Conflict Resolution Activities for All Ages

Conflict resolution activities in the workplace can create avenues to healthy relationship development and alleviate professional roadblocks that can negatively impact your bottom line. This is particularly true in offices with multigenerational coworkers.

Seasoned baby boomers, innovative Generation Xers, and up-and-coming Millennials–is the cross generational mix in your office harmonious and productive? Or is it a cacophony of discordant and contentious voices that create noise, friction, and tension?

How can your company transform this generational blend into its biggest asset instead of letting it sour into your biggest liability? A sure fire solution is participation in conflict resolution activities that create opportunities for everyone to be heard and appreciated, as well as  learning how to accept personal differences.

Trendy clothes, favorite music, cutting edge TV shows, and other interests are the cultural markers of most generation gaps. Everyone knows that age is more than a number. It can dictate your social and political preferences. It can inform your health–both physical and emotional. It shouldn’t be the case, but age can define you–your “value” or lack thereof.

It can pigeonhole you and delimit people’s expectations of you. It can narrow your opportunities for advancement, promotion, and personal fulfillment.  And the generation to which you belong can stereotype you. Say the words “baby boomer” or “Millennials” and a whole set of cookie-cutter images pop into our heads—yes, we do it, too.

Both charitable team building workshops as well as workshops that are carefully designed to enhance professional development, can be effective conflict resolution activities because:

1. They move workers outside the constraints of the office environment and make it easier for everyone to relax.
2. They can help to shift the focus from the source of a conflict to an object of common interest. To be sure, nobody can remain obstructive for very long after seeing the smiles and tears of a needy child to whom they’ve just made a modest but meaningful donation—a cuddly teddy bear or a shiny new bike.
3. They can play to everybody’s strengths, because these workshops provide a stage upon which to showcase them.
4. They can also provide the perfect forum for cross generational relationship building. We don’t understand people to whom we cannot relate. It’s hard to communicate with someone you just don’t “get.’  And that’s a fast track to conflict. A charitable team building workshop in which kindness is a common language is a healthy setting in which a baby boomer and a Gen Xer may find that they have more in common than they ever imagined.