How to approach challenging situations September 18, 2019

How to approach challenging situations.

Conflict Management and dealing with challenging situations.

Our trainer Eva often gets asked, ‘What courses do you enjoy teaching most?’

Her answer normally shocks people!

One of Eva’s favourite courses to teach is conflict management and dealing with challenging situations. People ask, ‘how on earth do you enjoy teaching that?!’ Eva enjoys it as she finds it really gives people the skills that we all need in everyday life as well as business.

Eva emphasis it is a skill constantly used and elaborates with a great example of a time that she saw effective conflict management used at an airport whilst she was observing it as a passenger!

The story takes place at an airport in Singapore, Eva was preparing to travel a familiar route back to the UK. At this point in time, Eva was living and training in Singapore (training cabin crew and airport staff) and was extremely familiar with the airport and the airline she was flying with. On this particular day, she realised that the airport, usually a very organised and efficient place appeared to be in chaos which was extremely unusual! Eva had never seen the airport look like this before, she was used to an efficient, organised, calm and quiet environment!

The queues to check in were massive, which again, was very out of character for this airport and airline. Eva joined a line to begin her wait and being a trainer of conflict management, she was interested to see how the check in staff were going to deal with this troublesome situation. As Eva looked from one check in desk to the next, she realised that every check in desk was dealing with very angry and upset people.

Eva realised that the queue she was standing in, was moving faster than any other queue. Eva began to wonder why this was the case! She looked to see the check in assistant behind the desk in front of her queue to see that surprisingly, this check in assistant did not looked stressed or anxious as the others did but was instead smiling and laughing! Eva realised the person she was dealing with was also smiling and happy in stark contrast to the people at every other desk.

Eva realised after looking further down her faster moving lane that everyone in queue appeared to be at ease and happy. Eva wondered what the check in assistant’s secret was to keep everyone happy! Eva found out soon enough as after standing in the queue for only 2-3 minutes, the check-in assistant got up from behind the check in desk and walked up and down the queue approaching every person in the queue individually to apologise to them for the delay and explain to each person that the cause of the delay was due to the computer systems being down. This issue was something that the airline nor the check in assistants, had ever had to deal with before!

Eva realised that the check in assistant, by doing this, made sure everyone in her queue was willing to wait patiently and help manage the situation in this way. This was very clever of the check in assistant as ultimately, the check in assistant had engaged the people in line as part of the solution to the problem. In conclusion this is what great conflict management is and why this story it is such a good example of dealing with a challenging situation!

If you want to know more about how to approach challenging situations, conflict management and resolution, London Training for Excellence offer courses that can help you! Follow the link to view the Conflict Management and Resolution course below or email sales@londontfe.com for more information.

To watch Eva tell the story in person, watch the YouTube video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC_yUs2pEBI