Managing Conflict at Work: Understanding and Resolving Conflict for Productive Working Relationships

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Managing Conflict at Work provides practical guidance on how to prevent, contain and resolve conflict in the workplace. It demonstrates how effective conflict management can have a powerful impact on the way organisations channel their energies; encouraging positive mindsets and building stronger and happier workforces.

Putting the cost of rising conflict in context with recessionary times, it looks beyond individual cases to issues such as workforce motivation and corporate responsibility. The authors provide a wide range of practical techniques, tools and templates to support individuals who need to facilitate the resolution of employee disputes. Aimed not just at mediators and conflict practitioners, but at staff managers and anyone who needs to deal with people disputes; the book emphasises simple and practical ways for dealing with conflict situations - both when potential disputes are first emerging, and once a conflict has escalated into a formal complaint.

Also including international case studies, extensive appendix of templates, tools and forms, including stakeholder analysis, mediation in-take forms and reflective questioning prompts, Managing Conflict at Work provides practical support to ensure that your company prevents disputes and stays within the law.

The book is accompanied by an extensive range of ready-to-use templates and case studies and is supported by a dedicated website, providing information and downloads referred to in the book, as well as videos and podcasts.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• 1 The nature of conflict
• The true cost of not managing conflict
• What this book is about and how it's organized
• What causes conflict?
• Common triggers for conflict in the workplace
• How conflicts often develop
• Call in the lawyers
• Should we be worried?
• 2 Deciphering conflict management
• What is conflict management?
• What conflict management isn't
• An anatomy of conflict management
• Relationships between disputing parties and their perspectives
• Models for approaching conflict management
• Introducing 'RESOLVE'
• 3 Options for resolving conflict
• Taking stock of options
• Horses for courses?
• Why conflict management should be a concern for all managers
• Approaches to mediation
• 4 RESOLVE - The Janus perspective
• Introduction
• The Janus perspective
• RESOLVES deciphered
• RESOLVE revisited
• 5 Preventing conflict
• The mediator within every manager
• Communication styles and manager choices
• The power of language and its impacts
• A manager's contribution to conflict
• Recognizing and channeling constructive conflict
• Prevention
• 6 Managing conflict from the front line
• A manager's role in dispute resolution
• Managing developing disputes
• Essential dispute resolution skills for resolving disputes
• Listening between the words
• When and what to escalate - and to whom
• The seven rules of communication
• 7 Escalated dispute resolution
• A full-blown dispute
• Stakeholder analysis
• Engaging in inner circle
• Criteria for closing out mediation
• Mediation strategy and planning
• Preparing for mediation
• Perceptions, reality and lies
• Emotional and psychological change
• Recognizing when an alternative intervention is appropriate
• Self-care for in-house mediator and coaches
• When mediation ends without a resolution: litigation
• The hope and the challenge of mediation
• 8 The practice of dispute resolution: critical encounters
• Introducing the conflict-busting 'micro-tool'
• First principles of mediation
• Common encounters
• Interventions relevant for the stage mediation has reached
• Two ears - one mouth
• 9 Strategic planning and conflict management
• A strategy for managing conflict
• The meaning of 'strategy'
• Key considerations for conflict management strategy
• Planning implementation
• 10 Implementing a conflict management strategy
• The practicality of implementing a conflict management strategy
• Addressing the training and development needs of conflict managers
• Training and development for everyone
• Supervision for in-house mediators
• Resourcing the conflict management function
• 11 Monitoring and evaluation Monitoring
• Evaluating conflict management strategy
• Collective learning
• The strategic context of conflict management
• Appendix 1 Conflict management micro-tools
• Appendix 2 Templates
• Appendix 3 Online resources
• References
• Index