Managing Conflict

1. Managing Conflict Personnel Development Organized Change

2. Change is the only constant when dealing with people • Change focuses or re-directs an organization • Often requires organization to rethink mission and compete for talented “employees”

3. Strategies for change • Rational empirical • Based in theory that people are rational and if they understand a change is in their best interest they will get on board • Founded in scientific method • Normative re-educative • Assumes people will be motivated by unsatisfied needs • Not a rational approach but based on interpersonal issues; people must be convinced of change • Power-coercive • Little to defend against this method – orders are stated and followed • Can be challenged by departments heads but with risks • 2 threats to these styles is resignation and threaten to tell media

4. Four steps to implement change • Awareness • 5 crises of management • Mang. Looks at the life of the org., interest of mang. Toward change, and the environment within the org to accept and implement change (subjective assessment) • Diagnosis • Objective evidence • Collect info and demonstrate how the implementation will improve the org; get people to think along the same lines • Intervention • Must understand what is changing • Deal with resistance • Evaluation • Did change resolve the problem and did new problems result

5. Conflict Adjustment • Defined: type of competition in which the parties to the conflict are aware of the directly opposite (or conflicting) nature of their positions and in which each side wishes to cont9inue to hold the position • Frustration where goals are blocked by other goals

6. Conflict is not necessary for growth • Conflict is usually personal • Disruptive conflict may sabotage the organization

7. Causes and Responses • Communication difficulties • Organizational structures • Psychological and social factors • Competition for scarce resources • For one to succeed, one must fail • How do you decreases individual success and make it more about group success • Use of threatening, antagonistic power strategies • Direct, non rational, unilateral • Increase hostility, counteractions and unwillingness to compromise • Personal characteristics of group members • Competitors verses cooperator • Need role definition to relate to role prescription

8. You are the manager…What do you do? • With a defensive employee? • Assess the cause • Find a position to diminishes the effectiveness of the conflict • A young, new employee who has stepped on the toes of your seasoned employees (think of ATS)

9. Feedback • Positive • Reinforcing desired behaviors • Negative • Offers negative opinion with offering a positive solution or modification • Problem Centered • Attack the negative and presents a solution

10. Example • Look at the situation where one of the ATSs want to date the athletes • ATS sponsored gathering would be encouraged to exclude athletes • The idea is forbidden • Point out the difficulty in remaining objective if the injured party is your girlfriend / boyfriend Come up with an other example

11. Resolution • Win-lose (domination), win-win (integration), lose- lose (compromise) • Coalitions: divide into sides; may have begun as two people or to positions but they have involved others to proper they are “right” • Members do not have to agree on anything else but their commitment to stand together on an issue

12. Common methods to resolve interpersonal conflicts • Imposition: one side must accept the position of another (win-lose) • Withdrawal: losing group leaves rather than accept the position of the winner • Inaction: (avoidance)ignore the problem • Yielding : (conceding) a side will retract demands rather than confront and lose • Compromise : (lose-lose) find middle ground and both sides give • Problem solving: (win-win confrontation) agree on problem and solution • Negotiation ad third party intervention

13. Stress and Burnout • An be positive and negative • Responses: psychological components and physical components • Signs: physical and emotional • Burnout: person becomes inoperative; fatigue, illnesses, migraine, irritability, withdrawal, social practices

14. Operational Planning

15. Planning • Decision making process to determine course of action • Best way to ensure goals are achieved • 3 characteristics of palling • Takes place prior to action • Need to produce future state • Future state results form multiple interdependent decisions

16. Operational • Policies: type of plan that expresses an organization's intended behavior relative to a specific program sub function • Processes: collection of steps to direct task of organization • Procedures: Type of operational plan that provides specific directions for members of an organization

17. Operational • Practice: ways to administrate tasks • Should never contradict P& P • All these should be reviewed and modified at least once over few years • Other types • PERT:program evaluation and review technique- graph of time line and relationships within a program • Gannt Charts: graphic planning and control method • Allies-Opponents-Bedfellows-Adversaries

18. Strategic • ID course of action to be taken • ID outside interests • Defines client base and plans for feedback, evaluations, outcomes, re-organization, etc • WOTS UP analysis (Ray pg 32 &285 • Weakness, opportunities, threats, and strengths in underlying planning • Most appropriate if program is already established) • Must be done by many participants with different viewpoints • Relates to evaluation