Continuing Education for Financial Service Professionals
Manage and Resolve Conflict
Manage and Resolve Conflict
Manage and Resolve Conflict Copyright © 2015 CLIFE Inc. All rights reserved. Any reproduction of parts or all of this book and its contents by any means electronic or mechanical is prohibited.
The information in this course is provided for educational purposes only; it should not be construed or interpreted as providing advice. Agents and advisors should always seek guidance from their principals and compliance experts in regards to informing themselves and others about details of the products they sell and other considerations of their business.
We welcome all feedback and suggestions for additions to the book. Please send your comments to info@clifece.ca. CLIFE INC. 1595 Sixteenth Avenue Suite 301 Richmond Hill, ON L4B 3N9 www.clifece.ca
Be A Star Performer: Manage and Resolve Conflict provides a continuing education credit upon satisfactory completion of an online test. Please see the website for details or email info@clifece.ca.
Manage and Resolve Conflict
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction
4
What You Will Learn
6
The Benefits of Conflict Resolution
9
How Conflict Arises
11
How to Resolve Conflict
20
Win-Win Negotiation Preparation Sheet
31
Conflicting Interests
32
Complaint Resolution
34
Conclusions about Conflict
35
Manage and Resolve Conflict
Introduction -
Are you familiar with the expression, “It takes two to tango?” If we think about conflict instead of dancing: conflict needs two opposing positions. Just like the tango; you can’t do it on your own.
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Conflict is part of all relationships: working and otherwise. You can be the cause or the cause may be external and beyond your control.
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If you have ever heard or declared: “ I understood you were going to ….” “As we discussed and you agreed …” “ Why did this happen?” “When can I expect to see …?” “Why would you do that?” “You promised.” “I’m disappointed that …” “Why didn’t you ….” or “Why would you tell me that now?” you’ve been on the receiving end or giving end of conflict.
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Conflict is not entirely avoidable but it can be managed. This translates into lower levels of stress for you and better working relationships.
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Conflict management is a life skill that deserves more attention and more respect than it receives.
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The techniques for management hold true whether you use them with your client, your boss, your spouse, your children, or the guy next door.
Manage and Resolve Conflict
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You need to learn what to do, practice what suits your style best, and then use the skills every time the opportunity presents itself. Don’t try and avoid the conflict situation: control it, own it and bring it to the result you want.
Manage and Resolve Conflict
What You Will Learn -
Financial issues can be a source of stress, and stress can lead to conflict. Here’s how conflict can arise for the professional financial advisor: o Statement shock: your client receives bad news about investment performance in his quarterly statement and challenges you to explain the reason for losses and why action wasn’t taken to head off the loss; o Broken promise: you make a promise that just can’t be kept and your client is angry, confused, and hurt by your failure to keep a promise; o Failure to act: you don’t do what you say you will; o The fall-guy: you depend on others to deliver and they let you down; o Professional responsibilities at odds with personal objectives: you need to earn a living --- to do so means meeting sales objectives that rule out putting client interests first.
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In your role as a financial advisor, you may perhaps think first of the conflict that arises with clients when you and your client don’t see eye-to-eye on an issue or your client feels ill treated. o 74% of financial planners have experienced a meeting in which a client became emotionally distraught.1
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Conflict also arises: o As a result of clients interacting with their family members:
Divorcing clients; •
48% of financial planners have mediated a situation of marital discord and 34% have been asked by a client if he or she should divorce.2
1 Sussman, Lyle, and Dubovsky, David. “The Changing Role of the Financial Planner, Part 2: Prescriptions for Coaching and Life Planning.” Journal of Financial Planning, (2009). ProQuest. Web. 24 June 2012.
2 Sussman and Dubofsky.
Manage and Resolve Conflict
The unfortunate family dynamic in which greed and real or imagined favouritism by parents for their children trumps rational thought and behaviour. •
44% of financial planners have been involved in parent-child negotiations.3
o When you are an employee with responsibilities to a manager or firm.
When a superior sets an objective that benefits the firm at a personal cost to the employee, such as a sales goal that must be attained regardless of the employee’s work schedule and need for work/life balance.
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However the stress and resulting conflict arise, the evidence is in: if you want to be a star performer, you learn to manage conflict.
4
o This is what you are going to learn in this course. -
People are generally programmed to avoid conflict since conflict is such a source of anxiety. Some common conflict avoidance techniques include: o Avoiding necessary conversations; o Procrastination; o Terminating a relationship.
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Worse yet can be attempting to avoid a conversation, then taking the plunge and having the conversation --- but flubbing it. This is not only embarrassing but also highly frustrating, and can create another layer of negative feelings about the conflict and its source.
3 Sussman and Dubofsky. 4 Emotional Intelligence for Financial Planners. R. Braidfoot, A.C.Swanson, the College for Financial Planning, Sept. 24, 2012, p.3
Manage and Resolve Conflict
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However, the result of trying to avoid conflict is that it has only been avoided; its cause is the elephant in the room. It just can’t be ignored.
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Avoidance is not the way to deal with conflict. Instead, you must manage conflict by understanding how it arises and what to do.
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Learning to manage conflict begins with recognizing the fundamental sources of conflict. In this Course, you’re going to learn about some of these sources, such as: o A mistake has been made; o Differing expectations; o Different information available or provided to the separate people involved in the conflict; o Differing goals; o Assumptions are made; o Personal animosity; o Ethnic differences; o Change; o Negativity and recrimination.
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When a conflict rears its ugly head, you are also going to learn what to do: o The importance of knowing yourself and how you personally react to conflict; o Understanding how to negotiate; o Recognizing when a conflict escalates to a complaint, and knowing the steps available for complaint resolution.
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