Conflict Resolution Training for Leaders, Managers, and Supervisors

Even if leadership comes naturally to you, conflict management training can give you more confidence and skills when managing workplace conflict. Building your conflict management skills can make you a more effective manager and boost productivity on your team and throughout your company. Through conflict management training, you can learn practical strategies for dealing with common workplace conflicts.

Why Conflict Resolution Skills Are Essential for Managers

Even in work environments where collegiality rules the day, managers must sometimes resolve conflict among coworkers or between customers and employees. Workplace conflict resolution training can help you improve your conflict resolution and conflict management skills. Providing conflict resolution training for your employees can prevent unresolved conflict from becoming a problem at your workplace. However, you can only provide these skills to others if you provide the resources and are skilled in conflict resolution.

Conflict Resolution Training Helps Your Entire Team

When conflict occurs at your workplace, you should begin the conflict resolution process immediately. Emotional intelligence will help you identify the problem, but you need conflict training to solve it effectively. The more your employees know about conflict resolution, the better they will be at managing conflict at work, with and without your direct intervention.

If you bring workshops and training courses on conflict resolution to your team, all your employees will learn to manage conflict. You will receive fewer direct reports about disputes among employees, and you will need to resort to the mediation process less often.

Elements of Conflict Management Training

In conflict resolution training, you will learn about the five modes of conflict management as they apply to workplace conflict. You will also learn to use emotional intelligence to apply active listening and other mediation skills to different conflict styles. Managers and team leaders will learn to use effective communication to resolve internal conflict and to achieve the desired outcome in challenging conversations.

What Happens in a Conflict Resolution Course?

Managers and team leads attend conflict resolution workshops to improve problem-solving in their organizations. This can lead to a better company culture and a more collegial work environment. In online courses, you can acquire the conflict resolution skills you need to manage conflict in person and in a remote or hybrid work environment. The skills needed to resolve conflict are the same in any environment, but you should consider different perspectives and apply them differently in different conflict situations.

Conflict Management Skills Are for Everyone

Not everyone has to manage other employees at work, but everyone has to manage conflict. Resolve offers a variety of conflict management training courses, some of which are geared toward managers and others which are designed for all employees. We even have conflict resolution training specific to certain industries, such as hospitality, law enforcement, and healthcare.

Problem-solving is an important part of customer service jobs, just as it is for managerial jobs. Dispute resolution training can help customer service employees de escalate tense situations with angry customers. No matter what kind of organization you manage, you can find the best course to help you solve disagreements in your workplace and improve relationships with clients and coworkers. We can even create a customized training program to help you deal with a given situation or conflict that your company is facing.

Conflict Resolution Begins With Awareness

Figuring out the root cause of a conflict is the first step to solving it. Some conflicts have multiple causes. All the employees in the organization can benefit if the manager learns more about conflict psychology and the most common causes of conflicts. Through this learning, you can make planning decisions that will avoid these conflicts and their negative effects on your workplace.

Conflict Resolution Training Is Not A One-Size-Fits-All

Different people have different styles of dealing with conflicts and resolving them. For example, some people like to give the conflict a chance to resolve itself. By waiting, they reduce the risk of acting based purely on emotions. Some people’s first reaction is to be very critical of the other parties to the conflict. If they act on this impulse, it tends to escalate the conflict, making solutions seem even farther out of reach.

People who work closely in teams with their colleagues can become frustrated when it seems like their colleagues keep focusing on differences instead of common interests. Conflict resolution training can empower these natural peacemaking employees to contribute to solutions.

Resolving Dysfunction in Your Organization to Create a More Collegial Workplace

If your team keeps having disagreements, the problem could be bigger than just your team. The disagreements could be because of underlying issues in your whole organization. Perhaps the leaders at the highest level are setting up their employees for relationships fraught with disagreement. This could be due to several factors, and the person in charge of the decisions may not even realize that his or her leadership decisions are contributing to the conflict and harming productivity.

In a conflict resolution training course, leaders can learn to identify the factors that make it easier for conflicts to arise. Leaders can also identify strategies for helping team members engage in effective communication. They can learn about the role of emotions in decision-making and learn to see the conflicts at their companies from the perspective of all the parties involved.

Communication Is the Key to Conflict Management

Some managers will tell you that the key to building a good rapport with their teams is making small talk in the elevator or when passing by each other in the hallway. No one, not even an absurdist playwright, would tell you that small talk is the ultimate goal of communication or that, by itself, it is sufficient to resolve disputes. Small talk is not a substitute for mediation or honesty, but it does contribute to a key ingredient in successful conflict resolution, namely empathy.

It is hard to see a coworker as an enemy if you know his or her favorite basketball team or ice cream flavor. Getting to know all your employees, and creating situations where they get to know each other, is a powerful tool for building friendly relationships. When coworkers know that they have things in common with each other, including but not limited to shared experiences at work, they are more motivated to find a solution to their disagreement.

The Five Modes of Conflict Management

The five modes of conflict management are accommodating, avoiding, competing, compromising, and collaborating. Most people are more comfortable using certain modes than others, but you should think of them as a toolbox. A person does not just have one conflict resolution style the way that he or she has just one blood type or just one astrological sign. An effective conflict management strategy means discerning which conflict resolution mode to engage in to deal with which conflict situation.

Conflict Resolution Is Not About Winning or Losing

Competing is some people’s preferred mode of conflict management. In the competing mode, you are trying to win, and you want the other party to lose. Customers who are trying to get a refund are often in competing mode. The customer service principle that says “the customer is always right” dictates that accommodating or compromising is often an appropriate response to customers’ demands.

When you are dealing with coworkers with whom you interact closely, a situation where one person loses only serves to set the stage for future conflict. The coworkers should seek to reach an understanding where they work together in pursuit of a solution. In other words, they should engage in the collaborating mode.

Resolve Conflict Resolution Training Can Help Your Company Deal More Effectively With Conflict

The best way to learn effective strategies for resolving workplace conflict is to consult the knowledgeable trainers and workshop facilitators at Resolve Conflict Resolution Training. Our team includes members from a variety of professional backgrounds that have afforded them expertise in the field of handling workplace conflict.

You can rely on Resolve if you are trying to find a solution to a current dispute within your company. If you have recently been promoted to a managerial role and now have more conflict management responsibilities than you have held in previous positions, you might benefit from one-on-one coaching sessions with one of our conflict management training coaches.

Contact Resolve Conflict Resolution Training for a More Peaceful and Productive Workplace

Finding a solution to the current problems in your work environment and developing strategies for preventing these problems from recurring begins with a phone call or email to Resolve Conflict Resolution Training. We will help you choose the best course or workshop to meet your company’s needs. Contact Resolve Conflict Resolution Training today and you will be one step closer to creating a stress-free work environment for you and your employees.