Target Audience: Anyone who participates in workplace decision making
Learning Outcomes: 1. Participants will discover the positive role that conflict can play in decision making. 2. Participants will be able to outline and assess the elements of a successful process to harness conflict in group decision making, as well as the abilities that the leader and participants must bring to that process.
The most innovative organizations have moved beyond merely managing conflict. They have learned to actually encourage healthy conflict and harness the creative energy it sparks. Using this "creative contention," organizations hammer out superior solutions to the problems they confront. The decision-making participants forge closer bonds with one another. These groups also implement decisions or new programs more easily because most participants become committed change agents during the decision-making process. In the years since the University of Georgia Law Library transitioned to a team-based structure, its primary decision-making body, the Steering Group, has grown into this model of decision making. Listen and learn as two long-time participants share important milestones in that growth and explain the processes and skills that are necessary to make creative contention a viable tool.
