Conflict Resolution Skills

Conflict Resolution Skills is a two-day workshop designed to help participants effectively manage and resolve workplace conflicts through practical strategies and communication techniques. The course explores the nature and causes of conflict, personal conflict management styles, and methods to shift interactions from defensiveness to collaboration. Participants will learn calming and persuasion skills, active listening, assertive expression, and non-verbal communication techniques to defuse tension and maintain a constructive environment. Additionally, the program covers managing anger and stress, principled negotiation, and a structured seven-step problem-solving process, ensuring participants leave equipped to achieve win-win outcomes in challenging situations.

Duration: 2 Days

Objectives

After this session, participants will be able to:

• Define conflict and assess the impact level of an ongoing conflict
• Identify and address the causes of a conflict
• Compare conflict behaviours and collaborative techniques
• Determine their own style of managing conflict
• Use calming and persuasion skills to contain difficult situations and defuse feelings
• Manage non-verbal behaviour
• Use voice techniques to maintain a non-defensive environment
• Shift from conflict to collaboration using communication and assertiveness skills
• Manage the anger and stress that accompany conflict situations
• Use principled negotiation and problem-solving skills to reach a win-win solution
• Follow seven key problem-solving steps in resolving conflict

Outline

• Part I: Brief Introduction, roles, goals and warm-up
• Part II: General Aspects of Conflict
  • What is conflict?
  • Four concepts useful in handling conflict
  • At which of the five levels of conflict do we intervene?
  • How to determine the causes of a conflict
  • Clarifying our core values
  • Comparing competitive behavior with collaborative behaviour
  • Identifying our personal style of managing conflicts
• Part III: Calming and Persuasion Skills
  • Calming upset feelings: specific words to use to reduce negativity and defensiveness
  • The Blame-shame Game: Helping people become less defensive and blaming during conflict
  • Switching the interpersonal climate from defensive to supportive
  • What NOT to say to an upset person
  • The power of nonverbal communication
  • Four ways to manage anger (our own and others’)
  • Strategies for handling various types of “difficult” people
  • Persuasion strategies that work
• Part IV: Communication Skills for Resolving Conflict Situations
  • Active listening skills
  • Paraphrasing and perception-checking
  • Asking questions that reveal useful information non-defensively
  • How to manage unexpected replies
  • Expressing ourselves assertively without becoming aggressive or passive
  • Using voice techniques to say what we mean and mean what we say
• Part V: Advanced Situational Communication Skills
  • Distinguishing among debate, argument, discussion and dialogue
  • Engaging in fighting fair
  • Moving from threat to consequence
  • Choosing response, not reaction: managing emotional thinking
  • The negative power of sarcasm
  • How to build on the opposer’s point rather than destroy it
  • When No means No : saying “No” professionally
  • Expressing empathy
  • Distinguishing “red” and “blue” relating styles
• Part VI: Negotiating to Win-Win
  • Some conditions essential to a successful negotiation
  • Structuring a negotiation: random tactics produce random results
  • Positional and principled negotiating
  • Recognizing the tie between “purple” negotiating and win-win
  • The heart of negotiating success
  • Strategies for dealing with hard-nosed tactics
  • Applying seven reasoned steps to problem-solving to win-win
  • Techniques for generating workable solutions
  • Practicum on real-life situations
• Part VII: Course Evaluation and Closure

ON-TRACK Corporate Training has a diverse and flexible schedule that can be customized to your needs. We offer group courses (both public and corporate), one-on-one training, virtual (on-line) classroom (Zoom etc.) and on-site training options. We also have easily accessible on-line training videos on OnTrackTV.