Learn Conflict Management Strategies

It would be easy to say that to deal with difficult people you should be tolerant and accept people's differences. This sounds nice, and might work in the short term, but if you are working with people you find difficult and you expect to be working with them for some period of time – you are better off learning how to respond and relate to them. The approach you use depends on the person, the situation, and your willingness to build and blend skills as needed. Dealing with difficult people requires that you first learn how to manage yourself with them. This means being self-aware and practicing self-management. It also means tuning into the feelings and emotions of others, however difficult it might be. When you know what triggers you and how you typically react, you can build skills to help make your interactions with others more productive. This is emotional intelligence, and if you build this capacity, you will be able to deal more effectively with many difficulties in life (including other people)!

An engaged workforce creates a positive work environment that boosts productivity, encourages creativity, and helps you engage and retain talented employees. This in turn will make your organization more profitable and innovative, and will strengthen your employees’ work ethic. In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of engaging your workforce and of establishing a positive work culture. You'll learn how to recognize common qualities of engaged employees, understand what drives employee motivation, and recognize commitment challenges. You'll also learn how employee engagement links to the bottom line by reducing turnover.

As a manager, it can be daunting to find yourself in charge of a diverse group, comprised of different age ranges, backgrounds, and experiences. It's inevitable that you'll encounter difficulties. Effectively handling conflict, whether it's team conflict or difficult employee behavior, is essential to productivity and requires developing conflict management skills. This course covers useful techniques and processes for conflict resolution. You'll learn methods for resolving conflict when dealing with an employee's difficult behavior. You'll also learn ways of effectively managing team conflict and understanding and dealing with conflict in the workplace as a whole.

Successful people are generally excellent listeners. They’re able to give others their full attention so that they can understand their needs and ask the right questions, even in difficult or stressful situations. They can also use their listening skills effectively to communicate their own goals and to build strong relationships with others. In this course, you'll learn common misconceptions about listening, how to hone your listening skills, and what to do when you encounter roadblocks to actively listening. You’ll also learn how being receptive to what others are saying can go a long way to breaking down the barriers to clear communication.

A positive workplace is paramount to your organization's long-term success. As a manager, you play a key role in establishing a positive work culture, and noticing when negativity takes the place of positivity. As a leader, you can foster a positive work environment by communicating honestly, respecting, supporting, and engaging others, and maintaining a good attitude. This course will introduce you to best practices for creating a positive work environment. You'll learn the benefits of establishing a positive and engaged workforce, its characteristics, and concrete steps to create one. You'll also explore how to recognize the signs and impacts of negativity, and how to take corrective action if necessary to engage employees.

If your organization creates a positive learning culture that focuses on developing people, it will not only weather difficult times better than most, but will flourish in an ultracompetitive global market. In this course, you’ll be introduced to organizational learning and its benefits to your organization. You'll examine the role of training, knowledge management, and technology in developing employees, and learn about the pivotal role of the continuous learning. By exploring the essential elements and indicators of a self-development culture, the course prepares you to assess your current workplace and determine how conducive it is to learning. Developing talent will increase your competitiveness and create more satisfied, goal-oriented employees – which leads to a more profitable organization.

Working at a customer support center or help desk environment can be challenging. Customers can sometimes be demanding and unreasonable, leading to conflict and stress. The customer service representative (CSR) who aims for service excellence can improve customer relationships by understanding the emotional needs of each customer and adapting to how they communicate. In this course, you'll learn how to identify and resolve conflict, negotiate with customers, and develop strategies to better manage time and stress, and you'll explore how a positive approach and attitude can benefit client service (CS).

Successful teams are characterized by having a clear direction, trust among team members, effective communication, and a clear process for managing team conflict. The survival of a team depends on a leader who can quickly recognize team conflict, diagnose its cause, and implement conflict resolution strategies. In this course, you'll learn about what causes conflict on a team and the important role of healthy communication in handling conflict. You'll discover best practice approaches to dealing with conflict. You’ll also explore the tenets of principled negotiation in managing conflict. Finally, you'll learn guidelines for resolving conflict that address one specific type of conflict: lack of trust.

When dealing with conflict at work, you need to be able to understand and adapt to the situation. Handling conflict effectively is a key skill in the workplace, especially when it comes to team conflict that could threaten organizational goals or employee well-being. In this course, you'll learn about various conflict management styles, and discover how managing team conflict quickly and appropriately can benefit both those involved and the organization as a whole. You’ll explore different approaches to conflict resolution, when to use them, and when to adapt your style. You’ll also learn about resolving conflict with difficult individuals.

Conflict, when hurtful or unresolved, puts distance between people who need to work together, and often results in a loss of talent. 'Not getting along' shouldn't be the reason people fail to contribute or leave organizations. Dealing with conflict when it is in your face is one thing, but preventing it comes first. This means accepting that conflict may occur, understanding the sources of potential conflict, preventing unnecessary conflict by watching for signs, and making sure you and others know what is 'off limits.' In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of healthy conflict, as well as typical sources of conflict. You'll find out how to recognize the signs of unhealthy conflict and take steps to prevent it. In addition, you'll learn when it's appropriate to report a conflict.

A conflict-free life is the stuff of dreams. But the world doesn’t work that way, and for all of us, workplace conflict is sadly an inevitability. Personality and organizational conflicts arise from myriad different sources and take many different forms. As a result, resolving conflict is a necessary skill, and business professionals need a plan for addressing it and managing conflict situations. In this course, you'll learn to recognize the sources and signs of conflict. You'll also learn conflict management strategies and processes for conflict resolution. Additionally, you’ll explore methods for handling difficult people and keeping the process of conflict management on track when difficulties arise.

Everyone has their own unique personality style. They also have a preferred style for dealing with conflict. Do you avoid conflict? Or do you take charge in a conflict situation? Perhaps you have a more cooperative approach? When working with others who have different styles, and when facing different conflict situations, we all have to adapt. In this course, you'll learn about the different conflict styles, including when and how to use them. You'll find out about the importance of adapting your style in response to others' styles and the particular situation you're in. Finally, you'll learn how to deal with a difficult individual in a conflict situation.

Is there anything that can torpedo your work day more than an arrogant, obnoxious, rude customer? YES! Not knowing how to handle one! It's challenging to stay service-minded when the person you are dealing with is being "difficult." This course will give you the perspective to effectively cope with customer conflict, and sound methods to deal with all types of potentially confrontational situations. You'll be able to identify elements of emotional response that interfere with good customer service. Staying cool, calm, and customer-connected is a critical learning objective for this course. Develop communication skills that defuse customer complaints. Learn and differentiate the best methods to handle difficult customers in person and over the phone. By the end of this highly interactive course, you'll have the strategies necessary to restore customer confidence and move beyond the thorny issue to an even stronger relationship.

Although, through the use of good communication skills, conflict in the workplace can be minimized, it can't be eradicated entirely. On the occasions when disharmony inevitably arises, there is a need for a different set of communication skills--those of negotiation, mediation, or arbitration. This course will give you an understanding of the various causes and outcomes of conflict, together with a practical demonstration of the styles and communication involved in the negotiated resolution of one to one conflict. You will also learn how to act as a third party mediator or arbitrator in situations where the parties concerned seem unable to resolve the dispute unaided.

Things change. This is a truism in both personal and business life. Whether that change comes in the form of personnel, organizational hierarchy, or processes, change is inevitable in the workplace. Leading change requires successful leaders to have a process for managing change, whatever its source. This course will help you undertake change management and set the stage for implementing change. It will provide strategies for overcoming resistance to change and steps to help lead your team through the change process.

Achieving service excellence is very challenging when dealing with angry customers. By following a few simple techniques to avoid confrontation, you can manage difficult customer relationships and project a high-quality client service (CS). In this course, you'll learn about typical trouble spots in dealing with angry customers and guidelines for avoiding conflict. You'll also learn how to handle a customer complaint by defusing the tension, investigating the problem, and coming to an agreement on a solution.

A conflict-free life is the stuff of dreams. But the world doesn’t work that way, and for all of us, workplace conflict is sadly an inevitability. Personality and organizational conflicts arise from myriad different sources and take many different forms. As a result, resolving conflict is a necessary skill, and business professionals need a plan for addressing it and managing conflict situations. In this course, you'll learn to recognize the sources and signs of conflict. You'll also learn conflict management strategies and processes for conflict resolution. Additionally, you’ll explore methods for handling difficult people and keeping the process of conflict management on track when difficulties arise.

Anything taken to an extreme can be a liability, including human behavior. While confident, cautious, or energetic people can be perfectly tolerable in small doses when working together, they can also be annoying or problematic when their behavior is over-the-top. Then there are people who are just plain negative – their glasses are always "half empty". While occasional griping is acceptable when working on a team, the behavior of negative people can eventually wear you down. To ensure successful communication and collaboration in the workplace, it’s vital you develop the skills needed for managing difficult people. In this course, you'll learn about the four types of difficult people: dominant-controlling, analytical-obsessive, expressive-impulsive, and skeptical-negative. You’ll also discover techniques for dealing with difficult people, and for managing your own emotions.

Conflict is inevitable within any organization, and successful leaders must know how to manage conflict. Resolving conflict doesn’t have to be a negative force, and leaders can set the tone for conflict resolution, and how it's viewed by their teams. In this course, you’ll learn strategies for managing team conflict at both the group and individual levels. You'll also learn how to use conflict as a positive force that can lead to innovation and an openness toward looking at the business in new ways.

This Assessment Only course is a component of the SkillSoft Professional Advantage track Managing Conflict and was designed for use specifically within that track.

What are your thoughts on conflict in the workplace? Do you dread it? Quietly try to avoid it? Or do you rush headlong to meet it with enthusiasm, certain it will bring renewed vigor and badly-needed change to your organization? No matter your answer, the Conflict in the Workplace Simulation will provide you with the opportunity to practice skills for coping with conflict and putting it to work for good. Conflict is inevitable in the workplace. Everybody has their own ideas about how things should run. Eventually, these ideas will collide. When they do, you don't need to be unprepared. Above and beyond all the skills you can possibly learn for coping with conflict, effective communication skills will prove to be the most beneficial. Without open lines of honest communication in the workplace, unspoken and harbored conflicts will boil and fester until productivity grinds to a halt. Knowing how and when to address issues of conflict will help you to cut away destructive behaviors, encourage healthy arguments, and create an environment full of vigor and embracing of change. The Conflict in the Workplace Simulation will help you to learn all this and more

As a manager, you will inevitably have to sort out some of the conflict that occurs in your organization. Sometimes, this will be between individuals, but often it will be between teams, and even departments. The different nature of these conflicts is likely to require different approaches, and there are also likely to be a range of particular demands on you in the way that you manage the conflicts. A way of differentiating and applying these approaches is by adopting a short-term approach against a longer-term strategy. The first is categorized by a "quick and dirty" style of containment and reduction. The second is characterized by approaches that are concerned with resolving the roots of the conflict by finding structural remedies to prevent the conflict from occurring in the future. Another form of a long-term approach is to attempt to prevent conflict from occurring. This is, of course, probably impossible, but this approach is characterized by considering in what ways a manager can act to discourage negative conflict.

Anger is a normal and even healthy emotion, rooted in the instinct for self-preservation. It provides important information about our relationships with others and can help us face trouble and overcome obstacles. But if it's not managed properly, this powerful emotion can be very destructive. And the consequences of poorly managed anger in the workplace may be much greater than in other contexts. Yet, its potential benefits may also be greater. This course explores the different ways that people express anger and the common causes of anger in the workplace. It also describes how you can use anger positively in the workplace, and the resulting benefits when you do.

Any organization, regardless of its size, industry or location, is made up of people – people who interact on a daily basis, and not always without incident. Developing emotional intelligence within the organization is a key factor in ensuring that these relationships run smoothly. This is especially true of leaders, who must provide an example of how to behave in group settings. In this course, you’ll learn how building emotional intelligence, or EQ, can improve team or group interactions. You’ll also explore the role of emotional IQ in workplace activities, conflict and stress management, as well as employee influence and engagement.

Of all the different types of skills and competencies a project manager uses when managing projects, "soft" skills are the most important. The ability to communicate effectively with team members and negotiate between different demands enables the project manager to manage project conflict. Effectively resolving conflict helps stakeholders remain positive and can mean the difference between project success and failure. In this course, you'll learn about change management and dealing with conflict. You'll explore how to handle it when someone requests project changes, how to create a plan for communicating with stakeholders, and approaches for dealing with conflicts that arise.

Like most people, you have probably become angry at work. A disagreement with a coworker or manager could make you lose your temper and voice your anger, but is this really a good idea? What will your coworkers or manager think of your outburst? While confronting anger in the workplace is inevitable, it's important to minimize your angry thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and channel your energy into more constructive activities. Your role: As a Product Manager for the high-tech company SafeCom, deadlines on your current campaign are fast approaching. A rocky relationship with your coworker with whom you share responsibility for the campaign and an overworked boss with little time to mediate are both potential catalysts for an increase in your levels of anger and stress. Through it all, you must find a way to keep your cool and finish the day with your campaign and professional relationships intact.

Negative behaviors have negative consequences. HR provides managers and employees with the documents to establish organizational policies and guidelines to ensure consistent communication. When violations occur, they should be dealt with fairly across employees groups, following a documented process. Should the need arise for employees to exit the organization, regardless of the reason, courtesy and confidentially are extended. In this course, we'll explore a series of infractions that can escalate from minor to grave and the various actions that are within the realm of HR.

Black Belts have the challenging task of managing the full spectrum of team dynamics on Six Sigma improvement projects. Besides resolving conflicts, Black Belts require the skills to manage and optimize group behavior. They must also be familiar with tools and techniques for making team meetings and decision-making process more effective. Black Belts are often called upon to assess training needs and plan its delivery to ensure team members have all necessary skills and knowledge required for the success of improvement projects. This course explores several team dynamics and management techniques for Black Belts. It also deals with training as a tool for improving the performance of Six Sigma team members and strengthening their ability to realize project goals. This course is aligned with the ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt certification exam and is designed to assist learners as part of their exam preparation. It builds on foundational knowledge that is taught in SkillSoft's ASQ-aligned Green Belt curriculum.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it seem like much of life is up in the air, with no end in sight. And now that school has started up again, it kind of feels like starting all over again. While it seems like everybody’s situation is different, still, we’re all learning and adjusting together. Whatever our jobs or titles, we’re all parents, or grandparents, or caregivers of one sort or another, and we’re all trying to figure out how to cope on a daily basis. And our kids are dealing with the same kinds of changes that impact us: a new workspace, less socialization outside of the family, less privacy, fewer ways to make the days distinct from each other, more worry and anxiety. In this course, members of the Skillsoft family share their experience, strength, and hope as we all attempt to balance our work and home lives while keeping our families safe, happy, learning, and moving forward, together.

You’ll likely face unpleasant situations or tasks at some point in your career. Communicating with diplomacy and tact in these situations can inspire confidence. In this course, you'll learn to navigate difficult conversations and situations. You'll also learn how to communicate a difficult message effectively, write diplomatic and tactful e-mails, and handle angry and manipulative coworkers.

Building and managing teams is enough of a challenge when everyone is in the same location. Collaboration when working on a team that's virtual requires even more commitment. In this course, you'll learn about teamwork and team leadership when working on a virtual team. You'll cover remote management and tactics for communication, assessment, and meetings for virtual teams.

Virtual teams can face the same difficulties as other teams, but also have unique challenges. In this course, you'll learn how to handle challenges facing your team, and how to evaluate your own style.

How do you handle angry and confrontational customers? One of the most challenging, and potentially uncomfortable responsibilities of a customer service person is dealing with angry customers. By following a few simple techniques such as letting the customer vent, and expressing empathy towards the customer's situation, you can usually defuse tense situations without incident. This course explores typical trouble spots in dealing with angry customers, including reasons for customer dissatisfaction and things customer service people should refrain from saying or doing to avoid adding to the customer's frustration. Materials designed to support blended learning activities aligned with this course are available from the Resources Page.

Any time two or more people are gathered in one place, conflict will inevitably follow. The workplace is no exception. It’s how you manage workplace conflict. There are many valid approaches to managing conflict, but ignoring it is the one guaranteed not to work. Resolving conflict is an important interpersonal skill that, with practice, can diffuse difficult situations at work. In this course, you’ll learn some of the major sources of workplace conflict. You’ll learn how to recognize your own conflict style and how to work toward conflict resolution. You'll also learn strategies and approaches to conflict management and working with difficult people.

Successful teams are characterized by having a clear direction, trust among team members, effective communication, and a clear process for managing team conflict. The survival of a team depends on a leader who can quickly recognize team conflict, diagnose its cause, and implement conflict resolution strategies. In this course, you'll learn about what causes conflict on a team and the important role of healthy communication in handling conflict. You'll discover best practice approaches to dealing with conflict. You’ll also explore the tenets of principled negotiation in managing conflict. Finally, you'll learn guidelines for resolving conflict that address one specific type of conflict: lack of trust.

Successful teams are characterized by having a clear direction, trust among team members, effective communication, and a clear process for managing team conflict. The survival of a team depends on a leader who can quickly recognize team conflict, diagnose its cause, and implement conflict resolution strategies. In this course, you'll learn about what causes conflict on a team and the important role of healthy communication in handling conflict. You'll discover best practice approaches to dealing with conflict. You’ll also explore the tenets of principled negotiation in managing conflict. Finally, you'll learn guidelines for resolving conflict that address one specific type of conflict: lack of trust.

When you are dealing with workplace conflict, emotions get stirred up, and many people want conflict to 'go away.' But in most cases it won't go away on its own, so you need to choose a course of action. Sometimes it just means making peace with yourself or a situation. Other times, you may need to make trade-offs. If your choice is to deal with it straight on, you need a process. In this course, you'll learn how to work through conflicts smoothly by using a structured conflict resolution process. You'll also learn about techniques for getting the process back on track if difficulties arise.

This Assessment Only course is a component of the SkillSoft Leadership Advantage track Managing Conflict and was designed for use specifically within that track.

Any time two or more people are gathered in one place, conflict will inevitably follow. The workplace is no exception. It’s how you manage workplace conflict. There are many valid approaches to managing conflict, but ignoring it is the one guaranteed not to work. Resolving conflict is an important interpersonal skill that, with practice, can diffuse difficult situations at work. In this course, you’ll learn some of the major sources of workplace conflict. You’ll learn how to recognize your own conflict style and how to work toward conflict resolution. You'll also learn strategies and approaches to conflict management and working with difficult people.

The reality of workplace life is that team conflict won't go away on its own. Handling conflict successfully is no easy task, which is why you need an effective plan for conflict management. Not dealing with conflict in an organized and systematic way will likely cause the conflict to fester, lowering team morale. However, by managing team conflict well, you can quickly nip the problem in the bud. In this course, you'll learn about the common sources and signs of conflict, as well as a process for resolving conflict when it occurs. You’ll also explore ways to get the conflict resolution process back on track if difficulties arise.

Complaints are an inherent part of customer service, and this is especially true of internal customer service. No matter the level of vigilance, problems will arise, and when they do, they must be greeted with quick and effective responses to ensure that business can proceed. The Internal Customer Service: Conflict and Complaints Simulation has been designed to allow participants to practice handling customer service complaints within the relative safety of a learning environment. Over the course of the simulation, participants will apply their conflict-handling skills to overcome a host of obstacles and provide excellent internal customer service. Special emphasis will be placed on the participant's ability to nurture a customer service environment that is open to and accepting of conflict and complaints.

Successful teams are characterized by having a clear direction, trust among team members, effective communication, and the ability to quickly resolve conflict. In the early stages of team development, leaders must set up structures and processes that support the development of these team characteristics. Effective leadership is particularly required during the Storming stage of team development when conflict tends to be at its highest. The survival of the team depends on a team leader who can quickly recognize conflict, diagnose its cause, and use strategies to resolve the issue. In doing so, the leader restores trust and positive working relationships among team members. This course offers you an understanding about what causes conflicts on a team and the important role of healthy communication in handling conflicts. It presents many best practice approaches to resolving conflicts and illustrates the tenets of principled negotiation. By learning the principles and strategies presented in this course, you will have the skills to keep your high-performance teams away from destructive patterns of conflict and on track to achieving their goals. Materials designed to support blended learning activities aligned with this course are available from the Resources Page.

Anger is a subject that affects most everyone. Some individuals need help in controlling their anger, whereas others need help to positively express feelings of anger that are buried. It's important to find healthy ways of owning and expressing your anger. Otherwise, it may find some expression that is inappropriate, unhealthy, or counterproductive. The key to managing anger is creating conditions in which anger can be expressed appropriately and productively. In this course, you'll learn how to handle your anger in a healthier, more balanced way. You'll also find out how to engage with angry people appropriately and effectively.

Each customer wants her problem to be the most important problem to the Customer Service Representative (CSR). For the CSR, adapting to each customer's communication style, understanding each customer's emotional response, and solving each customer's problem can be an enormously stressful and time-consuming process. This course is intended to show the proper methods needed to resolve conflicts, manage time, and manage stress. It also highlights the importance of a positive approach and attitude in bringing customer interactions to a satisfactory conclusion. This course helps to prepare learners to work in a customer support center or help desk environment.

A crucial part of the role of a project analyst is being able to negotiate. In this 13-video course, learners can improve their negotiation skills by examining the benefits of negotiations, how to resolve conflicts, and the negotiation stages. Begin with a look at the importance of negotiation skills in project management; identify how a project analyst benefits from using negotiation skills within a project team; and explore how negotiation skills can improve conflict resolution within teams. Delve into the five stages of the negotiating process, and also the types of negotiation techniques commonly used. Explore negotiator styles, the five types of negotiating; collaborative negotiation, and the benefits of using collaborative negotiation to bring about a win-win situation. Learn about the stages of a negotiation. Then explore methods of negotiating effectively, and discover ways to overcome hurdles during negotiations. Conclude the course with a look at common mistakes in negotiations, and examining common pitfalls to avoid in a negotiation.

Globalization is a reality. Once, only explorers and world travelers needed to be culturally knowledgeable, but now most of us work with people from different cultural backgrounds. Our variations in attitudes, beliefs, and communication styles present daily challenges for business leaders charged with managing across cultures. Managing diversity is now a necessary skill. In this course, you’ll learn about leading diversity. You’ll explore the dynamic nature of cultural intelligence (CQ) and how to grow it and use it to bridge cultural differences. You’ll also discover techniques for motivating, influencing, and managing across cultures, and adapting your own leadership style. Finally, you’ll learn about managing conflict across cultures by identifying and navigating cultural barriers and minefields.

Aggressive people are arguably the most difficult type of people to work with. Hostile-aggressives are openly pushy and can easily intimidate people; passive-aggressives work behind the scenes with hidden agendas. No matter which type of aggressive behavior you have to deal with, aggressive co-workers can easily ruin your day or ruin a project with their behavior. In order to limit the negative impact aggressive people can have, you need a set of tools and techniques at your disposal suited to the particular type of aggressive person you may be dealing with. This course will review the more common behaviors of hostile-aggressive and passive-aggressive people and provide some effective strategies you can use in coping with an aggressor's behavior.