Understanding conflict
Conflict escalation, styles and difficult conversations.
A half day on understanding conflict: its sources and types, how it escalates, choosing a style, difficult conversations, conflict in teams and from change, and feedback that lands.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 5 hours
- Where
- Leading people
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Managers and leaders in health, housing, local government and the voluntary sector who face conflict they would rather avoid
Overview
Conflict is information before it is a problem. The first half of the Immerse The conversations we put off begins with Karen Jehn's types of conflict and Glasl's nine stages of escalation, using the Best Value inspection of Liverpool City Council. It then explores choosing a style, from Thomas and Kilmann to Berne's transactional analysis, and difficult conversations, with Stone, Patton and Heen and the duty of candour in Wales. Conflict in teams and conflict caused by change follow, from P&O Ferries to the Birmingham bin strike. Finally, it turns to feedback, coaching and the Situation, Behaviour, Impact model, so that hard messages are delivered with respect.
Aims
The goal is to help leaders treat conflict as information, spotting escalation early, choosing their response deliberately rather than by habit, and holding hard conversations with respect, so that disputes end in ways that protect trust in teams and in public services.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Diagnose the type and stage of a conflict using Jehn's types of conflict and Glasl's nine stages of escalation.
- Compare conflict styles and the insights of transactional analysis to choose a deliberate response rather than a habitual one.
- Plan a difficult conversation that respects the duty of candour and uses Situation, Behaviour, Impact to give clear feedback.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Distinguish task, relationship and process conflict and explain what the meta-analytic evidence says about each.
- Identify the stage a conflict has reached using Glasl's nine stages and recognise the move from win-win to win-lose.
- Compare the dual concern models and choose a conflict mode by weighing the stakes and the relationship.
- Describe the what happened, feelings and identity conversations and prepare for all three before a difficult conversation.
- Use Tuckman's stages and Lencioni's pyramid to identify what a team needs from its leader.
- Distinguish distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice and explain why process matters most when outcomes are poor.
- Give specific, caring and direct feedback using Situation, Behaviour, Impact and Radical Candor, and explain why the feedback sandwich undermines both criticism and praise.
- Use Coser's and Pondy's ideas to read silence, latent conditions and the aftermath of a conflict episode.
Built from 7 modules.
5 hours of learning.
- 01Understanding Conflict: Sources, Types and FunctionsLeading through Change and Conflict40 min
- 02How Conflict EscalatesLeading through Change and Conflict41 min
- 03Conflict Styles and ChoicesLeading through Change and Conflict39 min
- 04Difficult ConversationsLeading through Change and Conflict38 min
- 05Conflict in Teams and Across BoundariesLeading through Change and Conflict40 min
- 06Change That Creates Conflict: Justice, Voice and Industrial RelationsLeading through Change and Conflict39 min
- 07Critical Conversations: Feedback, Coaching and ConflictManagement49 min