SkillSoft Courses
SkillSoft includes over 3,300 online professional development courses that are available to UI faculty, staff and students at no charge. Courses related to conflict management include the following:
Difficult People in the Workplace Environment
ID: comm_04_a01_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
Do you grind your teeth in frustration each time you have to work closely with someone who drives you batty? Do you have to put up with difficult people at work on a regular basis? Has your physician told you that your blood pressure is at an all-time high?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, it's probably time for you to learn to deal with difficult people at the office. This course will guide you in your journey to coping effectively with difficult people. You'll learn step-by-step methods and processes to help you identify difficult people to cope and communicate with them. With the help of this course, you'll no longer have to be frustrated or intimidated by difficult people.
Target Audience: Business professionals, managers, executives, front-line workers
Handling Conflict
ID: comm_07_a02_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
No one can complete a working career without experiencing conflict, so it is essential for you to handle this conflict in the most effective way.
To handle conflict well, you need to build a repertoire of techniques. These techniques require you to behave differently from your natural instincts at times.
Therefore, a good starting point is to establish what your instinctive approaches to conflict are, and where these attitudes stem from.
This will enable you to decide on a range of different approaches to conflict, based on a spectrum that goes from being only concerned about your own needs, to only being concerned about other people's needs. This spectrum gives rise to five possible strategies for dealing with conflict.
Whatever strategy you apply, some core techniques will make you more effective. These involve three main actions: confronting the conflict, communicating with the other party, and determining an acceptable outcome.
Sometimes, the conflict in the workplace just surrounds you, even though you are not involved directly. You then have to learn how to avoid taking sides, or becoming a scapegoat.
Target Audience: Anyone who has to deal with conflict in the workplace.
Facilitating Difficult Situations
ID: mgmt_08_a04_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
How do you deal with the group that has an exceptionally dominant person who doesn't let anyone else have say, or trivializes the contributions of others? How do you keep a faction from taking over? What is the best means of handling direct challenges to you or the group? What do you do when you know someone is deliberately trying to derail your meeting and/or success? What is the best way to clear the air when there is tension? Welcome to the tough stuff in facilitation. In this course you will learn to recognize and deal with the most difficult aspects of facilitating groups. You will explore typical trouble spots, like dealing with side conversations. Discover ways to maintain and channel enthusiasm with high-participation groups and turn around low-participation situations. Learn techniques to help you handle sabotage and passive/aggressive behavior. Capitalize on confrontation by shifting your analysis from 'what's wrong' to assessing 'what is really going on.' You will also learn the benefits of conflict and apply tips to transform chaos into creativity.
Target Audience: Managers, team leaders, or anyone who will conduct/lead meetings or work groups.
Perspectives on Conflict in the Workplace
ID: comm_07_a01_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
What is meant by the term "conflict," and what are the general attitudes towards it in the workplace? In this course, three prevailing attitudes towards conflict are compared. These are that:
--Conflict is always a bad thing
--Conflict is always a good thing
--A certain level of conflict is productive, but too much is undesirable.
This last view informs the rest of the course, which goes on to describe how a healthy and productive level of conflict can be encouraged in an organization, promoting a win-win philosophy that improves performance.
Of course, conflict cannot always be contained at this productive level, and often spills over into becoming destructive. Therefore, learners will also discover how to recognize the signs and symptoms of destructive conflict, so that they can deal with it in the workplace.
Target Audience: Anyone who faces, or has to deal with, conflict in the workplace
Managing Organization Conflict
ID: comm_07_a03_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
As a manager, you will inevitably have to sort out some of the conflict that occurs in your organization. Sometimes, this will be between individuals, but often it will be between teams, and even departments.
The different nature of these conflicts is likely to require different approaches, and there are also likely to be a range of particular demands on you in the way that you manage the conflicts.
A way of differentiating and applying these approaches is by adopting a short-term approach against a longer-term strategy.
The first is categorized by a "quick and dirty" style of containment and reduction.
The second is characterized by approaches that are concerned with resolving the roots of the conflict by finding structural remedies to prevent the conflict from occurring in the future.
Another form of a long-term approach is to attempt to prevent conflict from occurring. This is, of course, probably impossible, but this approach is characterized by considering in what ways a manager can act to discourage negative conflict.
Target Audience: Managers who must deal with conflict in the workplace
Resolving Conflict with Communication Skills
ID: comm_02_a06_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
Although, through the use of good communication skills, conflict in the workplace can be minimized, it can't be eradicated entirely. On the occasions when disharmony inevitably arises, there is a need for a different set of communication skills--those of negotiation, mediation, or arbitration.
This course will give you an understanding of the various causes and outcomes of conflict, together with a practical demonstration of the styles and communication involved in the negotiated resolution of one to one conflict.
You will also learn how to act as a third party mediator or arbitrator in situations where the parties concerned seem unable to resolve the dispute unaided.
Target Audience: Those within the organization whose roles require them to achieve results by being able to influence other people such as colleagues, senior managers or clients. Also, anyone who has responsibility for managing, supervising, or leading staff.
Customers, Conflict and Confrontation
ID: CUST0105
Overview/Description:
Is there anything that can torpedo your work day more than an arrogant, obnoxious, rude customer? YES! Not knowing how to handle one! It's challenging to stay service-minded when the person you are dealing with is being "difficult." This course will give you the perspective to effectively cope with customer conflict, and sound methods to deal with all types of potentially confrontational situations. You'll be able to identify elements of emotional response that interfere with good customer service. Staying cool, calm, and customer-connected is a critical learning objective for this course. Develop communication skills that defuse customer complaints. Learn and differentiate the best methods to handle difficult customers in person and over the phone. By the end of this highly interactive course, you'll have the strategies necessary to restore customer confidence and move beyond the thorny issue to an even stronger relationship.
Target Audience: Front line personnel, team leaders, and customer service managers.
Workplace Communication Skills
ID: comm_02_a03_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
Poor communication is often blamed for discord, errors, and misunderstandings in the workplace. In fact, and more correctly, poor communication of intent causes these problems. They occur when people are unwilling to say exactly what they mean, or what they want. They also occur when there is a reluctance or an inability to get clarification of another person's intent. These situations can be avoided by using certain communication techniques to establish intent, both other people's intent, and your own. This course covers the three prime strategies that will enable you to do this.
By speaking assertively, you can make your intentions clear, and in this course you will have the opportunity to practice several assertive communication techniques. Similarly, the course will demonstrate how to give constructive criticism on the behavior of others, and how to receive criticism on your own behavior positively.
Finally, the course covers the skill of questioning. You will learn how to use questions in a non-threatening way to direct or encourage a conversation, to uncover hidden feelings or motives, and to persuade. Effective questioning is one of the most valuable communication skills of all.
Target Audience: Those people in roles which depend on the ability to influence colleagues, senior managers, or clients. Also, anyone who has responsibility for managing, supervising, or leading staff.
How to Work with Aggressive People
ID: comm_04_a02_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
Have you ever had one of those absolutely great days at work? Everything is going the way it should, you're on schedule, and you're getting to meetings on time. Then someone verbally attacks you or metaphorically stabs you in the back.
Aggressive people are arguably the most difficult type of people to work with. Hostile-aggressives openly antagonize people; passive-aggressives work behind the scenes with hidden agendas. No matter which type of aggressive behavior you have to deal with, you've got your work cut out for you.
That's where this course comes in handy. It details the characteristics of the six most common types of aggressive people and provides effective ways you can cope with their behaviors.
Target Audience: Business professionals, managers, executives, front-line workers
How to Work with Negative People and Procrastinators
ID: comm_04_a03_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
Don't you hate it when people say they'll do something, but when the deadline is up, it turns out they somehow never managed to get around to doing it? Or what about people who whine all the time? You might come in to work in the best of moods, but after ten minutes of someone complaining nonstop while you're waiting to fill your coffee cup, your day is shot. If you're tired of putting up with negative people or people who leave you 'holding the bag,' then you're going to love this course. It describes ways you can triumph over the negative and negligent attitudes that some of your co-workers, employees, or bosses might display.
Target Audience: Business professionals, managers, executives, front-line workers
How to Work with Arrogant and Duplicitous People
ID: comm_04_a04_bs_enus
Overview/Description:
In certain settings, jesters and gossips can be quite entertaining. However, at the office or on a regular basis, they are not amusing. In fact, their habits can be quite destructive. If you've had it 'up to here' with someone who has a head the size of a compact car, or if you're tired of being told the latest malicious gossip by someone else, you'll want to take this course. After you've learned how to deal with arrogant and duplicitous people in this course, you'll never have to suffer from enlarged egos or minute self-images again.
Target Audience: Business professionals, managers, executives, front-line workers
SIMULATIONS
SkillSoft Simulation (SkillSim) is a technology-enabled simulation which puts you in an authentic business or professional situation. You will play a major role in a variety of simulated interactions where your decisions will have a direct impact on the course of events and result in realistic consequences. The SkillSim is designed to help you practice or assess your mastery of skills and knowledge learned in a series of SkillSoft courses. As you progress through a series of scenes, you will receive feedback on your performance. To assist you, the simulation incorporates links to context sensitive SkillSoft course material.
Managing Workplace Conflict Simulation
ID: COMM007B
Overview/Description:
Conflict is inevitable in the workplace. Everybody has their own ideas about how things should run. Eventually, these ideas will collide. When they do, you don't need to be unprepared to manage the fallout. Above and beyond all the skills you can possibly learn for managing conflict, effective communication skills will prove to be the most beneficial. Without open lines of honest communication in the workplace, unspoken and harbored conflicts will boil and fester until productivity grinds to a halt. Knowing how and when to address issues of conflict will help you to cut away destructive behaviors, encourage healthy arguments, and create an environment full of vigor and embracing of change. The Managing Workplace Conflict Simulation will help you to practice all this and more. The Managing Workplace Conflict Simulation comprises three scenarios and is based on the SkillSoft series "Conflict in the Workplace." Throughout the simulation links are provided to the following SkillSoft courses: comm_07_a01_bs_enus and comm_07_a03_bs_enus.
Target Audience: Managers seeking strategies to resolve conflict in the workplace.
Conflict in the Workplace Simulation
ID: COMM007A
Overview/Description:
What are your thoughts on conflict in the workplace? Do you dread it? Quietly try to avoid it? Or do you rush headlong to meet it with enthusiasm, certain it will bring renewed vigor and badly-needed change to your organization? No matter your answer, the Conflict in the Workplace Simulation will provide you with the opportunity to practice skills for coping with conflict and putting it to work for good. Conflict is inevitable in the workplace. Everybody has their own ideas about how things should run. Eventually, these ideas will collide. When they do, you don't need to be unprepared. Above and beyond all the skills you can possibly learn for coping with conflict, effective communication skills will prove to be the most beneficial. Without open lines of honest communication in the workplace, unspoken and harbored conflicts will boil and fester until productivity grinds to a halt. Knowing how and when to address issues of conflict will help you to cut away destructive behaviors, encourage healthy arguments, and create an environment full of vigor and embracing of change. The Conflict in the Workplace Simulation will help you to learn all this and more. The Conflict in the Workplace Simulation comprises three scenarios and is based on the SkillSoft series "Conflict in the Workplace." Throughout the simulation links are provided to the following SkillSoft courses: comm_07_a01_bs_enus, comm_07_a02_bs_enus, and comm_07_a03_bs_enus.
SKILL BRIEFS
SkillBriefs are condensed summaries of the instructional content of a course topic. SkillBriefs are designed to be used as an instant reference. Select the Resources tab in the Navigation bar, then click SkillBriefs. This opens a new window where you can access the information.
SkillBrief: Effective Conflict Management
ID: ADM0112
Description: Explore effective conflict management.
SkillBrief: Conflict Management
ID: mgmt_02_a04_bs_enus
Description: Learn about conflict and conflict management interventions.
Events Cause Conflict
ID: TEAM0211
Description: Understand the causes of job-related conflict.