Conflict Management and Leadership for Managers: Knowledge, Skills, and Processes to Harness the Positive Power of Rapid Change at Work

All managers are conflict managers, and Conflict Management and Leadership for Managers, Third Edition coaches current and future organizational leaders with the knowledge and skills necessary to prevent and manage every common source of conflict faced at work. This text is divided into three sections: conflict management and collaboration basics, strategies for preventing conflicts inside your work teams and organizations, and processes and skills for enhancing relationships with external stakeholders. This comprehensive, all-in-one resource offers skill-based exercises, self-assessments for role understanding and goal-setting, and a variety of learner-friendly tools. Informed by decades of experience working with organizations of all types, sizes, missions, and cultures, Susan S. Raines demonstrates how effective and creative managers positively address conflict to enhance collaboration and mission achievement, thrive in rapidly changing environments, and craft a positive brand image for both one’s organization and their own career.

Updates to the Third Edition:

• Greatly expanded coverage of DEI-related conflict management woven into all sections for greater racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality, cultural, and religious sensitivity and situational specificity coverage.
• Greater coverage of the roles of social media and technology in increasing and decreasing conflict and suggested technological strategies to utilize and/or mitigate increasingly modernizing work communication methods and advancement challenges.
• More coverage of distributed hybrid workplace issues around team cohesion, employee motivation, and connectedness relevant to industry-wide environmental changes initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Increased coverage of informal conflict and dispute resolution that are more common and nuanced, providing more granular application of skills and strategies.
• Improved art program for visual learners.
• Updated relevant court rulings and federal policies to stay in step with current legal best-practice.

Susan S. Raines, PhD, is a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. For more than twenty years she was a professor of conflict management in the Graduate School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding & Development at Kennesaw State University, in suburban Atlanta. She is the president of Collaboration Services, a consulting firm that works with public, private, and nonprofit organizations to prevent and proactively manage conflict and collaboration. She has mediated more than 17,000 cases inside and outside of the court system and served as an Alternative Dispute Resolution Reservist for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Through the provision of training, one-on-one performance coaching, program evaluation, culture change initiatives, strategic planning, and crisis intervention, she has assisted organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, United Nations International Organization for Migration, the Florida and Georgia Supreme Courts, the DeKalb County Multi-Door Courthouse, The Maryland Association for Conflict Resolution, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Florida Medical Association, George Physician Leadership Association, Volkswagen North America, American Association of Chemists, New York State Agricultural Mediation Program (NYSAMP), CureViolence, and many Fortune 500 corporations. She is the coauthor of Expert Mediators and more than approximately fifty peer-reviewed publications, and served as the editor-in-chief of Conflict Resolution Quarterly for twelve years.