When you download the New Conflict Management: Effective Conflict Resolution Strategies to Avoid Litigation you will learn how wise negotiators extract unexpected value using an indirect approach to conflict management.

conflict management skills

What are Conflict Management Skills?

Conflict management skills can help us keep disputes and arguments from escalating out of control.

When negotiators get along well, creative problem solving is easy. When they become upset, however, they seem to forget everything they know about finding joint gain, to the point of giving up tangible wins simply to inflict losses on the other party. This is especially true in high-profile negotiations that turn nasty. This is where conflict management skills come in handy.

One of the most important conflict management skills you can acquire is managing team relationships for the long term, which requires trust-building and investing in individual relationships. 

Conventional wisdom advises addressing team conflict by staying focused on tasks and avoiding relationship issues. Yet a case study of conflict management by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and Diana McLain Smith of The Monitory Group concludes that this approach to dispute resolution works only when the issues are “cool” ones that can be resolved through objective analysis.

When you need conflict management skills for yourself, remember that during the most heated arguments, it is often best for you to imagine yourself on stage and to mentally ‘go to the balcony’ or remove yourself from the situation at hand in order to take a larger view of the conflict.

One of the most difficult conflict management skills, however, is a simple apology. Program on Negotiation faculty member Sheila Heen reminds us in her book Difficult Conversations that apologies have two functions in conflict management: demonstrating contrition and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. No matter the dispute, it is often necessary for someone to take the lead in pursuing collaborative change in conflict resolution.

When you download the New Conflict Management: Effective Conflict Resolution Strategies to Avoid Litigation you will learn how wise negotiators extract unexpected value using an indirect approach to conflict management.

We will send you a download link to your copy of this free report and notify you by email when we post new information on our website about how to handle conflict management.

The following items are tagged conflict management skills:

Case Study of Conflict Management: To Resolve Disputes and Manage Conflicts, Assume a Neutral 3rd Party Role

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

In their book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Penguin Putnam, 2000), authors Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen tell us how to engage in the conversations in our professional or personal lives that make us uncomfortable by examining a case study of conflict management. Tough, honest conversations are critical for managers, … Read More

New Conflict Management Skills: Understand How to Resolve “Hot Conflicts”

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Negotiating effectively with colleagues can be more challenging than dealing with outsiders. Conventional wisdom advises addressing team conflict by staying focused on tasks and avoiding relationship issues. Yet a case study of conflict management by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and Diana McLain Smith of The Monitory Group concludes that this approach to dispute … Read More

Conflict Negotiation Strategies for Business Negotiators

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

When closing a deal, new business partners are typically optimistic about the path ahead. But somewhere down the line, conflict is almost inevitable. One party may miss a deadline. The two sides may interpret contract terms differently. Changing economic conditions may make it difficult for one side to uphold its end of the deal. When a … Read More

Arbitration vs Mediation: Using Teambuilding and ADR in Negotiation

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

During his years as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State, one of James A. Baker, III’s, goals was to encourage the free-market reforms that Communist Party of the Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had launched in the late 1980s. One day during his tenure, a high-level Bush administration official commented in the press that … Read More

The beginning of organized labor

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

The Clearinghouse at PON offers hundreds of role simulations, from two-party, single-issue negotiations to complex multi-party exercises. The Pullman Strike Role Play is a simulation from the Workable Peace Curriculum Series unit on the rise of organized labor in the United States. This role play is set in the town of Pullman, Illinois, outside of Chicago, … Read The beginning of organized labor