Developing Your Conflict Competence

Conflict is inevitable in any organization. Successful leaders know that if conflict is embraced rather than avoided it can lead to fresh opportunities, solutions, and results. Developing Your Conflict Competence is a practical book that offers a hands-on resource for leaders, managers, team members, and everyone within an organization who wants to sharpen their skills and learn to respond to conflict with confidence. This third book in the "conflict competent" series is filled with tips, checklists, exercises, and illustrative stories that offer insight into the nature of conflict and show how to handle conflict successfully. Throughout the book, authors Craig Runde and Tim Flanagan outline a concrete process for dealing with unavoidable workplace tensions and present a series of thought-provoking questions and self-diagnostics. Developing Your Conflict Competence is a comprehensive guide to managing disagreements, differences, and discord. It shows how an individual can practically help others deal with conflicts that are causing friction within an organization. Runde and Flanagan also give down-to-earth advice for dealing with discord within teams. They show how teams can establish norms for handling conflict by creating the right climate for discussing issues and using effective communications techniques. On a more global level, the authors present specific approaches for changing organizational culture so conflict can be addressed with effectiveness and immediacy. Developing Your Conflict Competence demonstrates how anyone confronted with conflict can cool down, slow down, and engage constructively.

Craig E. Runde is director of the Center for Conflict Dynamics at Eckerd College. Tim A. Flanagan is director of Custom Programs at the Leadership Development Institute at Eckerd College. Runde and Flanagan are the authors of Building Conflict Competent Teams and Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader (both from Jossey-Bass). Visit the authors' web site at www.conflictcompetent.com. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) is a top-ranked, global provider of executive education that develops better leaders through its exclusive focus on leadership education and research. Founded in 1970 as a nonprofit, educational institution, CCL helps clients worldwide cultivate creative leadership-the capacity to achieve more than imagined by thinking and acting beyond boundaries-through an array of programs, products, and other services.

Preface: What's a Hands-On Guide and Why Should I Be Interested? ix 1 Introduction 1 2 Cognitive Aspects of Conflict 11 3 The Emotional Side of Conflict 33 4 Engaging Conflict Constructively 71 5 Team Conflict Competence 139 6 Organizational Conflict Competence 215 Resources 243 References 249 The Authors 253 Index 255 About the Center for Creative Leadership 267