Workplace conflict is rarely about what it appears to be about. Beneath most persistent disagreements are unaddressed differences in values, expectations or working styles — and a communication environment that does not make it safe to surface them. This one-day course gives you a practical framework for understanding the sources of conflict, reducing its impact and turning friction into stronger working relationships.
Understanding the nature and sources of workplace conflict, conflict styles and management strategies, de-escalation and confrontation skills, facilitating reconciliation and follow-through.
Every session runs in a small, boardroom-format group — typically six to eight senior professionals. Your trainer tailors content to the specific industries, organisations and challenges each participant brings, so you work on real situations, not generic examples. The learning combines evidence-based best practice briefings with structured discussions, practical workshops and peer learning. This is training with a coaching and consulting flavour — focused on building skills and producing outputs you can apply in your work immediately.
- Recognise early signals of conflict before they escalate
- Understand the motivations and behaviours driving conflict in yourself and others
- Apply five established strategies for managing and resolving workplace conflict
- Facilitate confrontation and reconciliation between conflicting parties
- Give and receive constructive feedback in charged situations
- Adapt your communication approach to different conflict personalities
- Reduce ongoing tension while maintaining professional working relationships
- Create conditions where conflict is less likely to re-emerge
- The nature of conflict and its potential for damage
- Typical conflicts at work
- The dimensions of conflict
- Understanding and using your behaviour
- Helpful and unhelpful behaviours -- verbal and non-verbal
- Knowing yourself as others see you
- Transactional analysis and ego-states
- Assertiveness strategies, tools and techniques
- Feedback -- 'The breakfast of champions'
- Giving and receiving constructive feedback
- Five strategies for managing conflict
- Benefits and dangers of the different strategies
- A conflict resolution model
- Issues influencing the style of conflict resolution
- Improving questioning and listening skills to explore causes of conflict
- Ensuring you are part of the solution, not part of the problem
- Facilitating conflict confrontation and resolution
- Identifying conflict with customers, suppliers and stakeholders
- Using the strategies, tactics and skills to best effect
- Exploring conflict as a healthy option, a driver for change
Team leaders, managers and HR professionals dealing with ongoing conflict between colleagues, across teams or within departments. Also relevant for professionals in high-pressure environments where differences in values or working style create persistent friction.
The following are some of the ISOC trainers who regularly lead this course, depending whether you join us in London, Dubai or live online.
A great deal. The small-group format and intensive, practical approach mean every participant leaves with specific, applicable skills and techniques.
Nothing specific is required. If you have a current project or challenge relevant to the course topic, bring it along — the practical exercises can incorporate real-world contexts.
Mastering Critical Conversations focuses on the single high-stakes discussion — often one that has been avoided or has become charged. This course addresses ongoing conflict between people or teams: persistent tension, damaged relationships and dynamics that require a longer-term resolution approach.
Yes. The frameworks are applicable to your own situation as well as those you manage. Many participants bring a current conflict, and the small-group format allows the trainer to incorporate these contexts directly into the exercises.