Speaker's
Corner - Conflict Prevention In The Workplace
Need
A Speaker For Your Conference, Keynote or Company Meeting?
We're missing the point with conflict resolution and conflict management.
We can save huge amount of resources by focusing on preventing destructive
conflict while encouraging constructive conflict.
Conflict
Prevention In The Workplace
Conflict
in the workplace can be a huge drain on resources. A conflict riddled organization
has higher levels of gossip, back-door politics, personal attacks, and
turnover while having lower productivity and morale. Conflict isn’t always
bad, though. There is constructive conflict and destructive conflict. They
key is reducing levels of destructive conflict, while ensuring that potentially
useful conflict is handled in ways that will keep it productive.
There
are many resources for teaching people how to manage and resolve conflict,
but historically there has been little emphasis on PREVENTING destructive
conflict from occurring in the first place.
Robert’s
focus in “Conflict Prevention In The Workplace” is techniques that anyone
can use to prevent unnecessary conflict from happening. The key techniques
relate to the use of cooperative communication and language that helps
people work together to solve workplace problems rather than confrontational
language which pushes people to opposite “sides”. The techniques discussed
are drawn from Robert’s most recent book “Conflict Prevention In The Workplace
- Cooperative Communication”.
Possible
topics include:
•
Conflict in organizations - an overview of the good & the bad
•
The difference between cooperative vs. conflict provoking behaviour
•
Replacing conflict provoking communication with cooperative communication
•
The power of general cooperative communication techniques
Prospective
Audience:
Anyone
in the workplace
Your
Presenter - Who Is Robert Bacal?
Robert Bacal is a dynamic
stimulating speaker whose forte is questioning common assumptions in business,
management, training and communication, and helping others approach common
issues and problems from a different perspective.
Holding a Masters degree
in applied psychology, Robert has been training others and speaking for
two decades in corporate, government and university settings. Other experiences
include working as an organizational development consultant, an instructional
design specialist, serving on an academic research journal editorial board,
and even working with multiple murderers in a mental health setting.
Currently Robert is head
of two companies, Bacal & Associates, a consulting organization, and
the Institute For Cooperative Communication, a virtual organization whose
mandate is to develop, explore and teach ways to prevent and deal with
conflict.
Robert is also the author
of eight books ranging from “Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook for Public
Sector” to “A Critique of Performance Management Systems - Why Don’t They
Work”. His newest book, Conflict Prevention In The Workplace - Using Cooperative
Communication was released in May, 1998. In 1999, McGraw-Hill published his book entitled Performance Management - A Briefcase Book
In addition to books,
Robert is a regular writer for Today’s Supervisor in California, and former
writer and publisher of The Public Sector Manager Newsletter and The Work-Smart
Bulletin. His articles have been used all over the world in academic and
business settings and reproduced in association publications such as the
International Association of Facilitators.
Robert applies several
principles to his speaking and training engagements. First, no canned speeches.
All speaking and training engagements are custom-designed. Second, Robert
will only speak or offer training in topic areas where he has a considerable
level of expertise. Third, passion and energy. Robert only speaks on issues
where he feels a passion for the particular issues. It shows.
Robert’s work can be summed
up with the following quote:
My job is not to have
all the answers. I’d like to have all the answers but I won’t pretend I
do. My real job is to help people who attend my sessions question assumptions,
and explore ways for them to solve their own problems, whether it be in
team-development, performance management or customer service. Two criterion
for success. People who attend my sessions should walk out thinking just
a bit differently. And, they should laugh, enjoy and relax while they are
there.
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