Conflict Resolution Team Building Techniques

Internal conflict is one of the most serious and destructive problems an organization will face. Remaining competitive in today's marketplace requires effective partnerships between departments, with unions, suppliers, and with customers. Additionally, organizations undergoing mergers or acquisitions are many times challenged to combine diverse cultures.

The Building Spectacular Partnerships (BSP) seminar provides proven strategies to solve conflicts by developing problem-solving skills and solutions.

CONFLICTS BETWEEN GROUPS CAN BECOME OPPORTUNITIES TO BUILD MORE EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS.

It is the 'soft' issues of culture, history, and the absence of mutual trust and respect, which are most often at the root of conflict within an organization. Practical knowledge of how to establish trust as the basis for achieving improved cooperation has been one of the great missing links in the chain necessary for increasing productivity and quality. The theory and techniques of this program provide an essential tool for creating and maintaining productive relationships.

BSP aids members on both (or multiple) sides of a issue or conflict to explore the conditions necessary for establishing a sound relationship based on mutual trust and respect. It ensures that factors, which can lead to distrust, are identified and those specific actions for reducing non-constructive behavior are developed. The session concentrates on shifting the relationship from what it is to what it can become based on collaboration and problem solving. As a final step, participants design an implementation strategy and action program to achieve the mutually determined goals.

The Model derives its strength from the diagnosis it facilitates participants to make, the discrepancies it brings into focus between what currently exists and what is possible, and the group level of support for change it creates.

Through the exercise, participants seek to resolve problems that can obstruct optimum performance.

The Model: Six Steps

The three-day session begins with a review of objectives, activities, and procedures. Although specifics vary depending on particular problems and needs, a six-step process is applicable to all situations.

1. Developing the optimal model: Each participating group works separately to create a model of optimal effectiveness specific to their problems and needs.
2. Consolidating the optimal relationship: A consolidated model of a sound relationship is then generated through the groups' joint efforts.
3. Describing the actual relationship: Actual conditions that characterize the relationship are described separately by each group, with members analyzing historical factors that have shaped and influenced the relationship.
4. Consolidating the actual relationship: The groups' individual perspectives are consolidated into a joint picture that accurately and objectively describes the present relationship.
5. Planning for change: Changes to be made in specific, operational terms are jointly agreed on and described in detail. These result in plans for follow-up with this group and others not present.
6. Progress review and re-planning: Follow-up dates are scheduled for groups to reconvene thirty to sixty days after the initial session to review progress, critique their current relationship, and plan the next steps.

Results

The operational plan earns the commitment of everyone who participated in creating it, and motivation generated through the integration process translates good intentions into sound actions.

The plan for future operations has been mutually developed and examined against an agreed upon model of excellence. Gaps have been identified. Specific projects, programs, and plans have been outlined to help each individual, team, and all interworking groups to change the situation from where it is to what it should be.

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