While some of us enjoy a lively debate with colleagues and others prefer to suppress our feelings over disagreements, we all struggle with conflict at work. Every day we navigate an office full of competing interests, clashing personalities, limited time and resources, and fragile egos. Sure, we share the same overarching goals as our colleagues, but we don't always agree on how to achieve them. We work differently. We rub each other the wrong way. We jockey for position. How can you deal with conflict at work in a way that is both professional and productive—where it improves both your work and your relationships? You start by understanding whether you generally seek or avoid conflict, identifying the most frequent reasons for disagreement, and knowing what approaches work for what scenarios. Then, if you decide to address a particular conflict, you use that information to plan and conduct a productive conversation. The HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict will give you the advice you need to: Understand the most common sources of conflict Explore your options for addressing a disagreement Recognize whether you—and your counterpart—typically seek or avoid conflict Prepare for and engage in a difficult conversation Manage your and your counterpart's emotions Develop a resolution together Know when to walk away Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Explains why people have disagreements and how to handle them before disagreements turn into arguments, fights, or scapegoating.

Drawing on advice from the world’s leading experts on conflict and communication—from relationship scientists to hostage negotiators to diplomats—Ian Leslie, a columnist for the New Statesman, shows us how to transform the heat of conflict, disagreement and argument into the light of insight, creativity and connection, in a book with vital lessons for the home, workplace, and public arena. For most people, conflict triggers a fight or flight response. Disagreeing productively is a hard skill for which neither evolution or society has equipped us. It’s a skill we urgently need to acquire; otherwise, our increasingly vociferous disagreements are destined to tear us apart. Productive disagreement is a way of thinking, perhaps the best one we have. It makes us smarter and more creative, and it can even bring us closer together. It’s critical to the success of any shared enterprise, from a marriage, to a business, to a democracy. Isn’t it time we gave more thought to how to do it well? In an increasingly polarized world, our only chance for coming together and moving forward is to learn from those who have mastered the art and science of disagreement. In this book, we’ll learn from experts who are highly skilled at getting the most out of highly charged encounters: interrogators, cops, divorce mediators, therapists, diplomats, psychologists. These professionals know how to get something valuable – information, insight, ideas—from the toughest, most antagonistic conversations. They are brilliant communicators: masters at shaping the conversation beneath the conversation. They know how to turn the heat of conflict into the light of creativity, connection, and insight. In this much-need book, Ian Leslie explores what happens to us when we argue, why disagreement makes us stressed, and why we get angry. He explains why we urgently need to transform the way we think about conflict and how having better disagreements can make us more successful. By drawing together the lessons he learns from different experts, he proposes a series of clear principles that we can all use to make our most difficult dialogues more productive—and our increasingly acrimonious world a better place.

Conflict in the workplace is a perennial problem for organizations. Whether it's a disagreement between colleagues, a dispute with management or large-scale industrial action, conflict negatively affects both people and profits as employee morale and productivity fall. Endorsed by the CIPD, Managing Conflict is an essential guide for HR professionals needing to tackle these problems by not only resolving current issues, but also preventing future instances of conflict. Going beyond interpersonal conflict, the book also looks at resolving board room disputes, disputes with shareholders, in the supply chain, commercial disputes and customer complaints. The first part of Managing Conflict covers the causes and costs of conflict, the impact of the psychological contract and the legal framework for managing workplace disputes both in the UK and internationally. The second part of the book provides a blueprint for redefining resolution and building a culture of constructive conflict management, from designing a conflict management strategy and developing a formal resolution process to embedding mediation, engaging stakeholders and training managers in resolution and mediation skills. This book also includes conflict resolution toolkits for managers, HR teams, employees and unions to help tackle conflict and bullying at work. Packed with best practice case studies from major UK and global organizations, this is an indispensable guide for all HR professionals looking to resolve conflict in the workplace. Online supporting resources include a conflict health check tool, conflict cost calculator, and checklist for developing an internal mediation scheme.

“One of the most important books of our modern era” –Amb. Jaime de Bourbon For anyone struggling with conflict, this book can transform you. Negotiating the Nonnegotiable takes you on a journey into the heart and soul of conflict, providing unique insight into the emotional undercurrents that too often sweep us out to sea. With vivid stories of his closed-door sessions with warring political groups, disputing businesspeople, and families in crisis, Daniel Shapiro presents a universally applicable method to successfully navigate conflict. A deep, provocative book to reflect on and wrestle with, this book can change your life. Be warned: This book is not a quick fix. Real change takes work. You will learn how to master five emotional dynamics that can sabotage conflict outside your awareness: 1. Vertigo: How can you avoid getting emotionally consumed in conflict? 2. Repetition compulsion: How can you stop repeating the same conflicts again and again? 3. Taboos: How can you discuss sensitive issues at the heart of the conflict? 4. Assault on the sacred: What should you do if your values feel threatened? 5. Identity politics: What can you do if others use politics against you? In our era of discontent, this is just the book we need to resolve conflict in our own lives and in the world around us.

"In the tradition of bestselling explainers like The Tipping Point, [this] book [is] based on cutting edge science that breaks down the idea of extreme conflict--the kind that paralyzes people and places--and then shows how to escape it"--

Make workplace conflict resolution a game that EVERYBODY wins! Recent studies show that typical managers devote more than a quarter of their time to resolving coworker disputes. The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games offers a wealth of activities and exercises for groups of any size that let you manage your business (instead of managing personalities). Part of the acclaimed, bestselling Big Books series, this guide offers step-by-step directions and customizable tools that empower you to heal rifts arising from ineffective communication, cultural/personality clashes, and other specific problem areas—before they affect your organization's bottom line. Let The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games help you to: Build trust Foster morale Improve processes Overcome diversity issues And more Dozens of physical and verbal activities help create a safe environment for teams to explore several common forms of conflict—and their resolution. Inexpensive, easy-to-implement, and proved effective at Fortune 500 corporations and mom-and-pop businesses alike, the exercises in The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games delivers everything you need to make your workplace more efficient, effective, and engaged.

Leading Minds and Landmark Ideas In An Easily Accessible Format From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series delivers the fundamental information today's professionals need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. Managers at every level, and in every industry, must balance various working styles, build efficient management teams, and develop sharp negotiation skills to remain competitive. Harvard Business Review on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution offers a selection of the best thinking on negotiation practice and managing conflict in organizational settings. A Harvard Business Review Paperback.

When it was first published in 2001, Negotiating Globally quickly became the basic reference for managers who needed to learn how to negotiate successfully across boundaries of national culture. This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition preserves the structure of the acclaimed first edition and improves upon it, making it even easier to learn how to navigate national culture when negotiating deals, resolving disputes, and making decisions in teams. Rather than offering country-specific protocol and customs, Negotiating Globally provides a general framework to help negotiators anticipate and manage cultural differences. This new edition incorporates the lessons of the latest research with new emphasis on executing a negotiation strategy and negotiating conflict in multicultural teams. The well-received chapter on “Government At and Around the Table” has been expanded and updated with new examples that span the globe. In this comprehensive resource, Jeanne M. Brett describes how to develop a negotiation planning document and shows how to execute the plan. She provides a model that explains how the cultural environment affects negotiators’ interests, priorities, and strategies. She provides benchmarks for distinguishing good deals from poor ones and good negotiators from poor ones. The book explains how resolving disputes is different from making deals and how negotiation strategy can be used in multicultural teams. Negotiating Globally challenges negotiators to expand their repertoire of strategies so that they will be able to close deals, resolve disputes, and get teams to make decisions.

Designing Systems and Processes for Managing Disputes features a hands-on, interdisciplinary approach with wide-ranging practical applications. Seven real-life case studies and numerous examples have students designing and implementing a process for resolving and preventing disputes where traditional processes have failed. This is a must-read for students and practitioners alike. New to the Second Edition: A chapter-long focus on facilitation skills for designers The addition of a seventh central case study related to processes following the Trayvon Martin shooting in Sanford, Florida A new appendix with an overview of mediation for students who have not taken a prior course in mediation An interesting new story by a Brazilian judge who used Designing Systems and Processes for Managing Disputes to create new processes to resolve multiple cases, some pending over 20 years, arising from lands taken to create a new national park A new question focusing on the issues related to designing court-connected mediation programs Updates throughout all chapters and the appendix Professors and students will benefit from: Focus on skills development for dispute systems designers A multidisciplinary approach Biographies of designers, providing students with a sense of how to get into dispute systems design work An appendix assisting students who have no background in dispute resolution, with brief overviews of negotiation, mediation, and arbitration Problems and exercises to help students apply their learning Examples of complex disputes Featured disputes including eBay, a child abuse claims tribunals, court-related mediation, intra-institutional disputes, and community and post-violence conflicts