Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader
by Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan
Published by Jossey-Bass
Click on book
cover to order
at Amazon.com
Reviewed by Celia Renteria Szelwach, DBA (ABD)
Subtitled: How You and Your Organization Can Manage Conflict Effectively
My typical observations of conflict in the workplace when working with executive and managerial teams are that leaders typically ignore or avoid the conflict and hope it goes away, or they resort to intimidation, sabotage, and winning at all costs. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that authors Craig Runde and Tim Flanagan of the Leadership Development Institute (LDI) at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida offer a better way to leverage the value of constructive conflict and minimize the effects of destructive conflict dynamics.
In less than 200 pages, Runde and Flanagan easily and concisely share:
* Definitions of leadership, conflict, and conflict competency
* The process for conflict dynamics
* Importance of leader self-awareness and self-control
* Methods for preventing destructive responses to conflict
* Suggestions for enhancing constructive responses, and
* Building conflict competent organizations
I particularly enjoyed the Dynamic Conflict Model in Chapter 2 which provides an easy method for understanding the triggers (hot buttons) that incite conflict, the active and passive constructive or destructive responses we choose in response, whether conflict remains task or person-focused, and the resulting de-escalation or escalation of conflict respectively.
The main weakness in this book is the brevity of Chapter 6 on building conflict-competent organizations. Additional strategies and work-related case studies in multiple industries would be helpful to apply the theory to personal experience, particularly if the reader is a new supervisor or from a particular industry where some destructive responses may be the organizational norm (i.e., avoidance and yielding were highly prized in one of my client companies where overt conflict was viewed as contradictory to the values of customer service and teamwork).
In spite of this, Becoming a Conflict Competent Leaderis a very worthwhile read particularly in light of the escalated violence observed in workplace and school campuses and in communities.
Armchair Interviews recommends this book for business consultants, organizational leaders, or professors interested in building personal competence in conflict dynamics to achieve solid results.
Authors' Web site: http://www.conflictcompetentleader.com/">