Nashroon Mo­hammed,

BA (Hons), Dip LC, CCC, CLTMC

In her book Con­flict in the Work­place: Caus­es and Cures, Dr Ar­Lyne Di­a­mond said that in years gone by, or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­at­ed by an au­thor­i­ta­tive struc­ture where em­ploy­ees would obey.How­ev­er, to­day's work­places have flat­ter chains of com­mand, knowl­edge work­ers who make de­ci­sions them­selves, and are more like­ly to move to an­oth­er job if they don't like the way they are be­ing treat­ed.

Un­fair treat­ment of staff is­sues can lead to dis­agree­ments which can es­ca­late to con­flict among em­ploy­ees and man­agers. Con­flict in or­gan­i­sa­tions can be re­solved, but we must have the ap­pro­pri­ate tools to ac­com­plish this.The Con­flict Dy­nam­ic Pro­file for In­di­vid­u­als (CDP-I) is an as­sess­ment that can be ad­min­is­tered to our em­ploy­ees to de­ter­mine the way they typ­i­cal­ly re­spond to con­flict. The CDP-I can al­so help them im­prove those ar­eas that are most prob­lem­at­ic.

There are nu­mer­ous ways to use the CDP-I. Al­though the in­stru­ment can be giv­en to in­di­vid­u­als at all lev­els and in dif­fer­ent types of or­gan­i­sa­tions and set­tings, the pri­ma­ry ap­pli­ca­tions are as fol­lows:

�2 Con­flict res­o­lu­tion

�2 Lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment

�2 Ca­reer de­vel­op­ment/in­di­vid­ual coach­ing

�2 Team build­ing

�2 Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment

Con­flict res­o­lu­tion

One of the pri­ma­ry us­es of the CDP-I is to help in­di­vid­u­als, teams and or­gan­i­sa­tions re­solve spe­cif­ic con­flict is­sues. It can be used as a means of pre­vent­ing con­flict from hap­pen­ing in the fu­ture by mak­ing em­ploy­ees more aware of how to use con­struc­tive re­spons­es to de-es­ca­late the con­flict.

Em­ploy­ees can al­so use this tool in a cur­rent or on­go­ing dis­pute to bring about a win/win out­come. The con­flicts can range from a one-on-one dis­agree­ment, to a dys­func­tion­al team, to an over­all pat­tern through­out an or­gan­i­sa­tion of de­struc­tive con­flict man­age­ment. What­ev­er the sce­nario, the CDP-I can iden­ti­fy the prob­lem ar­eas and tar­get spe­cif­ic ar­eas for im­prove­ment.

Lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment

Re­search has sug­gest­ed that ef­fec­tive con­flict man­age­ment is one of the pri­ma­ry de­vel­op­men­tal needs of lead­ers and man­agers. Daniel Gole­man in his book, Work­ing with Emo­tion­al In­tel­li­gence, said that "em­ploy­ees are be­ing judged by a new yard­stick: not just by how smart they are, or by their train­ing and ex­per­tise, but al­so by how they han­dle them­selves and oth­ers."

There­fore, man­agers must en­hance their skills set in oth­er ar­eas, as they them­selves will be mea­sured by how well they man­age and lead their peo­ple. Skills such as, per­spec­tive tak­ing, cre­at­ing so­lu­tions, ex­press­ing emo­tions, and reach­ing out are re­lat­ed to pro­mo­tion and the per­cep­tion of ex­cel­lent lead­er­ship skills.The CDP-I can be used as part of an in­ter­nal lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gramme.

Ca­reer de­vel­op­ment/In­di­vid­ual coach­ing

The CDP-I can be used alone or in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er as­sess­ment tools to help tal­ent­ed man­agers and in­di­vid­ual con­trib­u­tors to move in­to more com­plex or de­mand­ing roles. This can pre­pare them for fu­ture ca­reer growth.In some cas­es, em­ploy­ees have a need to de­vel­op them­selves in the area of con­flict res­o­lu­tion. The CDP-I can pro­vide in­for­ma­tion as to what spe­cif­ic ar­eas need to be ad­dressed. This ap­proach is of­ten used in one of the three fol­low­ing sce­nar­ios:

�2 The em­ploy­ee has at­tend­ed some type of train­ing pro­gramme ei­ther with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion or from an out­side ven­dor and would like ad­di­tion­al, fol­low-up coach­ing, specif­i­cal­ly in the area of con­flict res­o­lu­tion

�2 The em­ploy­ee does not par­tic­u­lar­ly like group learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments and prefers a one-on-one set­ting

�2 The em­ploy­ee, al­though a high per­former, does not han­dle con­flict ef­fec­tive­ly and needs tar­get­ed as­sis­tance

In each of these cas­es, feed­back on the CDP-I and sub­se­quent de­vel­op­men­tal plan­ning with the ac­com­pa­ny­ing de­vel­op­ment guide can be very ben­e­fi­cial. A com­bi­na­tion of coach­ing by tele­phone, face-to-face goal-set­ting ses­sions, on-site "shad­ow­ing," on­go­ing eval­u­a­tion of progress, and re­assess­ment over a des­ig­nat­ed pe­ri­od of time can re­sult in great im­prove­ment.

Team build­ing

Un­re­solved con­flict can be dev­as­tat­ing to an in­di­vid­ual, a team and an or­gan­i­sa­tion. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­downs of­ten lead to avoid­ance and re­sent­ment which, in turn, lead to low­er sat­is­fac­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Con­duct­ing a team in­ter­ven­tion with the CDP-I (and pos­si­bly oth­er as­sess­ment tools) can be the start­ing point for es­tab­lish­ing guide­lines for han­dling con­flict in the fu­ture. Even with high func­tion­ing teams, there usu­al­ly are ar­eas of con­flict, which, if not ad­dressed, have the po­ten­tial to de­rail the team.

Hav­ing each mem­ber of the team re­ceive feed­back on the CDP-I helps team mem­bers iden­ti­fy prob­lem ar­eas and fos­ter a more co­he­sive and sup­port­ive team en­vi­ron­ment. Fa­cil­i­tat­ing open and hon­est dis­cus­sions about spe­cif­ic is­sues can re­al­ly im­prove the team dy­nam­ics and pro­vide an en­hanced work­ing en­vi­ron­ment.Con­flict is a glob­al is­sue and all of us have been in sit­u­a­tions where we al­lowed our anger to con­trol us. Feel­ing the anger is good, but our re­sponse to it must be in­tel­li­gent.

Our emo­tions are not some­thing we can leave at the gate when we walk in­to our or­gan­i­sa­tion, we take them with us. Con­flict it­self is in­evitable and de­struc­tive re­spons­es can be avoid­ed, whilst ef­fec­tive and ben­e­fi­cial re­spons­es to con­flict can be learned.

�2 Nashroon Mo­hammed is a work­place coach. She can be con­tact­ed at coach­nashtt@gmail.com