Want Collaboration? Accept and Actively Manage Conflict by Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Hughes Presented by: Bobby Pfennigs Mohamed Alzabidi

“Conflict is natural and necessary” “Most companies respond to the challenge of improving collaboration in entirely the wrong way. They focus on the symptoms rather than on the root cause of failures in cooperation: conflict” ----- “Executives underestimate not only the inevitability of conflict but also-and this is the key-its importance to the organization” “Conflict is natural and necessary”

Two Different Areas of Managing Conflict: Even though most people lack understanding of how to deal with conflict effectively, there are ways to manage it… Two Different Areas of Managing Conflict: Strategies for managing disagreements at the point of conflict Strategies for managing conflict upon escalation up the management chain

Strategies for managing disagreements at the point of conflict Devise and Implement a common method for re-solving conflict Provide people with criteria for making trade-off Use the escalation of conflict as an opportunity for coaching

Strategies for managing conflict upon escalation up the management chain Establish and enforce a requirement of joint escalation Ensure that managers resolve escalated conflicts directly with their counterparts Make the process for escalated conflict resolution transparent

Tapping the Learning Latent in Conflict See conflict as a valuable resource that should be managed and exploited Managers are so busy trying to resolve these almost daily disputes that they don’t see the patterns or sources of conflict Conflict- so often viewed as a liability to be avoided whenever possible- can be valuable to a company that knows how to manage it J&J Example

Thank you! Questions? Comments?