Reimagining Conflict:
How to Help Your Teams Clash
Constructively and Confidently

presented by Tina Schust Robinson

A battle of wills. A fight to the finish. An unpleasant reality and necessary evil. Most of us dread conflict at work. Yet we know it’s the only way to achieve trusting relationships, creative solutions, commitment to decisions, and accountability for results. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team model positions conflict right above trust - meaning without trust we can’t have healthy and productive conflict, and it’s only THROUGH conflict that we can become (and believe others to be) trustworthy. As HR and talent development leaders, we help employees at all levels shift their mindset on conflict and adapt behaviors to optimize the innovative potential of friction situations.

In this interactive session we will review the most common sources of conflict at work, identify reasons we may resist conflict, share personal stories of the benefit of productive workplace conflict, and leverage the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) to recognize our own approach and how we can adapt situationally to make conflict work for us. We recommend you take the TKI prior to joining this session (LINK) or take a free version (LINK). Bring your results, your stories, and your enthusiasm as we learn how to clash constructively and confidently. Participants will reimagine conflict as a constructive and productive approach to building trust while developing strategies for assessing conflict styles and developing adaptation skills.

Application on the job includes:

• Define the relationship between conflict and trust
• Identify sources of conflict and reasons why we resist conflict
• Describe the five approaches to conflict as defined by the TKI Conflict Assessment