Conflict, Resilience at work and Entrepreneurship

Conflict is inevitable and according to our research it generates limited performance and productivity throughout organizations today (in the 65% of cases).

Moreover, conflict drains about the 35% of managers' and entrepreneurs' time at the workplace.

Cost of conflict is, therefore, very high, both at an individual and at a team level. Poor management of the conflict leads to important consequences: low problem solving and bad climate. That is, poor performance and negative well-being.

Our Conflict Dynamics Model (CDM), based on the studies from the Center for Conflict Dynamics at the Eckerd College (Florida, U.S.A.), assumes that the outcome of conflict may be also positive if conflict is well-managed.

The key element is the behavioral set of responses we adopt to deal with conflict during the conflict dynamics. The awareness of these components is crucial if one wants to address conflicts in the appropriate and productive way.

Behaviors we adopt can be measured by the Conflict Dynamics Profile (CDP) which is a research based tool with excellent statistics.

CDP enables us to measure one' profile (in accordance with the 15 strategic behaviors imnplied in conflict management), including the 7 Constructive Behaviors and the 8 Destructive behaviors. 

Moreover, Conflict Dynamics Profile includes a quadre of the 9 Hot Buttons, those persons/situations which can set off and keep alive the conflict. Particularly, hot buttons, if pushed, enhance negative and emotions, depress the Constructive Behaviors and enhance Destructive Behaviors.

CDP is unique as it refers to behavior, not style or strategy. Behaviors can be intentionally changed to let a "Bad Conflict" evolve into a "Good Conflict".

Conflict Competence is a Leadership function and is made of congnitive awareness, emotional intelligence and beghavioural intent. 

CDP help people to make out of their conflict the best; we have now more than 150 cases successfull personal and organizational stories.

We are the only in Italy to consult and train managers, entrepreneurs and their teams using CDP within and exclusive professional network (IWD: Institute fro Workplace Dynamics).

We also certify, in collaboration with Pierre Naquet, President of IWD:

CDP coaches, business psychologists and Company coaches or trainers.

Conflict Management is nowadays the key to performance and well-being.

Will you come with us for CDP?

Personal Work Resilience is the "individual capacity to manage the everyday stress of work and remain healthy, rebound, learn from unexpected setbacks, and prepare for future challenges proactively "(Kathryn McEwen).

Resilience at Work Scale (RAW-S) is targeted specifically to the workplace; it gives a simple and powerful guide both to areas of behaviors which are successful as well as suboptimal behaviors to be modified and developed

Some description of resilience identifies it as a personality trait or genetic predisposition, but within the existential reality there is a view that resilience can also be conceptualized as a dynamic and interactive process.

Such an approach views it as a function of individual conscious interaction with their external environment

This suggests that rather than being a fixed quantity determined by relatively unchanging genetic factors, resilience is malleable and as such is capable of development. It suggests also the possibility of being teachable.

The RAW Scale shows and defines the inter-play between personal characteristics and the environment which develop work behaviors and climates that promote and support resilience.

Are you going to consider Resilience as a personal asset which can nurtured and developed?

Entrepreneurship is a “game changing" concept that can help existing businesses succeed in the face of overseas competition (Lewis, 2012).

The past decade has seen a striking amount of interest in all things entrepreneurial-entrepreneurs themselves, the entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial ventures large and small. Business writers have hailed entrepreneurship as a crucial engine for economic growth describing it, as illustrated by this bold claim: “If we're going to emerge from the worldwide economic slump, entrepreneurs will lead the way.” (Badal & Streur 2012)

The entrepreneurial mindset is no longer the exclusive property of business owners. Increasingly, corporations are seeking, nurturing, and rewarding entrepreneurially-minded employees, sometimes known as “intrapreneurs” and critically examining the degree to which their corporate cultures allow entrepreneurial thought and action to flourish (Morris, Kuratko, & Covin 2008).

Even President Obama has called for « entrepreneurship » to be included with "problem solving" and "critical thinking" as 21st century skills to be incorporated into education standards and assessments (Obama, 2009).

Despite this wide level of interest, however, there is currently little consensus regarding the hallmarks of the entrepreneurial mindset. Much of what’s been written about entrepreneurs is largely theoretical or anecdotal.

Even the empirical work we could find on the topic is not as comprehensive or as universally high-quality as we might have hoped.

As noted by Hisrich, Langan-Fox, and Grant (2007), the search for individual differences between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, and between more and less successful entrepreneurs, has produced a rather inconsistent body of evidence.

The effort to understand the entrepreneur have taken a variety of forms, some of them quite clearly and narrowly focused on entrepreneurship per se, and others more generally concerned with related concepts such as innovation and creativity. There were some obvious differences between these two orientations. For example, the more purely entrepreneurial approach has included attention to a variety of structural and economic factors that may influence the chances of entrepreneurial success, (e.g., Eckhardt & Shane, 2003).

Innovation/creativity approach has tended to focus on more “micro” situational characteristics such as structure of the work team (e.g., Payne, 1990) or team climate (DeDreu & West, 2001). However, both types of research have had something to say regarding the individual characteristics that may be beneficial for entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs

So, Eckerd College has designed a validated set of variables that clearly distinguish between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, in order to create a tool to measure these variables.

This tool is named the Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile (EMP), which we are at IWD-Europe proud to deploy throughout Europe on an exclusive basis. The variables are 14 and can be measured both at an individual and at a group/organization level.

If you know where you are (what is your EMP profile?), you can decide where it might be convenient to go  (what are your entrepreneurial strenght and which one of the variable might be developed).

Since 2016, and first in Europe, we have been using EMP for the benefit of our customers who want to unleash initiative and proactivity as a value and a behavior within their organizations.