Cambridge Business Association
Creating a Drama-Free Workplace
Book

Creating a Drama-Free Workplace

The Insider's Guide to Managing Conflict, Incivility & Mistrust

Anna Maravelas
Career Press, 2020
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Concrete Examples
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Workplace conflict consultant Anna Maravelas draws on her long experience to explain how to prevent and resolve workplace clashes. She illustrates her suggestions with short case studies which make the book instructive and entertaining. She also enlivens the reading experience for senior managers and HR professions by adding insights from various other disciplines. Managers can put her practical advice to work right away.

Summary

Workplace conflicts unfold in three different kinds of corporate cultures: “hostile,” “indifferent” and “connected.”

Your overall corporate culture determines how conflicts emerge and how best to resolve them.

Consider three kinds of corporate culture:

  1. “Hostile” – Teams at some corporations show open antagonism toward one another. The workplace is full of uptight, unreasonable and unhappy emotion. Members of these organizations feel threatened. They hate going to work and avoid meetings. Hostility saps employees’ energy and leads to lower productivity. Merely working through the critical issues that agitate your team members, and thus, eliminating anger, is not enough, however. Employees’ involvement in their work might diminish if they’ve been using hostility to fuel their energy. On the other hand, if they can move past hostility, and then learn to reconnect and appreciate each other, they can draw on those new links for positive energy.
  2. “Low energy, indifferent” – In this environment, employees disengage and feel apathetic toward ...

About the Author

Anna Maravelas is the president of Thera Rising International. She teaches conflict resolution and her work has appeared in publications such as Oprah Magazine and Harvard Management Update. 

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