How to Manage Conflict: Turn All Conflicts into Win-Win Outcomes

by Peg Pickering

How to Manage Conflict is a practical guide offering advice and suggestions for successfully handling all types of discord. Each chapter provides directions to conquer rough terrain and builds upon five understanding the critical ingredients for collaborative thinking, aligning responsibilities to the needs of others, building into daily interactions the practices necessary for support, developing conflict resolution skills and negotiation skills to resolve various types of challenges, and developing personal tools and systems for dealing with tensions and pressures. In a short amount of time, users will immediately learn how to apply these strategies favorably and effectively.

120 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1999

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is geared toward workplace conflicts and workplace managers. There's some good stuff in there - simple explanation of conflict management styles, conflict basics, active listening - the "five step intervention process" is much like the 5 steps in mediation, and the "constructive confrontation model" is very similar to the basic nonviolent communication model. That said, a few things annoyed me - the last couple or three chapters repeated several paragraphs at the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, verbatim. Lazy way to fill space in a short book - if the info needs repeating, could it at least be rephrased? While "negotiation", "arbitration" and "mediation" are mentioned, the difference is not well clarified. The "intervention team" is not called until conflict has already escalated, and a couple of the suggested tools bothered me (like continually repeating yourself to make a point). The last two chapters - dealing with angry customers, and the parting philosophy, are full of good ideas, succinctly stated.