How Leaders Shape Conflict Resilience in their Workplace

We're pleased to share that the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution (CICR) was recently invited to contribute to the Ottawa Business Journal on a topic we believe is increasingly important for today's organizations: building conflict-resilient workplaces.

In this article, our Services Director and TPN practitioner, Monique Newton, explores how leaders shape the culture around conflict—not simply through policies, but through the way they show up, respond, and engage with everyday interpersonal challenges.

We hope you enjoy the read!

In my work at the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution (CICR), I often meet leaders and managers who are concerned about the impact of interpersonal conflict in their organization. They want to support their teams but say they lack the time, confidence or skill set. Many would like employees to be able to navigate interpersonal conflict on their own. 

Supporting interpersonal conflict well does take skill, practice and self-awareness. It requires more than a short friendly conversation, and often, the support of a trained practitioner or conflict coach.

Ideally, our workplace culture has the capacity to integrate different views and lived experience. When there is time and space to respond thoughtfully to challenging situations rather than quickly react to them, we can all contribute to a workplace that is more conflict resilient. 

What is conflict resilience?

I suggest that conflict resilience is our capacity to expand our responsiveness to a changing dynamic in an interpersonal relationship. In conflict, we often experience a change that presents a challenge. Our resilience does not come from fighting to “bounce back” but rather to be in relationship with the change so that we can learn and grow. 

Conflict resilience includes our capacity to:

• Receive a request or feedback without immediately resisting 

• Allow space for diverse viewpoints

• Be curious and listen to understand another perspective, rather than trying to change it

• Sit with discomfort without rushing to fix or resolve

• Choose to respond thoughtfully, with self-awareness, rather than react

• Share accountabilities without blaming

• Demonstrate empathy. 

A conflict-resilient organization has space for diversity in lived experience and views, fosters open conversation about change and encourages healthy boundary setting. 

Leaders and managers can shape a more conflict-resilient workplace culture by how they show up, respond to, and navigate interpersonal conflict themselves.

Honouring people’s dignity, demonstrating genuine curiosity toward colleagues, and showing up with humility all support a culture of conflict resilience. 

Leaders and managers who avoid challenging conversations and diverse views or who are consistently defensive may communicate a lack of self-awareness and self-confidence to colleagues and employees. Similarly, leaders who tend to aim toward pleasing others may send a message that they lack capacity to express their views, make clear decisions, or set healthy boundaries. 

Some signs that leaders and managers are not conflict resilient can include:

• Delaying or avoiding performance review conversations 

• Not having regular check-in practice with staff to see how they are doing at work, or to provide informal feedback

• Not being transparent with staff and colleagues about what they want 

• Avoiding difficult conversations 

• Saying they support staff and doing the opposite in action.

How can we build conflict resilience in practice?

Leaders and managers can support growth, skilful responses, and self-confidence in their workplaces by showing up in ways that:

• Honour people’s dignity

• Demonstrate genuine curiosity

• Practice humility.

In my work as a practitioner, I have learned that experiential, interactive learning that is grounded in a team’s real-life experiences creates shifts toward dignity, curiosity and humility. 

At the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution (CICR), we integrate skills and practices to support conflict resilience into our work. Our interventions and training support leaders, managers and their teams to:

• Navigate difficult conversations while creating space for dignity and diverse perspectives

• Support two or more people in conflict with genuine curiosity 

• Guide a team through conflict with self-confidence and humility.
  

Building conflict resilience includes cultivating a set of practical skills that can be learned, practiced and strengthened over time.

This is the kind of work I support through my practice at CICR. If this resonates with you, let’s connect! I offer complementary consultation sessions where we take time to understand your specific context and explore how to support your team in building conflict resilience.

About the author

Monique Newton is the Director, Services at the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution (CICR) and the Director of CICR’s Community Conflict Resolution Ottawa (CCRO) program. Monique is a certified Mind-Body Coach and Yoga Therapist, C-IAYT. She focuses on trauma-informed approaches, embodied conflict resolution, and well-being of practitioners and service providers.