From Conflict to Creativity: How Resolving Workplace Disagreements Can Inspire Innovation and Productivity - Softcover

Landau, Sy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0787954233 ISBN 13: 9780787954239

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2001

Synopsis

From Conflict to Creativity offers leaders, managers, boards of directors, and team members a new way of thinking about conflict in the workplace. Within these pages, three experts in the field of workplace conflict resolution Sy, Barbara, and Daryl Landau present an innovative and proven collaborative model that can help resolve on-the-job conflicts and unleash the potential for creativity. Using the information and tools presented in this book can take any organization from a place that merely tolerates conflict to a dynamic environment that uses everyday differences to enhance creativity.

About this title

About the Author

Sy Landau-- a professional mediator and trainer--is president ofOrganizational Strategies Group, Inc., a management consulting firmspecializing in the resolution of difficult workplace conflictsthat create tension and reduce productivity.

Barbara Landau is a psychologist, attorney, trainer, and mediatorwho is experienced in resolving workplace, commercial, and familylaw disputes. She is president of Cooperative Solutions and offerstraining in the areas of mediation, negotiation, and conflictresolution.

Daryl Landau is a dispute resolution consultant and trainer withOrganizational Strategies Group, Inc. He has a master's degree inconflict resolution from George Mason University and teachesorganizational conflict management at George Brown College.

From the Inside Flap

Conflict is an inevitable part of any workplace setting. But too few managers have the skills they need to resolve everyday on-the-job conflicts and transform the experience into a dynamic force for promoting creativity.

In From Conflict to Creativity, authors Sy, Barbara, and Daryl Landau― experts and practitioners in the field of workplace conflict resolution― have written a landmark book that reveals how on-the-job conflict can be used to unleash creativity and enhance productivity. Using a wealth of real-life examples and informative anecdotes, the Landaus outline a collaborative model for resolving workplace conflicts creatively. They also reveal how using this same approach can foster workplace creativity when no conflict exists.

Step-by-step, the authors explain how to resolve persistent and complex workplace conflicts, integrate conflict management into corporate culture, and use diversity to generate creativity. From Conflict to Creativity also describes the four essential components of using conflict as a catalyst for group creativity-a collaborative process, skilled and motivated participants, a skilled leader who is comfortable with conflict, and a supportive organizational culture-and shows what it takes to develop a workplace environment that is open to fresh ideas and supports differing perspectives. In addition, From Conflict to Creativity

• Examines the root causes of on-the-job conflict
• Outlines a win-win, interest-based approach for reaching solutions to conflicts
• Analyzes the link between creativity, diversity, and contention
• Shows how to maximize creative contention while preventing destructive disputes and dysfunctional relationships

The practical approaches, useful examples, and down-to-earth solutions outlined in this book will help business leaders, managers, committee members, and work teams unleash their organizations' potential for greater creativity.

Reviews

"Conflict in organizations is natural and inevitable," the Landaus state at the outset of this clear and concise guide for not only managing such conflict successfully but harnessing its potential to develop creative solutions to organizational challenges. In discussing common strategies adopted for dealing with unproductive conflict (avoidance, competition, accommodation and compromise), the authors cite examples from their wide experience as mediation, negotiation and dispute resolution consultants. This wife/husband/ son team argues that a collaborative process appealing to the interests of all sides has the greatest potential for promoting free discussion of ideas while encouraging the committed participation of all, and for turning conflict into an opportunity for joint problem solving. They assert that once people's energies are redirected from sniping at each other to working together, the conflict inherent in a diversity of opinions can become an invaluable asset. The Landaus have found that an effective organization is one that generates conflict (of the good variety) in order to brainstorm and debate ideas fully and candidly before adoption and implementation. Their recommendation to foster "creative contention" and to be "hard on the problem but soft on the people" depends crucially, however, on fearless leaders with a gift for facilitating in a supportive workplace, an admirable combination that may be all too rare in today's harsh business landscape. (Nov.)Forecast: With the potential for destructive conflict escalating in workplaces around the country and managers desperate to stem declining morale, the concrete, experience-based insights of this book should garner excellent word-of-mouth.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787954233
• ISBN 13: 9780787954239
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208