Eleven Ways to Improve Executive Management of Conflict

Abstract

Conflict comes with the job of managing the public's natural resources. When I ask, fish and wildlife executives tell me they want employees with excellent conflict management skills. When I next ash what they are doing to prepare their employees to become skilled conflict managers, I regularly get a blank stare. Professionals are usually on their own to acquire these skills, largely through unguided, trial-and-error learning. Eleven actions leaders can take to improve conflict management in their organizations fall into four categories:

1.	Conflict prevention through training, adding a “conflict resolution” dimension to employee performance evaluations, maintaining an early warning system to detect emerging conflict, and creating robust stakeholder involvement processes.
2.	Contingency planning through systematically assessing vulnerabilities, conducting “What if…” strategy analyses, and maintaining a rapid response capacity for when a conflict emerges.
3.	Crisis management through ensuring that the organization can effectively analyze a conflict situation and can efficiently stabilize a bad situation so relationships can be rebuilt.
4.	Encouraging completed staff work by using a planning tool that teaches employees to bring a finished situation analysis and remedial plan forward at the same time they bring a conflict to the executive's attention.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the following for thoughtful manuscript reviews: Dale Burkett, Melanie (Mel) DePaoli, Oriana Noël Lewis, Betty Lochner, Dr. Patt Schwab, Dave Chadwick, three AFS reviewers, and, especially, Linda Fraidenburg.