 Given that leaders spend 30% of their time resolving unproductive conflict and that executives spend 20% of their time in litigation related activities, resolving conflict productively and skillfully should be at the top of your critical skills list.
Before we conduct conflict management workshops, we frequently have participants complete our highly-validated emotional intelligence (EQi) assessments. While the assessment measures a wide variety of skills, the two most important for successful conflict management are empathy and assertiveness.
“If you know how effective your team is in engaging empathy and assertiveness, conflict management will improve considerably.”
Empathy is recognizing, understanding, and appreciating how other people feel. You need to be able to articulate your understanding of another’s perspective and to behave in a way that respects others’ feelings.
Assertiveness involves communicating feelings, beliefs and thoughts openly, and defending personal rights and values in a socially acceptable, non-offensive, and non-destructive manner.
What’s important to recognize is that you need both of these skills in order to resolve conflict successfully. High empathy, without assertiveness, may result in a lack of personal or organizational boundaries, as well as an inability to appropriately advocate for your legitimate interests. Similarly, high assertiveness without high empathy, frequently discourages people from approaching you with their concerns and may also discourage sustainable agreements, meaning that people agree but don’t follow through.
What Should You Do?
Consider assessing yourself and your staff in order to understand their skill level with both empathy and assertiveness and where they have an opportunity to improve. If you know how effective your team is in engaging empathy and assertiveness, conflict management will improve considerably. Follow up that assessment with a useful conflict management class to provide additional essential skills.
 Did You Know
Learn more about our training offerings and check out our team members at:
Be sure to read Lynne’s book The Power of a Good Fight.
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October 23, 2017
