Brian,
> of time to work through. It has been my experience that taking the time
> to work through conflicts in team contexts often proves to be both an
> enlightening and productive experience. I believe that when people openly
> discuss differences in a safe, non-judgemental manner, conflict can be a
> wonderful thing.
I agree.
In my experience, the problem is that many people think open conflict is
bad and to be avoided for smooth operation, or, if they are open to such,
they don't know how to handle it effectively.
Interestingly, there is a Jesuit priest by the name of Rupert Lay who also
consults with businesses and who has apparently emphasized the importance
of acknowledging and dealing with conflict. I did a metacrawler search on
Rupert Lay; most of the responses were in German (but I did have one there
in English).
The two best tools I've found for helping people deal with conflict are
found in the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: the ladder of inference and the
left hand column exercise. They are simple to understand, and they give
people struggling with how to engage in conflict a recipe to get started.
Regards,
Bill
--
Bill Harris Hewlett-Packard Co.
R&D Engineering Processes Lake Stevens Division
domain: billh@lsid.hp.com M/S 330
phone: (425) 335-2200 8600 Soper Hill Road
fax: (425) 335-2828 Everett, WA 98205-1298
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations
For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>