Dealing With Conflict Workshop

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Dealing With ConflictWorkshop
David.Leigh-Fellows_at_Thoughtworks.com Matt.Bonetti
_at_GMail.com
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On the agenda
Whats conflict? Misconceptions about
conflict Some tools. A example. Your
turn. Meet back and report.
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What is conflict?
Daniel Webster defines conflict as
1.  Competitive or opposing action of
incompatibles 2.  Antagonistic state or action
(as of divergent ideas, interests or persons)
3.  Struggle resulting from incompatible needs,
drives, wishes or demands 4.  Hostile encounter
Conflict is merely the existence of competing
or incompatible options.
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Misconceptions about conflict
1.  Conflict, if left alone, will take care of
itself. 2.  Confronting an issue or person is
always unpleasant. 3.  Anger is always negative
and destructive.
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Typical reactions to conflict
1. Retaliate (pretty much always a mistake) 2.
Dominate (Bullying hard on long term
relationships) 3. Isolate (accepting the
situation for now assuming your not suppressing
it and you can let it go that is) 4. Cooperate
(confront the issue immediately)
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Some tools.
NLP (Neural Linguistic Programming) John
Grinder Richard Bandler
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Some tools.
Eye Accessing Cues.
Visualization
Kinesthetic
Auditory (Internal dialogue)
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Some tools.
The Meta Mirror (Robert Dilts)
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Some tools.
Creating rapport through matching
Body language Posture stance Breathing
pattern Gestures Eye contact Voice Speed
Volume Rhythm Language Key words and
phrases (good when summarizing).
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Some tools.

• Futurespecting \ Future pacing
• What outcome do I want?
• How will I know when I have what I want?

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Dealing with difficult situations an
exampleHoney I shrunk the kids
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Dealing with difficult situations your turn
Break into teams. Agree on actors to take on
roles. Act out the scenario. Discuss. Another
if weve got time. Report back to group.
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Honey, I shrunk the kids.
Youre travelling into work one morning, when an
icy dread grips your stomach. Late last night, in
another futile attempt to hit an unrealistic
deadline, you ran some code against the live
database without going through the usual peer
review process. Now you come to think about it,
perhaps you got the insert and delete statements
the wrong way round.. Arriving in the office,
you sneak to your computer and check what you
did. In the cold light of day, you realise that
youve deleted all of the prices in the database
for the last six months. Youre going to be in
deep, deep trouble, but you know you really have
to cough up to your mistake. What should you do?
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Return of the JFDI
Youre working on a highly visible, client
critical, tight deadline project (hey, arent
they all?) and your team has been following the
agile development process. The trouble is, your
main business user has forgotten one tiny little
detail.. with four days to go, just when you
think everything is going to work out fine the
exec in charge hits you with Did I forget to
mention I promised the board well be able to
service 850,000 customers on the first
day Youve not done any stress testing yet but
your system was only built to service 1000
customers on the first day and your team has
given up their last two weekends and Christmas
getting this done. I dont care what it takes,
JFDI!. What should you do?
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The man who knew too much
Youve been working on a bit of software for a
customer whos bought into the Agile process, and
theyve been onsite, always spent time with you,
and generally been very helpful. In fact, theyve
almost been too helpful. The customer is a
business guy whos been used to writing some
basic code in Excel VBA, and he likes to think
hes a bit of an ace coder. He always tells the
team exactly how to do something in fine but
its not always the best way, technically. And he
gets quite irate when you code something in a way
that he doesnt like. What should you do?
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Summary

• 1.  Listen
• 2.  Acknowledge
• 3.  Explain
• 4.  Seek alternatives
• 5.  Use assertive statements
• 6.  Summarize the discussion

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Resources
NLP Workbook Joseph OConnor. How to manage
conflict Peg Pickering.