Stress: Conflict Management, Developing a Procedure

Use the following exercise to guide your team in developing a conflict management procedure.

Goals:

• To acquaint the team members with some guidelines for resolving conflict with another person by giving useful feedback.
• To help the team members develop their own procedure for managing conflict.

Time:    Approximately 2 hours

Process:

1. Process overview. (10 minutes)
2. Defining and debriefing relevant Birkman data. (20 minutes)
3. Each team member will be provided a copy of the Conflict Management Suggestion Sheet and will be asked to read over it. Each team member will also be given Birkman reporting and Birkman Needs At A Glance (10 minutes)
4. Team members assemble in to sub-groups with paper, pens, and flipchart. Each sub-group will write a set of guidelines for conflict management that their team can use. The ideas in the handout from step 3 can provide useful starting points but each sub-group is encouraged to approach the task any way they like. (20 minutes)
5. After all sub-groups are complete with the task the sub-groups will take turns presenting their guidelines to the total group and explain their reasoning behind their guidelines. (20 minutes)
6. The facilitators will review the posted guidelines with the team and assist towards achieving consensus about which guidelines the team wants to adopt moving forward. NOTE: “consensus” in this context means that each team member can at least “live with” the guidelines decided upon. (30 minutes)
7. The final agreed-on guidelines are written down and posted. One member of the team will write these agreed-on guidelines down to reproduce and distribute to all team members after the session.
8. Concluding discussion by facilitators. (time permitting)