CONFLICT RESOLUTION

This service has changed dramatically with our discovery of the Strength Deployment Inventory®. We will explain how we used to work on Conflict Resolution and what we do now.

As a part of our comprehensive service to our clients we are periodically asked to intervene in either an interpersonal or systemic conflict in a work team. Previously we did this basically by talking to the parties involved and, after considering several strategies, choosing the one that seemed most promising - not only to us, but to the participants. (Part of the purpose of finding agreement on a strategy is that they have to agree on something, and the mere act of coming to an agreement contributes to a successful resolution of the conflict.)

Now, with the benefit of insights from the Strength Deployment Inventory, we can add another very helpful element. We begin in the same manner - listening to the story from the perspectives of the several participants and enlisting their advice on how to address the issue. Then we give them the opportunity to take the SDI® and, very important, to answer a feedback questionnaire which gives both of the parties the opportunity to see how the other views them. If two parties are involved in the conflict, we now have four different "objective" statements about how the conflict has developed.

But even more important that this has to do with what we find to be the real genius of the SDI. Depending on how each person answers - or how each seems to perceive the other when answering the feedback questionnaire - we get a suggested three-stage sequence by which conflict gets addresses. Generally, when people are dealing with conflict in their first stage (their preferred stage), they are dealing graciously and effectively. When people move to the second stage, they lose much of that grace and effectiveness. And when they move to the third stage, well, it can be pretty ugly. In fact, third stage conflict is often so difficult, even painful, that it is the natural human desire to get out of it. When we see all of this laid out in a graph, we can fairly quickly find a pathway to get us out of the discomfort that the conflict is causing.

We not only resolve the conflict, but we come out of the experience wiser.

Now, it must be said that we are asked to deal with conflicts, some of which are simply intractable. We cannot promise to make the conflict go away or even promise to create adequate coping mechanisms. Sometimes, we are not successful.

Strength Deployment Inventory and SDI are registered trademarks of Personal Strengths Publishing, Inc.