Courageous Conflict Lite

By Mark A. Adams

We all experience conflict. Learning to work with it effectively is an essential skill for anyone. Courageous Conflict Lite is a condensed version of the book that provides the reader with valuable concepts and techniques that you can put to use right away to resolve conflict and improve relationships. Courageous Conflict covers a wide variety of topics such as anger, communication, integrity, perspective, and biases. It also includes tools such as constructive confrontation and insights to understanding others to help the reader look at and approach conflict in new ways to be more effective with people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark A. Adams
• Release date: Nov 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311523716

Mark A. Adams

Mark A. Adams is an accomplished professional with diverse experience in business, education, and coaching. Mark is the author of Courageous Conflict: Leading with Integrity and Authenticity and is the Owner of Achievement Edge, LLC, a consulting practice focused on coaching leaders, groups, and individuals in the areas of conflict, leadership, teamwork and thinking skills. As a certified mediator, Mark is available for group facilitation and conflict coaching. His experience includes team building, communication, conflict resolution and leadership development. His primary focus is about helping people learn better ways to think about, learn from and resolve conflicts while challenging limiting beliefs. Mark lives in Colorado with his wife, two children, three dogs, and cats where he enjoys kayaking, hiking, camping, and photography. For more information go to: www.achievementedgetraining.com

Book preview

Courageous Conflict-Lite

by

Mark A. Adams

This eBook will provide the reader with concepts taken in from the book

Courageous Conflict: Leading with Integrity and Authenticity

by Mark A. Adams.

Copyright 2013 Mark A. Adams

Smashwords Edition

Published by Achievement Edge Press

www.achievementedgetraining.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

A World without Conflict

Attitudes and Perceptions about Conflict

Mindsets

Filters and History

Perception

Biases

Spin

Willful Ignorance

Judgment

Bigger Picture

Defensiveness

Anger

Communication

Non-Violent Communication

Confrontation

Conflict – Triggers

Hooked – Time Out

Frustration

Venting

What Are You Practicing?

Practice When Upset

Identifying Conflict

Don’t Get Pulled In

Bring Them To the Line

Backing Off

Addressing Conflict

Big Picture Leadership

Afterword

Introduction

We all experience conflict, some more often than others. How we respond to the people we are in conflict with not only influences the outcome, it has the power to enhance or damage the relationship. Unfortunately, conflict resolution is not something we are generally taught. We learn in part how to interact in a conflict from our role models and peers who may or may not have the best approaches.

Conflict is present in our daily lives and how we respond to it determines our effectiveness, our integrity and our standing with others. Characteristically, conflict is viewed as bad due to the negative connotations, feelings and experiences we have had in the past. However, conflict can also be a catalyst for good, when used to create better ideas, solutions, and resolutions to ongoing problems.

This shortened or lite eBook version of Courageous Conflict: Leading with Integrity and Authenticity will provide the reader with a host of tools, concepts and ideas to help the reader learn more effective ways to think about and work with conflict in their daily lives.

A World without Conflict

Let’s face it; a world without conflict is not only unrealistic, it would be undesired. Without conflict, we would lose creativity and innovation. Without conflict, we would be expected to conform and not grow. For all of the negativity and fear of conflict, there are just as many positive benefits. Learning to embrace conflict and use it as a tool instead of avoiding it can make a world of difference. This book will talk about both interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict and how these elements influence and affect our lives and our relationships with others. At times, the material might challenge us to examine ourselves and how we approach others.

Unfortunately, in society today there is a fear of conflict, confrontation, accountability, responsibility and dealing with problems, whether our own or problems with someone else. Despite the anxiety and fear surrounding conflict, a great deal can be gained from it. The tendency is to push it away, sweep it under the rug or otherwise delay addressing it with the hope it will just go away on its own or blow over if ignored long enough. It does not.

Most of the time not addressing conflict makes it far worse, especially when it cannot be ignored or suppressed anymore. This is when conflicts can blow up; create wounds and fallout that leaves irreparable damage.

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Attitudes & Perceptions about Conflict

We each have our own approaches for how to deal with and respond to conflict in our lives, everything from denial and avoidance to confrontation and manipulation. At a time when the skills of responding to conflict are more critical than ever in our high-tech, fast-paced, pressure filled world, we revert to old patterns and techniques that do not work or create more damage than necessary.

Mention the word conflict or the phrase conflict management and almost immediately, others feel fear or anxiety. Why is this? We learn early on, conflict can be scary and is often bad. Some of the first lessons learned when starting school are about getting along with others. Later, as we grow up, we are thrust into conflict without the skills or understanding of how to deal with it and end up seeing first-hand how conflict can be scary, because of its possible consequences. We might have gained some skills for dealing with conflict and experienced both winning and losing by using skills, we have seen modeled by parents and other role models. We get into such a rush to deal with conflict, avoid it or put a bandage on it that we miss the real benefit. Our failure to take advantage of the lessons that can be learned from our conflicts results in making the same mistakes repeatedly.

One of the first things we need to explore is our attitude and approach toward conflict. The typical conflict avoidant person seeks harmony and does not want to stir things up. Other people who do not mind conflict might be leaving a wake of destruction with rude, blunt and inconsiderate comments, not caring or realizing how their approach creates more conflict and lowers the amount of trust and respect people have for them.

The attitude and belief that conflict is bad is one of the first things we need to overcome. Conflict is not all bad. Conflict can help us look at things from different vantage points and can help us become aware of things we might have overlooked or not known. Additionally, conflict challenges us and helps push ourselves to grow, hopefully into a better, wiser person.

Do we generally enter into conflict thinking about what we can learn from the other person/side? Unfortunately, we approach conflict with the mentality in which we feel we know what is right and automatically consider the other side wrong. We may push our own agenda and fail to realize we might make better decisions if we allowed ourselves to learn from the other side.

Understanding that some of us have more to lose or gain from conflict can help us better understand why we are not as engaged or care about a particular conflict as much as others. For example, a person who is in a position of authority might not have as much of an aversion to a conflict in which they have little or