Newsletter: 2005 May Issue

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Newsletter

May 2005

Spotlight: Mind the Gap!
In his research and practice, Queen's IRC faculty member and mediator Gary Furlong has found that when it comes to resolving conflict, one size does not fit all. In an excerpt from his superb new book, The Conflict Resolution Toolbox, Gary shares the first of his “top eight” models to help mediators, negotiators, lawyers, managers, and supervisors reach agreements in even the most intractable disputes. ...more

This Issue: HR “Vision-aries”: Queen's IRC wins the coveted Vision award for outstanding HR contributions. ...more OD Dynamics: How do you work successfully with the whole system? ...more Our Subscribers are Winners: Learn who “took home the tome” in the last newsletter contest. ...more

Upcoming Programs All - Toronto- Regina - Halifax Sept. 21 - 26, Kingston Industrial Relations Register Sept. 22 - 25, Kingston Building Smart Teams Register Sept. 23 - 26, Toronto Change Management Register Sept. 30 - Oct. 03, Regina Dispute Resolution Register Oct. 07, Toronto Performance Management Essentials and Strategy Register Oct. 07 - 08, Toronto Compensation Clinics (Performance+Group Benefits Programs) Register Oct. 08, Toronto Employee Group Benefits Register Oct. 15 - 17, Toronto Business Strategy Register Oct. 19 - 24, Kingston Negotiation Skills Register Oct. 21 - 24, Regina Building Smart Teams Register

HR "Vision-aries": A very cool award for Queen's IRC

At a delightful gala last week in Ottawa, Queen's IRC received the Ray and Berndtson Vision Award for excellence in providing an HR product or service. The judges praised IRC's innovation and high service standards, recognizing its programs as well as its informative website and clinics with HRPAO and OHRPA.

IRC's Director Dr. Carol Beatty was on hand in the nation's capital to receive the award. “This meant so much to all of us here at IRC because it is the fruit of 10 years of brainstorming, researching, planning, and plain hard work,” she says. “A decade ago we made a commitment to help keep our clients on the cutting edge of HR knowledge and skills. This award confirms that our efforts have been on target.”

In bestowing the Vision award, here's what the judges had to say: “Their commitment to excellence and meeting business needs has equipped them to address the ever-changing landscape of human resources by providing state-of-the-art programs and delivery methods. Queen's IRC ... continues to be a leader in its field.”

Dr. Beatty thanks IRC's clients for their acknowledgement and support, and promises more boundary-breaking work to come. “We won't rest on our laurels,” she says, pointing to IRC's ongoing innovations in organization development, which has made it Canada's first and only management training institute for OD practitioners.

OD Dynamics: Principles for Keeping the Whole System in Sight

Organization Development is all about planned, enterprise-wide interventions to increase organizational effectiveness. Here are four essential principles to guide you in whole systems work, drawn from the recent Queen's IRC OD Foundations program.

1. Assess the potential for action

Consider your resources in terms of:

• Committed leadership
• Good business opportunities
• Energized people

2. Get the whole system in the room

Ask yourself:

• How many functions, levels, managers, operators, and staff can be mustered to work on their own organization at once?
• Should you include customers, suppliers, and other stakeholder groups?

For large changes, you will need to get the whole team in the room for one to two days in order to gain clarity about the project, and inspire buy-in from everyone involved.

3. Focus on the future

• Emphasizing “what's wrong” depresses people and drains energy
• Planning ideal future scenarios energizes common values

4. Structure tasks that people can do for themselves

• Don't have a “laissez-faire” process
• Do have structured tasks, timeframes, and expected outputs
• Create a framework within which people can design their own futures

Prized Subscriber

Congratulations to Shelley Shantz, who won a copy of Building Smart Teams: A Roadmap to High Performance from the contest in our previous e-newsletter issue.

Spotlight: Getting to Yes
An Excerpt from "The Conflict Resolution Toolbox" by Gary Furlong

In his research and practice, Queen's IRC faculty member and mediator Gary Furlong has found that when it comes to real-life conflict, one size does not fit all. In the following sampling from his new book, “The Conflict Resolution Toolbox,” Gary discusses the value of the Circle of Conflict as a multi-purpose tool — one of his “top eight” to help mediators, negotiators, lawyers, managers, and supervisors reach agreements in even the most intractable disputes.

The Circle of Conflict is strong as a diagnostic model, in that it proposes specific categories for understanding the dynamics that are driving the conflict without being limited to any particular substantive type of dispute. For this reason, it can be used with just about any type of conflict a practitioner may be involved in. In addition, this tool gives practitioners a way to identify the different causes of a conflict, and helps them look beyond the “presenting” problem to begin to question underlying or root causes.

The Circle of Conflict diagnoses and assigns the underlying causes or “drivers” of the given conflict to one of five categories:

• Values (belief systems; right and wrong; good and evil; just and unjust)
• Relationships (negative past experiences; stereotypes; poor or failed communications; repetitive negative behaviour)
• Moods and Externals (factors unrelated to the substance of the dispute; psychological or physiological; “bad hair day”)
• Data (lack of information; too much information; collection problems)
• Structure (limited physical resources; authority issues; geographical constraints; organizational structures)

The model offers concrete suggestions for working with each of these drivers, and directs practitioners toward Data, Structure, and a sixth category, Interests, as the focus of resolution. “Interests” refers to an individual's wants, needs, hopes or fears. Put simply, the guiding principle for the practitioner is to help the parties stay focused [on these three categories], as this is effective in moving them toward resolution rather than escalation. The Circle does this because it asserts that you cannot directly “solve” Values, Relationship, or Mood/External issues with the other parties.

When working with the Data and Structure categories, the model gives specific strategies for the practitioner to focus on, with an emphasis toward joint problem solving.

Some strategies for working with Data problems are:

• Have each party explain, challenge and correct erroneous data
• Jointly assess data
• Surface assumptions around the parties' assessment of data
• Challenge assumptions made about other parties' motives
• Jointly gather data that each party will agree to accept and rely on.

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