Conflict management in the project

What is conflict?

• Recognising conflicts and various types and styles of conflict in project work.
• Promoting one's own ability to deal with conflict and reflecting on one's attitude to conflict
• Get to know the stages of escalation and their impact on the conflict partners and project management.

Interpret own and other people's emotions

• I-messages and agreements
• Controlling own and other people's emotions
• Achieving compromise and agreement with satisfactory solutions

The conflict conversation

• Transforming blame and destructive thoughts into solutions
• Avoiding conflict situations and arguments with the other side
• How to deal with conflicts with clients

Resolving conflicts

• Discussing complaints and deviations from the plan objectively and constructively
• Clarify disagreements between project staff and team members and mediate between the conflicting parties
• Self-help instruments for constructive conflict resolution according to Glasl

Communication with clients

• Practising conflict discussions in practical role plays
• Mastering difficult client discussions
• Avoiding conflicts through targeted conflict management in the project

As a team or project leader, everyday life in project work or project management is not always easy. You are responsible for conflict resolution and management in the project, have to take the wind out of the sails of misunderstandings in project meetings and advance the personal development of your team. Through our seminar, you will improve your team's project success in the long term and have conflict situations and disagreements resolved in no time in the future.

• Learn in our seminar on conflict management in the project to avoid possible verbal attacks and a subsequent escalation as well as to reduce the conflict potential.
• Train how to deal with different types of conflict to take away the fear of failure from your team members. Learn more about conflicts over goals, roles and distribution.
• Attacks can cause great damage at the relationship level. Learn relevant aspects of conflict management in projects and how to use them to resolve conflicts in the project team.
• Disagreement during a project meeting can reduce the productivity of the whole team and lead to consequences with other stakeholders.
• As a project manager, learn to compromise and see resistance or disagreement as an opportunity. In our seminar you will practise the correct formulation of messages so that the effects and reactions of the conflict parties become predictable.

Our seminar on conflict management in projects consists of a theoretical part with a comprehensive interactive presentation as well as various practical exercises. In addition, there are several worksheets on conflict resolution and conflict analysis as well as an impromptu role play. The latter is intended to prepare you as a project manager for difficult customer meetings and the associated consequences. This will enable you to reach a satisfactory agreement more quickly in the event of differences over deadlines or complaints. Within our two-day seminar you will learn relevant information that you can review in a clearing at the end of the day.

Dealing with conflicts is not only essential for project leaders and project managers. In the end, all parties involved in the conflict, i.e. employees, customers and suppliers, benefit from functioning conflict management in projects, so that the seminar Conflict Management in Projects is also aimed at a large group of people. Project teams work more productively thanks to their active participation in conflict resolution and consequently achieve the project goals more quickly.

You would like to hold the seminar "Conflict Management in Projects" in your company as an in-house training? That is of course possible. We will be happy to provide you with an individual and non-binding offer that corresponds to your approach to content, your time frame and other wishes. Simply send us an enquiry to: kontakt@drgkitzmann-akademie.de

As a project manager, you cannot always recognise the emergence of conflicts in advance. Those involved may withdraw, avoid other team colleagues and take flight. Other character types express the escalation levels loudly. The only important thing here is that you as the project manager recognise conflict potential early on and mediate between the conflicting parties at eye level.

Conflicts can arise at different levels. While perceived trivialities often cause a conflict, the actual causes are usually more deeply rooted. In addition to the 9 levels according to Glasl, conflict analysis can be divided into three further areas:

1. The rational level refers to concrete conflict management in the project. A problem arises that can be rationally evaluated and discussed. If conflicts only take place on this level, they are usually relatively easy to solve.
2. On the emotional level, conflicts, especially in professional life, often lie hidden for a long time. This can be, for example, the subliminal rivalry between colleagues that never comes up because of taboos in the company. Conflicts of this kind are often already at the upper end of the escalation levels, where those involved in the conflict already want to destroy each other professionally and privately.
3. The social or relationship level plays a role when a conflict partner's personality has been violated. For example, in cases of exposure, or (un)intentional injuries. These damages are sometimes the most difficult to repair.

1. Keep a record or diary of subtle indications of possible conflicts. Note the topic, the involvement of the employees and the exact date. The point here is not to find someone to blame, but to show the conflict parties the details in more detail.
2. Trust your intuition, you are often right. Do you notice a tense working atmosphere in the project team? Morale is sinking and deadlines and project goals can no longer be met? Question the situation and address discrepancies directly.
3. Get to the heart of the problem without detours. Successful project management requires that you, as the project manager, demonstrate the competence to actively approach those involved in the conflict and thereby achieve a joint clarification or agreement regardless of the type of conflict.