How well do you manage conflict with your boss or other superiors at work, or with the more difficult employees you need to supervise?
Conflict is a lot like fire. When it sparks, it can intensify, spread and lead to pain, loss and irreparable damage. It can distract, distance, derail and occasionally destroy opportunities and relationships.
Understanding how conflict and power affect each other is vital to effective conflict management, but talking about power differences openly is still taboo in most places in society. Power and authority differences between disputants can radically change the nature of effective conflict management.
But conflicts up and down the chain of command are a different game completely; when the rules change, so must our strategies and tactics. Conflict-prone professional environments and political networks require leaders, managers and employees to have a wide array of conflict management strategies and tactics and to be able to employ them artfully and effectively.
"MAKING CONFLICT WORK: Harnessing the Power of Disagreement" by Peter T. Coleman and Robert Ferguson is about conflict, power and change. It chronicles the challenges and opportunities we face when we find ourselves in conflict with those in authority and with those we have authority over.
Source: Peter T. Coleman: Making Conflict Work: Harnessing the Power of Disagreement