Positive Approaches to Conflict at Work

How to sensitively manage different types of conflict to create a more harmonious and efficient workplace.

Conflict at work can arise for a multitude of reasons when people with different backgrounds or values disagree on approaches, interests, and ideas. This can negatively impact employee mental health and well-being, resulting in inefficient collaboration which may hinder the organisation as a whole. This book aims to provide case study examples and practical solutions to a range of real world scenarios, illustrating how conflict at work can manifest and approaches to managing these in the right way to improve productivity and the overall well-being of employees. It encourages managers and leaders to explore the different types of conflict that occur and how to manage them in a respectful way.

Ideas from coaching and mentoring are included, as well as making reference to internal formal processes and procedures. Contemporary research, theory and models are explored so that readers are offered an in-depth analysis of how to effectively manage conflict, accompanied with exercises and critical reflection to aid understanding.

Suzanna Tan is an experienced executive coachand a qualified workplace mediator. She has over 15 years of in-house and freelance private and public sector work developing managers and leaders through coaching, facilitating and training. She has worked across virtual teams in a matrix environment, holding management roles in functions such as business development, commercial product management, diversity and inclusion, marketing and communications, and sales.  

Bob Thomson is a Professor at Warwick Business School.  He has many years of experience working in leadership and management development in the energy industry and in higher education.  He is accredited as a coach and supervisor by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, and is a qualified and experienced mediator.  He has written eight previous books on coaching, managing people, and learning from experience. He is the editor of Critical Publishing’s Business in Mind series of books on mental well-being in the workplace.