How to Resolve Conflict in the Workplace

Citation

Rausch, E. (2001), "How to Resolve Conflict in the Workplace", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 69-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmd.2001.20.1.69.2

This book presents an unusually thorough and comprehensive look at all aspects of interpersonal conflict. Therein lie both its considerable strengths and its minor weakness.

The emphasis, as the title points out, is on resolving conflict in our worklife. That includes conflict between peers and people at different levels in an organization.

In a way the book is actually beyond resolution of conflicts. Much of what is covered in Part I, The Nature of Conflict, and Part II, The Skills of Conflict Resolution, applies also to conflict identification, and even to conflict anticipation and prevention.

Conflict is not an easy subject on which to bring something new. It is a topic that has been studied extensively from many perspectives and has an enormous literature base, as can be seen from the extensive references and bibliography which list primarily books published during the last 11 or 12 years, relevant to interpersonal conflict. The few titles that are significantly older are primarily on transactional analysis, a useful concept that sheds some light on communications during conflicts, but on which very little, if anything, has been written since the 1970s.

Lacey has indeed brought something new, by creating what is almost a handbook on conflict. It reflects her extensive experience as manager of Conflict Resolution (UK), as training consultant, and as stress management practitioner. It applies neuro‐linguistic programming (NLP) concepts, and the teachings of the Conflict Resolution Network of Australia, in a volume so comprehensive that it would be useful as a reference in every manager’s library. It also seems to me that it would be a good idea for anyone who teaches a course on Conflict, to review it for possible adoption as the text.

In her introduction Lacey acknowledges that the book is based on western values. She cautions readers to research other cultures where they may wish to apply the book’s suggestions, and to adapt them where necessary to those environments. She also admonishes readers to adapt the ideas she presents to their own needs and to pass the basic message on to others. That way, she hopes, the book will contribute, in some small way at least, to a reduction in the enormous costs of conflicts in the workplace which she reports to have been estimated at running into the billions in the UK alone.

While addressing the reader and suggesting activities to personalize the insights and techniques she explains, she also offers many scenarios and anecdotes to dramatize them. Sources of conflict are treated in depth. The book provides specific guidelines for enhancing self‐awareness and for developing skills to extract win‐win solutions from controversies, as much as that is possible and can be done from one side in a dispute.

The techniques and skills which the book covers range from the purely introspective analyses of attitudes, such as dealing with one’s emotions, to the deep‐seated habits pertaining to personal use of power, with or without positional authority. There are discussions on skills for using assertive rather than aggressive or passive behaviour, on developing and showing empathy, on using positive language, on dealing with the emotions of others, and of course, also on seeking and finding satisfactory outcomes to the conflict.

The third and final part of the book is on The Tools of Conflict Resolution.

One wishes that there would be more in this part than the two chapters on conflict mapping and mediation and that this section would be as thorough and extensive as the earlier chapters. Fortunately astute readers can realize that the fairly thorough coverage of the mediation technique can be applied by them, even without the assistance of mediation. Readers can think of themselves as mediators (or as “managers”) of a conflict in which they are involved. In that role they can follow those mediator steps that do not absolutely require a third party. Success might then be possible despite the dour prediction in the deBono quotation which introduces the chapter, about the parties being in the worst position to settle a dispute. Fuller exposition of that “manager of conflict” concept (Rausch and Washbush 1998) might have added a practical edge to the chapter, in line with the specific suggestions and guidelines that are so abundant in the remainder of the book.

As mentioned earlier, this reviewer considers How to Resolve Conflict in the Workplace a most useful addition to any manager’s library. It certainly deserves an initial reading and then can be a source of ideas in the future when facing a difficult controversy with personal involvement, or one that affects members of the manager’s staff.