Leadership and Governance

Managing Conflict: Strategies for Elected Officials

Elected officials frequently deal with sensitive, sometimes contentious, issues at board meetings and in other public and private settings. Knowing how to successfully manage these conflicts is critical to achieving shared goals for a group or community. This course focuses on two parts of negotiation and problem solving: how personality types affect conflict development and resolution and understanding and applying principles of interest-based negotiation to create win-win solutions.

This innovative new course incorporates two teleconference lecture and discussion sessions, with one full-day on-site session, which includes individual and small-group exercises. There is an expectation of confidentiality within the program; participants' specific situations will not be shared outside the workshop.