Conflict Competence

Engaged leaders:

• Foster development of others: They support and challenge others to achieve professional and personal goals.
• Contribute to the creation of healthy organizations: They create engaging environments where others have meaningful opportunities to contribute and ensure that resources are available to fulfill their expected responsibilities.
• Communicate effectively: They listen well and encourage open exchange of information and ideas using appropriate communication media.
• Build teams: They facilitate environments of collaboration and cooperation to achieve results.

At the end of this tutorial, the learner will understand how to use courageous conversation to reduce/resolve personal conflicts and strengthen relationships. This tutorial is made available through sophia.org.

Every day, we meet people and process our interactions--making inferences and developing beliefs about the world around us. In this lesson, Trevor Maber introduces us to the idea of a ladder of inference and a process for rethinking the way we interact.

Difficult Conversations Playlist Topics:

• Resisting Change
• Supportive Conversations
• Addressing Concern
• Subtle Behaviour
• Complaining Others
• Intervening During an Argument
• Underlying Cause
• Mediating After an Argument
• Disruptive Faculty

View articles about leading through conflict in PubMed. 

The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation provides resources and research to learn more about transformative mediation.

Login may be required for off-site access to articles and journals. If prompted, log in with the same username and password you use to access your @nshealth.ca email. Contact library staff if you have any issues with access.

This study suggests that there are seven crucial conversations that people in healthcare frequently fail to hold that likely add to unacceptable error rates. The nationwide study was conducted by VitalSmarts in partnership with the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. This study suggests that improvement in these seven crucial conversations could not only contribute to significant reductions in errors, but also to improvements in quality of care, reduction in nursing turnover, and marked improvement in productivity.

Purpose: Professional nurses are taking on leadership roles of diverse healthcare teams. Development of conflict competence is essential, yet requires self-awareness and deliberate effort. Heightened awareness of one's preferred conflict style and cognizance of the implications of overuse and/or underuse of these styles is important. 

Findings: Students gained self-awareness about their preferred conflict style, recognized that each conflict style has its utility depending on any given situation, and demonstrated a difference in their most frequently used style.

Conclusion: Limited data conveys conflict behavior styles among pre-licensure nursing; however, students can influence their own environments (either causing or fueling situations) by their personal conflict-handling styles. Early development of these skills can raise awareness and cultivate ease in the management of conflict within varied settings.

Dealing with conflict is a task many managers struggle with or even avoid. But it is possible to transform disagreement and discord into positive outcomes. Listen to these six constructive ways to respond to conflict.

Workplace conflict may be frustrating, but is it worth the incredible effort required to tackle it? Authors Craig Runde and Tim Flanagan suggest taking a close look at the financial and human costs of not being able to reduce conflict - a problem they call "conflict incompetence."

Hosts respond to questions from the Coaching for Leaders community on how to handle difficult conversations and more.

Learn how to achieve shared goals while remaining true to yourself, even when the stakes are high. This lecture, discussion guide, and practice video package is made available through leanin.org.

Joseph Grenny discusses .....

Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers — and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.

William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations — from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.

Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that? "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.

Every doctor makes mistakes. But, says physician Brian Goldman, medicine's culture of denial (and shame) keeps doctors from ever talking about those mistakes, or using them to learn and improve. Telling stories from his own long practice, he calls on doctors to start talking about being wrong.

We can’t control if we’ll die, but we can “occupy death,” in the words of Peter Saul, an emergency doctor. He asks us to think about the end of our lives — and to question against the modern model of slow, intubated death in hospital. Two big questions can you help start this tough conversation.

The award-winning book that gives readers a method for handling the increasingly-outrageous behavior of narcissists and high-conflict people at work. Increasingly, high-conflict people--especially narcissists and bullies--are showing up in the workplace. It's All Your Fault at Work! addresses ways of managing the behavior of high-conflict people (HCP). Based on Bill Eddy's high-conflict personality theory, the book explains how to recognize predictable patterns of behavior and illustrates with over a dozen examples the simple four-step C.A.R.S. method to calm the HCP, analyze options, respond to hostility, and set limits on extreme behavior. 

When physician-patient conflicts arise they can lead to an impasse over issues as simple as prescribing antibiotics for a cold or as complicated as end-of-life care leaving physicians feeling frustrated and helpless. Breaking the Cycle explains how physicians can understand, approach, and resolve doctor patient conflict in a way that breaks down barriers and builds stronger, more gratifying relationships.

Broken promises, missed deadlines, poor behavior--they don't just make others' lives miserable; they can sap up to 50 percent of organizational performance and account for the vast majority of divorces. Crucial Accountability offers the tools for improving relationships in the workplace and in life.

Packed with practical and pragmatic suggestions and methods for dealing with the tough stuff at work, this unique and helpful book features simple diagnostics, models, and processes that you can put to use immediately.

We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success.

This book assists with personal understanding of how to identify, name, assess, and act on one’s values in the workplace. While set in a business context, much of what is discussed is relevant for health care. Several of the appendices are quite useful for summarizing key points in the book and for offering tools/questions for self- and team-exploration of values.

A guide for resolving conflicts, miscommunications and misunderstandings. Outlines 8 strategies that show how the inevitable disputes and divisions in the workplace actually provide an opportunity for greater creativity, productivity, enhanced morale, and personal growth. Case studies included in “revised edition.”

Whether you’re leading an organization or championing an issue, when the stakes are high, different opinions and strong emotions can derail your efforts to achieve the best outcome. Crucial Conversations© is a VitalSmarts© course that focuses on using candid and respectful communication to work successfully with others. Crucial conversations will help you develop the skills you need to manage conversations so that all perspectives are heard, relationships are enhanced and hidden issues come to the surface as you achieve the results you’re looking for.

This online course provides video tutorials, as well as downloadable guides and resources for handling difficult conversations both as a manager and an employee.
This course is made available through the Australian government's Fair Work Ombudsman's Online Learning Centre.

Resolving conflict in a positive manner is a skill than can be developed and practiced. Being heard can be one of the most important goals of someone engaged in conflict. Knowing how to listen and deploy appropriate communication tactics is determinative of whether a conflict will have a positive or negative resolution. Examine listening skills, appropriate and strategic verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and how to assemble a conflict management plan likely to yield positive resolutions. This course is made available by University of California, Irvine.