Resolving Conflict: Ten Steps for Turning Negatives into Positives

By Harold Scharlatt

Conflict is inevitable, in everyday life and especially in today's increasingly nonhierarchical organizations-in the workplace. So what has always been a key leadership skill, conflict resolution, has become even more critical. But too often, leaders receive little formal training in conflict resolution, and they struggle just to manage the simplest interpersonal conflicts. By using the lessons of this book, readers will be able to apply a thorough, proven method-summarized in ten steps-for resolving conflicts. Following these steps, leaders can analyze a conflict and move toward its resolution with more assurance of a positive outcome for everyone involved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership
• Release date: May 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781604917314

Book preview

PREFACE

When I began my career as an internal management and leadership consultant at a Fortune 25 company in the mid-1970s, the one flaw that my manager saw in both my interpersonal interactions and my facilitation work was my inability to effectively manage conflict. My interest in interpersonal and organizational influencing had led me to be fairly skillful in those areas—or so I thought. When my attempts at influencing were unsuccessful and conflict resulted, it became clear that my skill set left much room for development. Although I was better at managing conflict from a third-party perspective than from a personally involved circumstance, both situations called for more expertise. With my manager’s wisdom, I was placed on a team with four experts in conflict resolution. We were given eighteen months to further research the discipline of conflict resolution, create a training workshop based on key learnings, and apply our learnings as internal consultants throughout the organization. I was hooked! As someone whose career and personal life could be hindered by the inability to productively manage conflict, the lessons I learned and successfully applied changed the vector of my future success.

I have worked in the areas of influence and conflict for almost forty years. During that time I have had the good fortune to train thousands of individuals and act as a consultant to a myriad of organizations in seventeen countries.

∼Harold Scharlatt, Greensboro, NC

INTRODUCTION

Organizational leaders recognize the power of influence for producing results. They know that the ability to influence is critical to leading in contemporary organizations, where flat, matrix, or other nonhierarchical structures emphasize relational power over positional power. Leading in such complex environments highlights the need for:

♦  Influencing without formal authority

♦  Taking a global perspective

♦  Working cross-culturally

♦  Sharing leadership

♦  Improving cross-functional cooperation

♦  Managing multiple constituencies

However, even the best attempts at influencing others can fail, and when that happens, leaders often find themselves in conflict. So what has always been a key leadership skill—conflict resolution—has become even more critical. But too often, leaders receive little formal training in conflict resolution, and they struggle just to manage the simplest interpersonal conflicts. Without the ability to understand a conflict’s root cause and the intervening variables at play in a conflict situation, a leader’s efforts to facilitate resolution often fall short of the mark.

In my career as a consultant, business leader, and leadership trainer, the conflict-resolution lessons I have learned that work—and that I try to pass on to clients, staff, and peers—revolve around three consistent, essential concepts.

♦  Flexibility in approaching conflict situations

♦  Understanding the common causes of conflict

♦  Analyzing and leveraging the influence factors (such as power and time pressures; a more detailed list appears in a section below) to resolve conflicts in a positive way

I believe we can use these three concepts as tools to hone skills that lead to a more rigorous and productive analysis of conflicts. Further, those sharpened skills can help us develop more grounded strategies for resolving conflict. Of course, any time you deal with human interactions, as you do when you find yourself in a conflict situation, rigorous and grounded are debatable terms. Social interactions and relationships are fraught with uncertainty. However, I have chosen those words for two reasons: First, I use them in the context of the behavioral sciences, the study of the actions people take in response to a wide variety of internal and external experiences. Second, by using the analytic techniques I discuss in this book, readers will be able to ground their response to conflict in a step-by-step, logical