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Leaders, you must develop your leadership listening skills to resolve conflict. It may be conflict between you and those you lead. Likewise, you may need to help resolve conflict among those you lead. Alternatively, you may find yourself in conflict with your boss or your peers. How good are your leadership listening skills in times of conflict?

Leadership Listening Tips to Resolve Conflict. Image licensed from 123RF.com

Image licensed from 123RF.com

Checklist: How Good Are Your Leadership Listening Skills?

Everyday leadership listening skills are especially valuable for resolving conflict. Everything that you have learned prior to conflict and what you hear during conflict are the seeds of a solution.

Do you listen for and learn about …

1. Identity. Listen for how people define their identity. This knowledge is invaluable during future conflict. It gives you the insight you need to avoid attacking their identities and simply resolve the conflict.

2. Emotion. What is the emotion you hear really about? Fear? Insecurity? Lack of respect? Loss of success? Domination or resistance to it? Fight for survival or power? True conflict is an emotional activity. When there is little or no emotion we don’t have conflict, we have disagreements. If the emotion you hear is anger, ask everyone to think and answer the following question: Where is your anger going to take you and can you get back? It creates a pause and a restart on a better path.







Leadership Listening Tips to Resolve Conflict.





3. Positions. Are people taking firm positions? Do you hear win/lose mentality? Shift the outlook with win/win discussions and you resolve the conflict.




Are you thinking …

4. How to protect yourself? Whether you are directly involved in the conflict or the topic of conflict, you may get defensive. This kills your leadership listening ability. Tell yourself: “My fear is not real. Listening and collaborating will help me and everyone.”

5. Why can’t everyone just get along? This is a flashing red light that you are afraid of conflict. Ask yourself why. Do you fear people won’t like you? Remember, if you show respect to everyone, they will respect and like you. Do you think you can’t be impartial? You can be through listening to everyone and helping find win/win solutions. And, by the way, here are 21 concrete reasons why people can’t automatically get along.

If you keep hoping that people will just get along, you may silence the employees whose passion keeps momentum going.

Quote source unknown.

Instead, listen to help resolve conflict. If you don’t …

Leadership listening quote by Andy Stanley.

Leadership Listening Summary

Use your best leadership listening to discover identity, emotion, position, and overcome your own inner blocks. From there you can resolve most any conflict.

Related Post:
21 Reasons People Can’t Automatically Get Along
Leading Morale in Hot Debates & Disputes

©2019 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Tags: advice, communication, conflict, disputes, emotional intelligence, leaders, Leadership, listening, management, managers, resolution, Teamwork