Resources To Prevent & Deal With
Workplace Conflict With Parents, Members of the Public & Customers and Colleagues
You may want to visit The Conflict Management and Resolution Resource Center, and The Customer Service Zone for free resources on conflict, and customer service, respectively.
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The Education & School Sector - Conflict, Cooperation
& Prevention
Everyone has an opinion about education, teaching
and schools, and if you are a teacher, principal or school administrator
you are going to hear it and hear it and hear it. That's OK. Taxpayers
and parents have some right to express their opinions, but often
that expression takes the form of hostile, abusive or threatening
behavior. That wastes time for you and causes stress. If you've
experienced any of the following read on.
- parents or taxpayers marching into your school demanding
to see you (no appointment)
- threats to get you fired
- phone calls at home at odd hours
- unreasonable parents
- parents that refuse to help their own children
- parents or taxpayers that simply are not interested in
listening
- chronic arguers.
We can help you develop skills to deal with hostile and difficult
parents and taxpayers so you can work WITH them in the interests
of the children. To be able to do this requires:
-
staff skilled in conflict prevention with parents and the public
-
staff skilled in "recovery" what you do when things go wrong (complaints)
-
staff who don't waste time in internal squabbling and conflict with coworkers
-
teamwork
That where we come in. We help schools and school boards prepare their
staff to PREVENT conflict, both with the public, and with co-workers.
We help prepare staff to deal with difficult parent, the hostile
parent, or even worse that parent from hell who takes great joy
in manipulating staff and management, as if it's some jolly game.
Conflict Prevention With Clients and
Customers
Many staff (people) communicate with parents in ways that
put them off. It's not that they do it intentionally--they just
use language in ways that offend people or throw gasoline on the
fire. In some cases, staff can create customer problems when none
exist. Imagine the effect of the teacher or receptionist
who responds to a complaint by saying "Sorry,
Sir, there is nothing I can do, you'll have to wait for the principa",
and then walks away. Heck, it's polite,
it may even be accurate, but it's more than likely that approach
is going to end up costing people time if the parent gets difficult.
And now there's a problem that could have been avoided with proper
handling -- with the use of what we call COOPERATIVE
COMMUNICATION.
Through our book, Conflict
Prevention In the Workplace we teach people the difference
between language that causes confrontations and language that
encourages cooperation, either with customers or co-workers.
We also design
and deliver custom-designed seminars
on this topic. No canned stuff. We teach people the use of conflict
prevention techniques using examples from THEIR workplace and
company. We can do that in various time spans--half-day, 1 day
or two day, depending on needs. For details call us at (204) 888-9290.
What's the bottom line with conflict
prevention? With respect to parents and taxpayers, it SAVES time
because it prevents escalation of conflict, disagreement, etc.
It saves stress, by keeping things in control. Everybody wins.
Parents feel they are being treated well, and are less likely
to fight . Oh, and principals and administrators don't have to
get involved as often with customer disputes.
How can we help.? First we can design
and deliver custom-designed seminars on defusing hostile customers.
We do it your way, consistent with your company policies. Send
us email for more information at ceo@work911.com
We have produces several books and workbooks
on defusing hostile customers (see left hand side of this page).
In fact we have produced two for educators --
Defusing Hostile & Volatile Situations For Educators,
and it's companion workbook. For details
and information please click here.
Bottom Line: We teach you and staff
how to deal with the difficult, the ornery, the offended, the
angry, and the manipulative parent or tax payer .
Teamwork & Internal Conflict Among
Personnel
Still with us? It's impossible to grow
good relationships with parents and taxpayers if staff don't work
in concert and in harmony. They need to be harnessed and pulling
in the same direction, not in different ones. And, yes, there's
an art to it, and people can learn to handle internal conflict
much more effectively, and to prevent it from occurring in the
first place.
We can consult with you to create a
plan to help staff work together. We can work with you to teach
those "ole" conflict prevention techniques. Or we can provide
multiple copies of Conflict Prevention
In The Workplace at a significant discount.
Enough Already!
OK. I could go on and on and you have
better things to do than read more. Here's the summary:
We provide training, publications and
do motivational speaking on the subject of conflict, communication
and customer service for the education and school sectors.
Contact us by email at ceo@work911.com,
by phone at (613) 764-0241. |
