Win at Work!: The Everybody Wins Approach to Conflict Resolution

Sources

I decided to return to school to earn my PhD while I was still working in the corporate world. I chose Union Institute & University, because the school encouraged interdisciplinary studies. My passion for conflict resolution began when I was a child, and only grew stronger as I became an adult.

For the design and development of The Working Circle, I used a tremendous number of sources. I went outside the norm for my studies, as there were very few PhD candidates focusing on conflict resolution in 1993. As you read on, I expect that the ingredients for The Working Circle might surprise you; I assure you, they transformed both me and my work. I include them here so that you can better understand the richness of The Working Circle, and why it is so effective.

The ingredients of The Working Circle are as follows, along with explanations of how each component contributed to the end product:

Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice

I was introduced to the field of conflict resolution when I earned my Masters in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, Teachers College. One day, Dr. Morton Deutsch, one of the "fathers" of the field, gave a guest lecture, and I was enthralled. His talk demonstrated to me that there was a field of study that matched my passion. But I was just entering the corporate world, to test my competitive mettle, and so that passion would go underground and not surface again until my last corporate position, 12 years later.

The field that captured my attention ...