Resolving Those Inevitable Organizational Conflicts by Utilizing Collaborative Methodologies. (Managing Conflicts in a Remote Setting)

Organizations can be challenged with having the agility to respond rapidly and effectively to conflicts and critical business issues. Many formerly successful organizations lacked agility – do you remember A&P, Blockbuster, Circuit City, Borders, Ringling Brothers and Toys R Us?
The larger an organization becomes the greater its talent base and capabilities – but unfortunately communication and problem resolution become more challenging. What’s lacking is not the talent but a means of tapping into the knowledge, skills, and experience of that talent – in a manner that generates their buy-in.
There is such an approach – the Action Planning Process. The Action Planning Process consists of a series of steps that:

• Obtains from the individual team members their improvement-oriented proposals for resolving their conflicts and critical issues
• Then facilitates the team discussing their individual proposals and developing and implementing an action plan that addresses the conflicts and critical issues

• Participants will learn how to facilitate a process that:
• Brings forth the team’s critical, ‘real world’, current and highest priority issues – versus ‘top of mind’ reactions
• Provides everyone an equal voice in the process throughout each step creating maximum participation, buy-in and ownership
• Maximizes candor by not associating any names with the team members’ responses
• Saves meeting time by immediately displaying and discussing the team member’s proposals
• Creates an action plan - that has a ‘life’ after the planning meeting - with accountabilities and deadlines for addressing the conflicts and critical issues
• Generates teambuilding and conflict management during the action plan follow through

• Defining conflict and conflict management
• Recognizing that conflict is the result of our individuality & therefor inevitable
• How and why conflicts develop
• The types & benefits of organizational conflict
• Barriers to the successful management of interpersonal and group conflicts
• When to use and when to avoid using each of five approaches for addressing interpersonal conflicts
• Benefits to using the Action Planning Process to resolve group conflict including -providing everyone an equal voice, creating an improvement plan with accountabilities and timelines, and enhancing future work relationships 
• Resolving group conflicts with the Action Planning Process – tapping into employees’ knowledge, skills and experience in a manner that generates their buy-in

• Participants will learn how to apply the Action Planning Process to:
• Provide the team members a forum for confidentially voicing their proposals for addressing the conflicts and critical issues
• Take advantage of the team member’s insights, knowledge, and experience - the people who know better than anyone else what should be done
• Improve the working relationships between the team members who ‘must work together’ to implement the action plan

The Action Planning Process can be applied in a variety of situations including:

• Team building initiatives
• Change management programs
• Organizational transitions
• Conflict resolution situations
• Customer advisory council meetings

Supervisors, managers & leaders in any job function

Pete Tosh is the Founder of The Focus Group, a management consulting and training firm that assists organizations in sustaining profitable growth through four core disciplines:

• Implementing Strategic HR Initiatives
• Maximizing Leadership Effectiveness
• Strategic Planning
• Enhancing Customer Loyalty

The Focus Group has provided these consulting and training services to manufacturing and service organizations across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. Pete has worked closely with the leadership teams of organizations such as Exxon, Brinks, EMC, State Farm, Marriott, N.C.I. YKK and Freddie Mac

Pete holds a B.A. degree in Psychology from Emory and Henry University and Masters degrees in both Business Administration and Industrial Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. Pete also co-authors Leading Your Organization to the Next Level: the Core Disciplines of Sustained Profitable Growth.