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.

dealing with conflict

What is Dealing with Conflict in Negotiation?

In dealing with conflict, you can and should draw on the same principles of collaborative negotiation that you use in dealmaking. 

Whether dealing with conflict at work or at home, we frequently fall back on the tendency to try to correct the other person or group’s perceptions, lecturing them about why we’re right—and they’re wrong. Deep down, we know that this conflict resolution approach usually fails to resolve the conflict and often only makes it worse.

Instead, we may try to tamp down our negative emotions, hoping that our feelings will dissipate with time. In fact, conflict tends to become more entrenched, and parties have a greater need for conflict resolution when they avoid dealing with their strong emotions.

For example, conflict in the workplace often arises when resentment, anger, and other negative emotions are left to fester. An accidental slight can lead to a full-blown dispute if the parties involved fail to address it explicitly. 

Unfortunately, when dealing with conflict in the workplace, employees usually make matters worse. Because our perceptions are based on self-interest, we’re likely to have difficulty finding solutions that both sides consider to be fair. In addition, people tend to escalate their commitment to conflict, leading to deeper and deeper animosity. 

If you experience conflict in the workplace, whether due to a personality issue or a disagreement over a work matter, enlist the help of a manager—someone you trust to handle the conflict confidentially and effectively.

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 dealing with conflict:

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Training: Mediation Curriculum

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

In 2009, we collected many types of curriculum materials from teachers and trainers who attended the Mediation Pedagogy Conference. We received general materials about classes on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as well as highly specific and idiosyncratic units like Conflict Resolution through Literature: Romeo and Juliet and a negotiating training package for female managers … Read More 

How to Manage Conflict at Work

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

Sooner or later, almost all of us will find ourselves trying to cope with how to manage conflict at work. At the office, we may struggle to work through high-pressure situations with people with whom we have little in common. We need a special set of strategies to calm tempers, restore order, and meet each … Read More 

Conflict-Management Styles: Pitfalls and Best Practices

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

People approach conflict differently, depending on their innate tendencies, their life experiences, and the demands of the moment. Negotiation and conflict-management research reveals how our differing conflict-management styles mesh with best practices in conflict resolution. A Model of Conflict-Management Styles In 1974, Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann introduced a questionnaire, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, … Read More 

5 Conflict Resolution Strategies

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

Whether a conflict erupts at work or at home, we frequently fall back on the tendency to try to correct the other person or group’s perceptions, lecturing them about why we’re right—and they’re wrong. Deep down, we know that this conflict management approach usually fails to resolve the conflict and often only makes it worse. … Read More 

Negotiation Team Dynamics: The Divide-and-Conquer Strategy

Posted by & filed under International Negotiation.

In an interesting example of negotiation team dynamics, during a 2018 New Year’s Day address, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed opening talks with South Korea to discuss the North’s possible participation in the Winter Olympics, to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the following month. Hoping to avoid disruption by the North, South Korean … Read More 

Four Ways to Manage Conflict in the Workplace

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Samantha was livid. While making a presentation during a meeting that both attended, Brad, a newcomer in her department, had shared some slides during a presentation that were clearly based on ideas for a project she’d shared with him privately—without giving her credit. Samantha angrily confronted Brad in his office after the meeting; he became … Read More 

Win Win Negotiation: Different Cultures, Shared Meals

Posted by & filed under Win-Win Negotiations.

From movie moguls hammering out film deals in Los Angeles to publishers and agents assessing each other’s tastes in New York, the “power lunch” has become a familiar institution. Across the globe, negotiators often do business over shared meals, whether out of convenience or as part of a concerted effort to get to know one … Read More