Building Working Relationships:
Constructive Engagement, Negotiation,
and Conflict Management

In today’s complex organizations, very few things can be accomplished alone. Typically, work is done in teams or through partnering with colleagues, suppliers, and customers. We are part of a web of relationships within, across, between, and among many teams and organizations.  These relationships must develop quickly and productively to allow for high trust and creative collaboration.

In order to build effective working relationships, we must be able to engage with others, beginning our relationships in a positive and productive way. We need skills in negotiating fair agreements with others when vested interests are in competition. We need to be able to manage or resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise among those in close working relationships, while at the same time encouraging the innovation that productive conflict can bring. Building Working Relationships offers participants a rich variety of tools and processes to prevent, manage, and resolve conflict and to build strong and lasting agreements.

Participants will be able to:

• Build effective working relationships with colleagues, managers, vendors, customers, and sponsors
• Prevent unnecessary conflict in working relationships by establishing norms and boundaries and negotiating proactively
• Probe for needs and wants of others; clarify and fully understand issues
• Foster a give-and-take dialogue by seeking and building on the ideas of others while contributing their own ideas to the issue at hand
• Gain agreement to support ideas and actions through a constructive negotiation process
• Manage and resolve conflicts within important working relationships

Who Should Participate?

Anyone who needs to work in collaboration with others in order to achieve successful results

For more information on Building Working Relationships, click here.