Books about Workplace Conflict

Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader: How You and Your Organization Can Manage Conflict Effectively (Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan)

“If workplace conflict is inevitable, becoming a conflict competent leader is one of the most valuable skill sets a leader can possess. Runde and Flanagan clearly lay out how destructive conflict can be prevented while fostering the kind of constructive debate and creative solutions which businesses need to thrive.”
—Joanne McCree, former vice president, human resources, IBM

Developing Your Conflict Competence: A Hands-On Guide for Leaders, Managers, Facilitators, and Teams (Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan)

A practical resource, this book combines tips, checklists, exercises, and stories to outline concrete processes that improve the way leaders, managers, and anyone within an organization responds to conflict. Beginning with a series of questions and self-diagnostics, the authors show you how to: maintain emotional balance in the face of conflict; implement constructive communications techniques; help others deal with conflicts that are causing organization problems; establish norms for handling conflict; use specific approaches for addressing conflict more effectively.

Building Conflict Competent Teams (Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan)

Understanding how to cool down, slow down, and engage the naturally occurring conflicts among team members is critical to the ultimate success of a team. With this book, your team and its members will gain a deeper understanding of how conflict emerges and how to respond in ways that will leverage conflicts to their advantage. Team members will learn the importance of establishing a safe team climate, agreeing on processes to guide interactions, and use of constructive communication skills in order to develop a conflict competent team.

As the authors say, conflict is not to be avoided, but embraced and explored. This often results in new, previously unimagined opportunities, solutions and results. The authors include stories, interviews, and examples that provide entertaining and thought provoking insights. They dedicate one chapter to techniques and processes for addressing team conflict that has gone awry. Runde and Flanagan also include useful tips and tools for assessing your team?s current state of conflict competence and suggestions for addressing the challenges of today?s virtual and geographically dispersed teams.