have something very interesting to say, or good points to raise.
I really enjoy my weekly newsletters. I appreciate that the newsletter is a quick read and is much more intellectually stimulating than, say, reading a Dilbert cartoon.
You fill a need that went unmet -- a sort of Dr. Phil for Management!
I have found your articles extremely accurate, inspiring and applicable to day-to-day. You have a great writing style and the lessons that you have shared with us are invaluable.
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Most of us have way too much to do to find much time to read. And the time we do have is broken up into small chunks. We need the knowledge, but too often, we don't have time to get it, and we can't wade through 15-page chapters that lay out lengthy discussions.

Knowledge products from Chaco Canyon Consulting are designed with busy people in mind. Here are some features that make reading our e-books fast and convenient.

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Written for busy people: Most business books are about 200-250 pages, with about 10 chapters. I don't know about you, but I don't have time to read a 225-page book cover-to-cover. There are lots of folks like us—that's why there's such a booming market in book condensations.; Our ebooks cut out that middle step. They're designed to be read by people who don't have time for the typical business book. Our tip books consist of short paragraphs, two- to four sentences per tip. Each tip has a headline in bold. You can easily scan the book for tips that seem relevant to you and read only those. Read in any order, and read them in short sittings.
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