“Conflict” is a word that can have varying degrees of severity, meaning, and implication for each individual or circumstance. For example, conflict that is experienced in our current, daily lives seems insignificant in comparison to Samurai, or those in war, who faced death on a regular basis. However, it is still important to extrapolate significant lessons that have been derived from such severe scenarios, as these notions are still applicable in conflict that we experience in workplace and life today.

Conflict is unavoidable, as each individual has unique and differing thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Therefore, it is important to learn ways to minimize and manage this difficulty, in order to ensure efficient and harmonious interactions. This article provides genesis of a personal path, introducing tools and ways to minimize and manage conflict, while pointing to origin of these concepts. After an overview of these modern and ancient approaches, a discussion will follow on applying successful tools and techniques for managing conflict. These ideas can be used to help clear mind for better decision-making, and consequently, ensure a personal pathway to success.

New approaches to ancient concepts Profound strategies and lessons to minimize and manage conflict have been around for thousands of years in forms such as classic Chinese texts “Book of Change – Tao de Ching” and “Art of War”. Today, modern legends including Stephen Covey (“7 Habits for Highly Effective People”) and Dale Carnegie present similar corporate and personal tools. As many know “7 Habits” is not a group of new concepts, but age-old approaches to success and conflict management, represented in a way that can be clearly applied to modern day personal and corporate development.

Discovering origin & foundation of concepts Although many of true ancient concepts have been exaggerated or misused through incorrect interpretations, they can be applied in non-extreme forms relevant to modern day from such arts as: Zen (which is not a religion, but a path for self discovery and growth), “Art of War” by Sun Tzu (the classic text on strategy which is often regarded as most definitive text on topic), and Tao de Ching (the “book of change”). These all provide profound lessons for leadership, change, success, peace of mind and conflict management.

A workplace example – an tense group meeting debating a topic If one has to enter a meeting with a number of staff peers on a topic that is likely to require an intense debate, a strategy can be put into place to help provide a successful outcome (this should be combined with other approaches outlined below). For example, one can approach members of meeting individually prior to meeting to convey your preferred position. Once meeting has started you will hopefully already have likely confrontational people already “on-side” to achieve your desired outcome in a non-confrontational way.

The Key to Managing Conflict: bringing it all together, and applying it today All above methods (old and new) are about changing core behavior and approaches, in order to avoid conflict and simultaneously achieve personal success.

As Sun Tzu states:

“If you know yourself and know others – you will be successful. If you know others and not yourself, you will win one and lose one. If you do not know others and do not know yourself, you are destined for failure in every battle.”

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Summary: All leaders must eventually deal with poor performers. The author describes a method to help poor performers become good performers. It is based on developing and executing a 90-Day Improvement Plan.

A Leadership Screw Driver: The 90 Day Improvement Plan by Brent Filson

I was talking with first-line supervisors in a utility company about how to deal with poor performing employees.

"You've gotta put screws to him!" suggested one supervisor to his colleague who was having trouble managing one particular poor performer.

"I've put so many screws to him he's dead weight!" supervisor replied.

We all knew what "putting screws to him" meant -- using rewards and punishments to force change in behavior.

The trouble is, rewards and punishments are least effective ways of dealing with poor performers. That's because poor performers are usually smart, motivated, and tenacious -- when it comes to poor performing.

To change behavior of poor performers, avoid outside-in approach of rewards and punishments and cultivate an inside-out approach.

Aesop understood that. There is Aesop's fable of wind and sun competing to see who can remove a coat from a man. The wind tries to blow coat off, but man clutches it tightly to his body. Then sun grows hotter, and man, perspiring heavily and getting hotter and hotter, gladly rips coat off.

The leadership lesson is clear: You can bluster and blow to get somebody to accomplish a task, but that's not as effective as setting up a situation in which person gladly does it.