All conflicts can be resolved
Our approach
Not all conflicts can be avoided
Why conflict prevention?
Conflict is an inevitable part of working with people in a frontline organization. Not all conflicts can be avoided - and not all conflicts should be avoided either!
Conflict is an inevitable part of working with people in a frontline organization, despite the best intentions. At the same time, good, respectful and trusting collaboration between employees and citizens is crucial to the core mission of citizen-centered work.
The truth is that not all conflicts can be avoided, and not all conflicts need to be avoided. Some conflicts may need to be addressed.
The challenge is not to avoid the conflict, but to handle it as professionally, objectively, respectfully and with as empathetic an approach to the other party as possible under the circumstances. This minimizes the risk of the conflict escalating out of control and leading to a breach of trust. This increases the likelihood that the conflict process will be constructive and transformative in terms of moving the citizen positively.
The goal of conflict prevention is to avoid unnecessary conflicts with citizens and to work to make the inevitable conflicts constructive. With a conflict prevention approach, employees and citizens can use their energy, resources and focus where it is meaningful to solve the core task.
Preventing unnecessary conflict takes training
It is not an easy task! It requires self-control and self-awareness, an understanding of the other party's perspective, strong conflict knowledge and mastery of effective conflict tools and techniques.
You won't achieve this overnight, but through training and by each employee gaining concrete experience in using conflict management tools. It may sound difficult, but it's worth the effort, and in our experience, everyone can become good at preventing unnecessary conflicts and handling the inevitable or necessary conflicts in an appropriate, educational and safe way.
Unresolved conflicts affect everyone - even those who are not part of them
Conflict in one part of the organization can have negative knock-on effects on the entire organization. Conflict wears on our nerves and drains us of energy and job satisfaction, so if there are constant, unresolved conflicts between employees and citizens, it will often negatively affect relationships between colleagues and between employees and management.
The difficulty in conflict prevention is that it can be difficult to identify the causes behind conflicts and that there is a lack of concrete approaches and methods that have a real preventive effect. Often the focus is on dealing with the problems that arise, but you don't examine your own half of the field and the same type of problems continue to arise.
Get to the root causes of conflicts
Conflict management must go hand in hand with concrete tools and methods for conflict prevention to avoid becoming an endless and useless symptom treatment. A preventive approach is far more effective than the usual approach to conflict management that focuses on dealing with problems as they arise rather than resolving the root causes of conflict.
If you tackle the challenges with our conflict prevention knowledge and approach, you'll gain effective tools and techniques to eliminate unnecessary conflict. And you ensure that the conflicts that are necessary or impossible to avoid become educational and professionally stimulating rather than frustrating and mentally exhausting for employees. This provides professional energy and courage to overcome challenges and disagreements when meeting citizens and ensure a mutually beneficial and trusting collaboration.
