Sometimes hot and messy, other times cold and hidden, conflict surrounds us as leaders. There are two obvious choices: become the arbitrator who breaks the tie, or throw up your hands in exasperation deciding it's the team's problem. A third, more powerful approach is to become a skilled conflict facilitator. This hands-on workshop provides four interrelated systems intelligence tools and mindsets to help you prevent destructive conflict and encourage the creative kind: the positive/negative ratio, deep democracy perspective, conflict protocols and creating alignment without agreement. First laying a foundation with the team’s positive/negative behavioral ratio, this creates a positive emotional bank account to strengthen resiliency and help people "assume positive intent." We then add a behavioral structure, conflict protocols, to prepare teams for the heat of conflict, and finally introduce two core practices (deep democracy and distinguishing ‘interests’ from ‘positions’) for navigating active conflict as it occurs. The relationship systems approach, from CRRGlobal, will be taught and facilitated by two experienced agile+systems coaches.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/leading conflict handout - agile 2012.pdf