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As leaders, your ability to manage conflict and engage in difficult conversations is one of the most important skills you can have to find success for both you, your teams, and the organizations you serve. Conflict is an inevitable part of our professional and personal lives, which often results in a negative emotion that causes people to avoid conflict, all to circumvent the natural discomfort that may come with an ad hoc resolution process.

Rather than avoiding or escalating conflicts, you’ll have an opportunity to learn a process used at the highest levels of conflict resolution.

Welcome to “Finding Success in Conflict Resolution.” This workshop empowers attendees to engage in conflict strategically, using a principle-based approach.

In this 90-minute session, attendees will be learning conflict resolution from Scott Tillema, a retired SWAT hostage negotiator trained by the FBI in how to negotiate life-or-death situations.

Scott will take you beyond passive learning and engage participants with thoughtful questions and exercises that reveal truths and opportunities. Attendees will emerge from the session with four principles they can immediately put into practice and elevate their negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills.

How do people make decisions? Many people, especially highly educated professionals, will tell you they are driven by logic and reason. However, the professors at Harvard University did the research and concluded that 95% of our decisions are driven by emotion.

Chicago Booth Business School similarly released their findings which showed 90% of decisions are driven by emotion. Yet, many of us feel compelled to share charts, graphs, data, facts, and figures to convince someone of something, particularly when the energy is up and events are unfolding rapidly, we are driven by emotion.

How do you tap into this concept to give yourself an advantage during conflicts?

We begin with principle number one: “Manage yourself first.” How skilled are you at self-control? You’ll find the people who are the best at self-management are the best conflict resolvers.

We must start here, because how do we expect to influence others when we aren’t in control of ourselves? Do you know your triggers? Is it possible that you look at a situation and draw the wrong conclusion, or miss something obvious?

This segment will challenge you to look in the mirror and be willing to ask yourself the question: “What if I’m wrong?”

Principles two and three explore how hostage negotiators use communication to influence their negotiation partners to get positive outcomes. Attendees will learn the eight skills of active listening taught in the FBI’s hostage negotiation classes. Coupled with this are the five elements of a perfect delivery because it’s not what you say, but how you say it.

Under stress, even senior leaders learn that delivery becomes a forgotten element of conflict resolution. In situations where lives are on the line, no detail is inconsequential, and attendees will be challenged to fine-tune each element of their communication ability.

Would you be surprised to know that a critical element of crisis negotiation is respect?

In a Hollywood society, where conflict is illustrated to be a power struggle between competing parties, professional negotiators work closely with their counterparts and extend great levels of respect.

Many people will believe they understand how to be respectful, by offering the polite phrases of “Yes, please” and “No thank you”. However, respect is so much deeper than being nice.

This seminar concludes by exploring four drivers of human behavior with a few intriguing and interactive exercises. It is our belief that if any one of these four elements are not present, the conflict has the potential to remain unresolved.

Here, we explore fairness, empathy, autonomy, and recognition as four aspects of human desire that most people want to have met. As leaders and conflict resolvers, we must understand what these are and how to employ them to get toward the resolutions we seek.

If this feels like a lot of content for a 90-minute session, you are correct, as time will fly while you absorb concepts from this unique seminar.

You will emerge with immediately actionable takeaways that will positively impact how you manage conflict and give you the structure and tools to lead with influence!

DATE AND TIMES

Former SWAT hostage negotiator and speaker Scott Tillema, will present “Finding Success in Conflict Resolution” on Sunday, Nov. 10 from 8:30-10 a.m. and again from 10:30 a.m.-Noon.

Scott Tillema

Scott Tillema is a retired SWAT hostage negotiator with over 20 years of law enforcement experience in the Chicago area. Today, as a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, he is a partner at The Negotiations Collective, an international negotiations and conflict resolution training firm. Contact him at https://www.scotttillema.com/.

This article originally appeared in the October/November 2024 issue of Contractor Supply magazine. Copyright, 2024 Direct Business Media.