What made you decide to write ‘Handbook of Human Conflict Technology’?
Monberg: In my work as a mediator I often meet people that due to lack of knowledge about the nature of conflicts have taken all the conflict escalating steps and ended in a painful situation. Their organisation didn’t give them any help to find a collaborative solution, as conflicts were seen as something that should be avoided or solved by them. According to the laws of conflicts at a certain stage of a conflict you are not able to solve your own conflict and need outside help.

These factors made me realize that if a company or organisation haven’t acted proactively and created a strategy for their conflicts – they leave their employee and their partners on the conflict escalation staircase to hell. The ‘Handbook of Human Conflict Technology’ explains how to take the best from a conflict, the ability to see a situation differently and use this information to create an innovative solution.

The term "conflict culture" is used throughout your book. What is it and how can a company benefit from knowing what their "conflict culture" is like?
Monberg: All systems have conflicts and the escalation and handling of conflicts are depended of the organisations conflict culture. Some organisational cultures use power to deal with their conflicts and others use order and rights. The use of power creates a power contest and in the long run a lose-lose situation. The use of right and order create a rights competition and result in a win-lose situation.

This book shows you how to create an awareness of the organisations conflict culture and with this awareness create a conscious conflict strategy, that secures that conflicts is always solved firstly by the use of interest and needs to create the win-win solution in conflicts and that the use of rights and power always will be secondary.

In your book you mention that lots of companies wait until conflict becomes out of control rather than facing the problem in the early stages. Why do you think companies fear conflict so much and choose not to have a conflict strategy?
Monberg: In a culture of power and rights conflicts are negative because the outcome is a lose situation and therefore conflicts should be avoided. The mindset that conflicts are negative creates a belief that conflicts should not been dealt with. The thought of working proactive with conflict and create a strategy for your conflict is seen as a weakness and not a strength, as this maybe tells that your organisation have many conflicts. By acting like an ostrich and hide one’s head in the sand, many organisations lose the possibility to innovate and use the best energy in a conflict to create something new and better. Also they let their employees stuck in a situation where the only outcome of their conflict is lose-win situation and often a lose-lose situation. This isn’t FAIR to the employee or to the organisation and it is on time that organisations get the awareness that is doesn’t need to be like this and there is a possibility to create a win-win conflict strategy.

In what ways do companies lose out from ignoring conflict early on? Can you give some examples?
Monberg: First of all you leave your employee and partners on their own when the conflict arise and expose them for the huge risk of conflict escalation. Also you lose the possibility to create something better out of the diversity that the conflict arise from and the ability to change the malfunctions in the system that the conflict can be a symptom of.

When building the two bridges in Denmark – one between two islands and one between Denmark and Sweden - only a conflict strategy was created for the last construction work. The result of this conflict strategy was that there were no lawsuits, no accidents with a deadly outcome and a much lower frequency of accident that normal for such a building work. Furthermore the bridge was opened in time and was build at a lower price than expected. Do I need to say, that was not the situation with the other construction work where there were no conflict strategy?

In your book you describe how a conflict concept enables organisations to benefit positively from conflict. What benefits can a company expect from implementing a conflict concept?
Monberg: My experiences are that when you allow your company to have a conflict concept you open up for the possibility of using the positive in a conflict situation to create innovation and new thinking instead of being stuck and rigid. Also you secure that conflicts will be solved by methods that allow a win-win outcome and people are therefore much more open minded to come forward with their problems in the early stages of a conflict instead of waiting until things gets out of hand, where people have very destructing emotions towards the other party, that spread like a virus to the rest of the organisation.

What changes have you seen in companies that have decided to execute a conflict strategy?
Monberg: My best experience was a huge pharmaceutical company where I implemented a conflict strategy for their production area consisting of five hundred people. One of the employees that returned from maternity leave couldn’t recognise her own organisation –it had changed in such a positive way, where the employees talked openly to each other, immediately chose to deal with differences and took a common responsibility for their relationship.

Here are some facts about conflicts that you maybe can use on the homepage, as
"Did you know that....":

• Conflicts are causing nearly 90% of all involuntary terminations of employment
• The top-management use up to 70% of their time on conflicts
• The midlevel-management use 42% of the time on negotiation due to conflicts
• Over 65% of all problems with the performance at work is due to bad relations between employees
• That employees exposed to bullying or harassment are seven days more absent per year than other employees
• That when unhealthy conflicts remains unsolved too long, the employees will use their time to find a new job and leave the organisation
• That stress is often a result of a conflict-ridden work environment
• That the expenses to hire a new employee is between 75% to 150% of an employees yearly salary
• That 80% of the cases transferred to mediation are solved