What is Your Conflict Style?

Effective communicators are self aware people who are flexible in the ways they respond to threats.  They know a variety of conflict styles and can use the appropriate style to match the needs of the situation.  Depending on what is at stake, how important the relationship is with the other party, and how much you [...]

In-house Mediation Programs Save You Money, Do You Have One?

More and more employers are realizing the cost savings of implementing a comprehensive early dispute resolution program that incorporates mediation and settles cases, avoiding the need to go through time consuming and costly litigation.  Boeing, United Parcel Service, Darden Restaurants, among others, offer their employees a multi-step process to settle disputes arising in the course [...]

Dealing with Difficult People in the Workplace

Difficult people and difficult behaviors come in all varieties. You’ve seen them, and maybe have heard others put labels on them. They are the bullies, the naysayers, the complainers, the know-it-alls, the agreeable but undependable. Given the right conditions, we all have some of these tendencies in our work relationships. So [...]

Why is Generation Y so Different?

There’s a saying that goes like this: “You Raised Them, Now Manage Them” and a book by that title written by Nadira A. Hira. Its aptly named. If we want to understand the newest generation of workers in the workplace, we only need to look at what has happened to parenting and parenting styles.

How [...]

Learning to Bridge the Generation Gap in the Workplace

Although not as obvious or often talked about as other diversity issues, generational differences can cause conflict, disruption and team dysfunction in the workplace.  By understanding, recognizing, and appreciating the differences, not only can conflict be avoided but value and opportunity can be found in utilizing generational differences to a workplace advantage.
Today’s workplace has four [...]

Interdependent Communication

A new study from the University of Washington says graduate programs need to teach students even more. The study found that students need to learn not just how to be scholars but how to live in the real world including how to get along with others in the workplace.
In other words, the study [...]

Motivational Interviewing for Positive Change

by Dee Knapp
All around the country I have partnered with Ted Hunter of Sound Law Center to give talks based on the book “Motivational Interviewing”, S. Rollnick and W. Miller, Guilford Press, 2nd Ed. 2002. Rollnick and Miller, describe an evidence-based approach, used in clinical settings, to help people overcome the ambivalence that prevents [...]

Don’t Negotiate, Collaborate!

Tricks, power-plays, passive-aggressive maneuvers,“getting taken”, or being played the fool, even simple misunderstandings. Yikes, no wonder people don’t like to negotiate! But negotiation doesn’t have to be this way–even if one side seems not to “play fair”–if you enter the conversation with the intent to collaborate. Here are some tips for a successful [...]

Mediation in the News

Mediation and other types of collaborative processes including those in the workplace, appear in the news everyday. A recent search turned up several articles that are representative of the kind of collaborative process or mediation that gets press attention. For example, the Voice of America reported that South African President Thabo Mbeki has been facilitating [...]