Managing Conflict and Creating Consensus is designed specifically for managers facing recurrent climates of individual and institutional conflict. These conflicts may stem from a shortage of critical resources, rapid expansion, a recent merger or acquisition, ineffective or flawed communication, the shift from the entrepreneurial stage of business development to one of implementation, pressures resulting from rapid growth and development, or organizations undergoing significant change.

As much as conflict remains an inevitable element in today’s competitive business environment, individuals and organizations that effectively deal with daily and systemic conflict enjoy distinct competitive advantages: building and maintaining strategic alliances, furthering creativity and innovation, fostering collaborative organizational cultures and working relationships, containing costs, and improving business results.

• Executives and managers in startup companies or rapidly growing organizations.
• Executives who wish to better manage and mediate personal, cross-functional, cross-cultural, and/or organizational conflict.
• Managers involved with partner, supplier, customer, and employee relationships.
• Those interested in creating organizational mechanisms and approaches to managing disagreements and building accord.

• Broaden and improve strategies and skills to manage personal conflicts and mediate the conflicts of others.
• Create value from conflict by productively harnessing different perspectives and embracing conflict as an opportunity for growth.
• Develop the ability to diagnose institutional sources of conflict and design systems to manage disputes.
• Learn new approaches to collaborative decision making.

• Crafting and Implementing Sustainable Agreements
• Constructing Institutional Conflict Management Systems That Save Time and Money
• Developing Communication Skills That Diffuse Disputes and Promote Collaboration
• Leveraging Conflict to Transform Personal Relationships and Execute Organizational Change
• Managing the Dynamics of Cooperation and Competition
• Mediating Disputes, Building Trust, and Establishing Consensus
• Understanding and Adapting One’s Own Attitude and Approach to Conflict Management
• Understanding and Managing Cross-Cultural Impediments to Conflict Resolution

• Senior Director Distribution Operations
• Manager, Network Engineering
• Operations Superintendent
• Foreign Affairs Specialist
• Vice President, Market Issues and Policy
• Vice President, Human Resources
• Director, Ethics and Compliance
• Lead Contract Specialist

Interactive Role Plays: In addition to the business studies and related job experiences used throughout the program, trust-building and mediation excercises are incorporated to provide relevant learning that is enhanced by the diversity of the cultures, industries, and regions represented in each course offering.

Sherwood C. Frey Jr.
Ethyl Corporation Professor of Business Administration, The Darden School, University of Virginia.

Marc W. Modica
Lecturer in Business Administration, The Darden School, University of Virginia.

June A. West
Assistant Professor of Business Administration, The Darden School, University of Virginia.