Use Conflict Management Training Materials to Train Your Team and Improve their Communication

Conflicts are inevitable. We seem to get into conflicts of various degrees pretty much all through our lives. The word “conflict” usually brings up negative emotions. However, conflicts are not inherently bad. They are a necessity for progress. What makes conflicts critical is how you handle them. Good conflict management is not avoiding conflicts; it is rather about knowing how to respond to them. In business, conflict management training is critical as you can significantly increase inter-communication efficiency and create a better atmosphere to work in. This also helps team building.

This article explores indicators of conflicts, what you can do to handle them and how to reach consensus.

The first step in conflict management is to know you are in a conflict. The following are a number of conflict indicators:

• Disagreements, regardless of issue
• Open disagreement
• Conflicts over values
• Specific body language
• Strong public statements or sharing sensitive data with others
• Power struggle
• Increasing lack of respect
• Vague and undefined goals
• Keeping others in the dark

As stated earlier, conflicts are not always bad. They are necessary to resolve issues and progress to newer territories. However, certain conflicts can be quite destructive. An ideal conflict management should handle destructive and constructive conflicts appropriately. Here is what you need to consider:

Conflict is destructive when it:

• Polarizes people and teams, reducing cooperation
• Undermines people or their moral
• Leads to lack of respect for others
• Takes a lot of time and focuses people’s attention away from important activities
• Increases and highlights differences and creates an atmosphere of you against us
• Leads to aggression, negative emotions and in extreme case, violence.

Conflict is constructive when it:

• Leads to solutions and clarification
• Leads to better understanding of challenging issues
• Increases respect for others through understating new viewpoints
• Brings people closer together after conflicts are successfully resolved
• Helps people to develop new skills and understand new domains
• Encourages cooperation to address challenges as opposed to uncooperative behaviour
• Helps release anxiety and stress

Conflict management training allows learners to go through simulated conflicts in controlled environments. This is a great way to experiment with various responses and see what works best. Trainers can benefit from established techniques identified and included in conflict management training materials to streamline their training with interactive exercises and content.

Various ways have been proposed to address conflicts. The best way to learn each technique is to try it out in real life scenarios. The following are a number of important methods:

Set specific goals and understand what you want to gain out of each interaction

Communicate frequently with others to reduce misunderstanding

Sometimes you need to agree to disagree. Leave it at that.

• Be honest about concerns
• Get egos out of the way
• Set an example for others by remaining calm and factual
• Never exaggerate as this will only shift the conversation to argue about your exaggeration
• Stress the importance of following policy
• Be honest
• Give more information than is required. This will make you appear more honest and helpful
• Don’t attempt to undermine people. They will certainly remember you for this.
• Discuss your differences in values clearly and openly

To reach consensus and improve your conflict management, follow these guidelines:

• Avoid a win/lose mentality. Always go for win/win
• Don’t change your mind just to avoid a conflict
• Don’t switch to majority voting as soon as there is a conflict. Sometimes democratic decision making is not the solution. You would be better off by sharing more information with others and work together to reach a consensus.
• Encourage the attitude that holding different views is a healthy way to progress forward. You don’t want everyone to always believe in the same thing.
• Avoid using your position, expertise or experience as strong points to support your case. Discuss your view as logically as possible. Your case must stand on its own legs, not because an important person such as you says so.

Use these guidelines to improve your conflict management or enhance your conflict management training. You can setup a course for your team to improve their skills in this area by using conflict management training materials. This can also benefit team building activities or courses.