Conflict Resolution

Learn how to resolve conflicts without sacrificing the creative tension that characterizes the best organizations. Manage individual conflicts while ensuring what's best for the organization.

Description

Conflict is inevitable and, as a project leader, you need to be able to resolve it quickly and effectively. Conflict is inherent in almost every project for a multitude of reasons including project complexity, misaligned stakeholders, diverse team members, scarcity of resources, and matrix organizational structures that by definition place two sets of managerial values and priorities into tension with each other. The best project leaders have a well-developed capacity for managing and resolving conflict.

This course focuses on understanding the organizational nature of conflict and the approaches that a leader can use to resolve conflict including, avoidance, competition, accommodation, compromise, and collaboration. Participants will assess their own response to conflict using the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and will determine which approaches are consistent with their own profile and are appropriate to specific situations. This course also focuses on the technique of principled negotiation to avoid or resolve conflict. Principled negotiation, an interest-based technique popularized in the best-selling book Getting To Yes, provides a framework to separate people from problems, focus on interests, generate options, and evaluate options.

Successful project leaders can diagnose and resolve conflict in a manner that enhances team cohesiveness and improves the likelihood of successful results.

This course is anticipated to be approved for approximately 6.0 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Who Should Take This Course?

This course is essential for Project Management Professionals (PMPs), project managers, and functional managers charged with leading a cross-functional or project team to success. It is appropriate for business leaders, mid-level managers, and project managers who need to learn the critical leadership skills necessary to ensure the high performance of a project team.

Course Format

eCornell takes a problem-based approach to learning, and our courses are built around realistic case studies and scenarios. All courses are self-paced, and are facilitated by an eCornell instructor, who leads the online discussions and is available to answer any questions about the course content.

This course contains the following modules:

• Conflict Resolution in Context
• Organizational Conflict
• Avoiding Conflict
• Focusing on Completion
• Accommodation
• Compromisation
• Collaboration
• Principled Negotiation
• Separating People from Problems
• Focusing on Interests
• Generating Options
• Evaluating Options
• Additional Considerations

Benefits to the Learner

Learners who complete this course will be able to:

• Explain why conflict is inherent in a project
• Describe approaches to resolving conflict and explain how your conflict mode does or does not support these approaches
• Discuss the elements of the principled negotiation approach to conflict resolution

Authoring Faculty

Frank J. Wayno, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer

Sponsoring School

Cornell University’s College of Engineering

Total Learning Time

Approximately 6 hours over a period of two weeks.

Certificate Information

This course can be applied toward the following certificate:

• Project Leadership