Integrating Difference - Constructive Conflict

Don't let conflict hold back progress. By integrating difference it can become the source of innovation and creativity. We can all learn and benefit from the skills mediators use through conflict coaching.

Mediating Ways and Conflict Coaching.

Most of us think about mediation as an intervention to resolve a dispute and if that is happening to you our mediation service service can help out. But mediating skills are not only useful in bringing a deviation from the state of harmony back to a new stable state. As we all know in real life harmony is not the normal state but diversity and difference are the norm. Too often this develops into conflict of a disruptive kind. However, if we accept conflict as the normal symptom of complex reality then the skills of mediation are something we can learn as our normal response and not just something we reach for in extremis. This is the alternative viewpoint we have branded as mediating ways. If, in your work, diversity and difference are the normal state of things then you will want this rich tapestry to contribute to healthy organisational life. In our paradigm mediating ways assumes a wider role in which conflict management is not just re-ordering the disordered but it is part and parcel of a positive management and leadership culture which is custom-made for today's fast changing business environment.

Ways we can help:

We can design programmes to help organisations to develop individuals and teams in the way in which conflict can be recognised, managed and used creatively. These use the following approaches: Conflict Coaching Conflict Engagement Understanding personality and difference through the use of MBTI Understanding conflict management styles

If we can learn to experience our conflicts as

journeys rather than wars, as challenges

rather than burdens, and as opportunities for

growth and improvement, we may actually

begin to anticipate with pleasure the next

chance we have to transform our conflicts

into satisfying communications, creative and

paradoxical problem solving, collaborative

negotiations and better relationships.

Kenneth Cloke & Joan Goldsmith

Resolving Conflicts at Work - Ten

Strategies for Everyone on the Job

Conflict Coaching

Conflict is not always a negative force and yes, there is such a thing as constructive conflict. Difference and diversity are the root of change, renewal and innovation. It is how we deal with conflict which determines whether it is creative force or a destructive demon!