Conflict Management

Conflict Management The two-day seminar for anyone who no longer wants to sit conflicts out: you learn to see what really drives a conflict, to settle it in an ordered conversation, and to mediate so that those involved can work together again afterwards.

Conflict Management at a glance

• Format: 2 days on site + self-learning track
• Level: foundation to advanced
• Participants: max. 16
• Language: English
• Certificate: AEI certificate of attendance
• Investment: 290.00 euro net plus VAT

Conflicts are rarely where they break out. Two colleagues argue about a task, and the real argument is about recognition. A customer complains about a delivery time, and what they mean is that nobody informed them. Whoever works on the surface solves nothing.

This seminar works on the cause. You learn to recognise conflicts early, to assess their stage of escalation, and to lead the conversation that settles them — including when you are a party yourself and not a neutral third.

You work on your own cases. If you bring a conflict you have been pushing ahead of you for weeks, that is the best preparation you can have.

What you take away

• A framework for recognising what a conflict is really about.
• The five stages of escalation and the question of when a conversation is no longer enough.
• A conversation structure for clarification that holds under resistance.
• I-statements that do not sound like technique and still work.
• A method for mediating between two colleagues without taking sides.

Your learning objectives

• You recognise a conflict before it paralyses collaboration.
• You distinguish occasion from cause and address the cause.
• You lead a clarification conversation in which both sides are heard.
• You set boundaries without breaking the relationship.
• You de-escalate complaints before they become a claim with a lawyer.

The levers at a glance

The occasion is not the cause. The argument about task allocation is the occasion. The cause is usually a slight, an unclear responsibility, or a promise nobody kept. Whoever negotiates only the occasion gets the same conflict again in four weeks.

Escalation has stages, and each stage needs a different tool. At the first stage a conversation is enough. At the third you need a third person. At the fifth it is no longer about the matter but only about damage. Recognising the stage decides whether a conversation still achieves anything.

I-statements are not a politeness formula. "I need the figures by Tuesday, otherwise I cannot build the report" is information. "You never deliver on time" is a verdict. The difference is not friendliness but whether the other side can respond.

Mediating does not mean staying out of it. Whoever mediates between two colleagues must make each side's position understandable to the other without adding their own opinion. That is a technique, not a character trait.

Who is this seminar for?

For people who deal with conflicts and have so far either avoided or escalated them.

• Managers whose employees have tensions between them.
• Project leads coordinating between departments with different goals.
• Customer-facing staff who have to take complaints.
• Anyone who wants to have a conversation they have been postponing for weeks.

The seminar assumes no mediation training. Anyone who works with people professionally brings everything needed.

It is not for people mainly looking for confirmation that the other side is to blame. We work on your own side of the conflict, and that is less comfortable.

Investment and dates

Participation costs 290.00 euro net plus VAT, including the self-learning track, materials and certificate of attendance. There are six dates per year in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and live online, plus an in-house version for teams. All dates are listed on this page.

Funding through a training voucher or professional development programme is possible; we check what that looks like in your case before booking.

After the seminar

You keep the escalation framework, the conversation structure as a one-page checklist, and the review of your own case. Two weeks after the seminar you receive a short follow-up with one question to help you check whether the conversation took place.

If you like, we accompany a concrete clarification conversation in one-to-one coaching — before it or after.

For teams the seminar is available as an in-house event using your real cases. The structure stays the same, the examples come from you — and stay in the room.

Programme: 2 days

Day 1 – Recognising causes, leading the conversation

• What triggers conflicts
• Recognising stages of escalation
• The clarification conversation
• Using I-statements
• Mediating between colleagues
• Roles and responsibilities

Day 2 – Escalation, agreement, prevention

• De-escalating complaints
• Setting boundaries
• Preventing instead of solving
• Learning from conflicts

Both days run from 09:00 to 16:15 with breaks in the morning, at midday and in the afternoon.

Each day has three parts: a short introduction to the pattern, an exercise on your own case, and a review in the group. At the end of day one you formulate the sentence with which you want to open the conversation; at the start of day two we look at what came of it.

The seminar includes a self-learning track. It contains the patterns from both days as short units with examples and a self-test each. You can work through it before the date to clarify terms, or afterwards to repeat what stuck and what did not. It does not replace the two days — it keeps what you learned from fading after four weeks.

Our approach

We work on your conflicts, not on invented cases. At the start you decide which case you brought in; at the end you plan when and how you will hold the conversation. Between the two days there is time for a first step.

The exercises are short and repeat in variations. That is deliberate: a conversational pattern is not changed by insight but by repetition in a safe setting.

Work happens in pairs, in threes and in the group, with changing partners. Every participant receives feedback on their effect, not only on their wording. What is told in the room stays in the room.

The room matters less than you think. A conversation that is well prepared survives a bad day. One that is not prepared cannot be saved by a good one.