Two to three days, 6 to 20 people. On-site or online, in English or German.
No slide deck about escalation stages. You bring the conflicts from your own work, and you leave with sentences you can use next week.
The stance behind it
Conflict isn't a malfunction. It's information. It shows where interests diverge, where roles are unclear, where a decision is missing. Teams that can read this get better through conflict, not slower.
The key is a simple distinction: conflicts aren't good or bad, they're functional or dysfunctional. A functional conflict brings differences onto the table and makes them workable. A dysfunctional one goes in circles, hardens the fronts and eats energy and trust. So the goal of this seminar isn't to smooth conflict over or avoid it, but to turn dysfunctional conflict into functional conflict.
Contents
Most conflicts don't escalate because someone means harm, but because nobody looks early enough. You learn to distinguish conflict on the content, relationship and values level, and to assess escalation dynamics before they take over the conversation. The Glasl model provides the map: if you know which stage a conflict is at, you know which intervention still works and which doesn't anymore.
Trigger isn't cause. Feelings don't arise from what others do, they arise from how we evaluate it. Separate the two and you stay able to act, where others escalate. With Nonviolent Communication (Rosenberg) you train to separate observation from evaluation, to find the need behind the anger and to say it in a way the other person can actually hear instead of defending against.
At some point the conflict has to come onto the table. You rehearse the conversation you've been postponing: creating clarity without damaging trust. The foundation is Difficult Conversations (Stone, Patton, Heen) and role plays with your real cases. Not textbook examples, but the situation that's keeping you up right now.
From a conflict training
A top performer complains that he's carrying five projects while the team averages two. In the conversation it becomes clear: he never hands a task over, because he doesn't trust his colleagues with the responsibility. They in turn experience every handover as micromanagement. The conflict wasn't between two people. It was a pattern both of them kept alive.
How it works
Every training starts with a scoping conversation: What's the concrete situation, who's in the room, what should be different afterwards? From that, a design emerges, built for you. Not an off-the-shelf seminar I've delivered two hundred times.
In the training itself, one rule holds: participants experience first, then we make sense of it. Three minutes of talking at most, then an exercise, a role play or a discussion. Every unit has a dramaturgy: first the irritation, then the deepening, and capability at the end. Whatever still holds after the coffee break has landed.
Send a booking requestVoices
"Jacob is an outstanding coach and workshop leader. Training with him will be impactful and enjoyable. I wholeheartedly recommend him."
"Methodically excellent – and you managed to run the seminar with complete professionalism, while also being empathetic and engaging. The time flew by."
FAQ
Two to three days is the recommendation. Conflict needs practice, not just explanation: participants work on real cases, and that takes time. More compact formats from half a day are possible, for example as an impulse for a leadership round.
For leaders, teams and project owners in corporates and mid-market companies. Group size is 6 to 20 people. No prior experience needed; real cases from your own work are explicitly welcome.
Yes. The exercises were built for the room and translated for online, not just filmed. In-person remains the first choice for the intensive role plays; online works especially well for shorter and distributed formats.
In the training you learn the craft to work on conflicts yourselves. If a specific conflict is already too entrenched for training to help, conflict facilitation or mediation is the right format. I offer both; the scoping conversation shows what fits.
The price depends on duration, group size and preparation. Every training starts with a free scoping conversation; after that you receive a concrete offer.
Conflict management is one of five training topics. How it connects to difficult conversations, negotiation, leadership communication, facilitation and presenting: see the overview of all trainings. Who’s behind it: About.