Most people recognise that conflict is an inevitable and normal part of organisational life. When managed effectively, it results in better-quality decision-making, stronger commitment to team goals and more effective working relationships. The potential of all team members is fully used and team performance and motivation improves. Sounds too good to be true?

What we find more often is that conflict is either poorly handled or avoided altogether. This blocks team performance, wastes time and energy through a lack of trust and shuts down constructive debate. Team members avoid responsibility for actions where they lack commitment and walk away from decisions that have been 'agreed', resulting in poor team performance.

Our consultants work with teams to equip them to manage conflict more effectively. We enable team members to gain insight into what drives conflict for them – as individuals and as a team. Often this means exploring the underlying assumptions that different people have, and how this impacts on their behaviour and ultimately on their team performance. This increased awareness both of oneself and of one's impact on others is the first step to developing a broader repertoire of approaches, in order to manage conflict effectively.

In all our interventions we work at the level of unspoken thoughts and emotional responses to conflict, as it is at this deeper level that long-term behaviour change can occur. We achieve this through:

• Team development
• One-to-one coaching
• Management development workshops
• Managing conflict 'modules' as part of leadership-development programmes