Have A Nice Conflict

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Buy This Book!

Competency: conflict management, interpersonal skills, communication, customer service

Who benefits: anyone, everyone

Consultant Usage: if you are a people consultant or trainer at any level this is a must read

What’s it about? If you have been a regular reader of this post, you know this is my self-proclaimed “Customer Service Month”. I am especially examining the frustrations of the customer who receives poor service and the customer service representatives who can’t deliver superior service.

With the customer service representatives who can’t deliver superior service, the root cause(s) most often lie with bad management, bad strategy and sucky systems. Yet there is the frontline, on the line or behind the counter trying their darnedest to deliver something useful.

Let’s skip over (for now) all the reasons they aren’t well prepared to deal with all the contingencies that customers bring them. How can the frontline deal effectively with the conflicts customers cast in front of them each and every day? Presumably they have had some training in active listening (although my dealings with Direct TV challenge that assumption). That’s a good start, but where do you go from there.

In a miniscule irony, as I have been pondering this question I was reminded this week of some of the absolute best training I have ever received in interpersonal relations and relationships … and the only training I ever received that was actually beneficial in working through and resolving conflicts. A friend from the past, Tim Scudder and associates have just released Have A Nice Conflict, a wonderful fable about a sales manager in a downward spiral.

While the book was not written with brief encounters in mind, as I reflect upon the ideas in this book I concluded that it should be required reading for all frontline employees. This book is no substitute for bad management, bad policies and those above mentioned sucky systems, but it offers the frontline hope for conflict resolution rather than conflict stalemates and angry customers.

Allow me to move beyond customer service and review the book. The book is about relationships, written primarily for work, but the material is also fundamental to good relationships with spouses, significant others, children, and friends. As the authors write “Having a nice conflict means preventing and managing conflict in a way that actually strengthens a relationship.”

The book teaches us, or at least reminds us of how we are all different and as such react differently. Sometimes conflicts arise from those differences. It could be as absolutely simple as making a decision: I want to check in with some other people before deciding – you want take action now. How do we resolve that?

There are two topics in the book that I like best. The first is “trigger points” – identifying what tips us into conflict in the first place. Those frontline employees I have been writing about especially need to know what sets them off. The second is a five stage model (anticipate, prevent, identify, manage, and resolve) that guides us through the whole conflict resolution process and leaves us stronger as a result.

The book is for everyone in an organization. You need no prior approval to pick up this book, read and apply its teachings. If relationships with people at work and at home are important to you, you can benefit greatly from this gem. If relationships with people at work and at home are not important to you, you absolutely must read this gem.

In December of each year I like my concluding post to reflect upon the 10 best books, articles, videos and other forms of learning from the year. Have A Nice Conflict will be on that top 10 list … possibly #1. Do yourself a favor and beg, borrow or buy a copy and digest it. It is a valuable book worthy of your time.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.