Conflict Management and Leadership for Managers - 3rd Edition by Susan S Raines (Hardcover)

About the Book

A comprehensive, inclusive, and practical guide to preventing and managing every common source of conflict and dispute at work, whether involving leaders, managers, employees, customers, vendors, or regulators.

Book Synopsis

A comprehensive, inclusive, and practical guide to preventing and managing every common source of conflict and dispute at work, whether involving leaders, managers, employees, customers, vendors, or regulators.

Review Quotes

After reviewing the proposal for the book during the Summer 2022, I adopted the Second Edition of the book for a course on conflict resolution that I taught Spring 2023. I had used a different textbook in previous sections of the course, but the Raines text was more conducive for teaching conflict resolution in organizational contexts. The book was well received by the students in the class and I intend to adopt the third edition for the course in 2024.

This textbook presents basic concepts and skills necessary to prevent and proactively resolve common workplace conflicts. It's appropriate for use in an undergraduate course on conflict resolution, and would also be a great resource for future organizational leaders. There are skill-building exercises on difficult conversations, conducting performance reviews, and negotiating with employees and other managers while navigating through difficult times.

Conflict Management and Leadership for Managers reviews central issues in preparing for and addressing myriad types of conflict that occur in organizational settings. The book covers micro, interpersonal conflicts that occur among supervisors and employees, such as giving performance feedback, as well as group-level interactions and macro-level considerations such as designing systems for organizational conflict management that protect employees and organizations from harm and promote organizational justice.

This book is a great teaching and training resource for individuals seeking to understand and improve their conflict management skills, particularly within professional organizations. Whether you are seeking insight into your organizational conflict culture or practical conflict management approaches, this book has it all. There are excellent workplace examples and thought-provoking discussion questions throughout, which I love to use as conversation starters in my own classroom. Even if you are not using it for educational purposes, having a copy on your shelf would be beneficial for anyone working in a position that involves assisting others working through conflict.

This book offers information that will stand any manager in good stead. First, it gives managers the language to talk about conflict and the grounding to identify conflict when it happens. Knowing conflict is there and knowing how to talk about it are the first important steps toward resolving or managing conflict. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter offer an opportunity to reflect on conflict management strategies in a risk-free environment.

This third edition is one of the best innovations for the field of conflict management and even fields beyond. Raines offers an expanded exploration of conflict management for managers across practical settings, making it an instructive read for managers interested in learning how to best help others manage conflict, especially after the pandemic and those experiencing cultural and generational differences. Furthermore, this text can be useful for both advanced mediators and those just starting out.

About the Author

Susan S. Raines, PhD, is a diplomat for the U.S. Department of State. She served as a Professor and Associate Director in the graduate program in International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at Kennesaw State University for more than two decades providing consultation and services to corporate and governmental leaders focused on leadership coaching, strategic decision-making, culture change initiatives, training, team norm-building, change management, crisis negotiation, and scandal prevention and response. She has mediated more than 18,000 cases inside and outside of court systems, trained mediators worldwide, and coached executive leadership teams for Fortune 500 and international organizations. In addition to this text, she had authored more than 55 peer reviewed articles, served as the Editor-in-Chief for Conflict Resolution Quarterly for twelve years, and co-authored Expert Mediators (with Jean Poitras). She has three wonderful adult children who served as a lab for her work, sometimes willingly.