Coaching practices for The One Minute Manager Three Practices That Still Work During Conflict

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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • Something’s genuinely wrong here and there’s no time to coax everyone to a comfortable yes
  • We solve the immediate thing but the same ugly dynamic underneath stays exactly the same, so the next disagreement plays out identically
  • My whole attention as a manager is tuned to what’s broken
  • The second things get tense I snap into the same move every time without choosing it
  • I came in hard because the situation called for it, but partway through the urgent part got settled and the other person clearly just needed to feel heard

Practices that may help

  1. The One Minute Manager: Three Practices That Still Work
    Blanchard and Johnson’s One Minute Manager distills management to three practices: one-minute goals (clear, written, short), one-minute praisings (specific, immediate, genuine), and one-minute reprimands (immediate, behavior-specific, followed by reaffirmation). The framework is a 1982 practitioner classic, not a clinical protocol, but the mechanisms — specificity in feedback, timeliness, and the separation of behavior from character — are supported by decades of subsequent research in reinforcement and feedback theory.
  2. Competing (assertive, uncooperative)
    Pursue your own position firmly when speed, principle, or stakes outweigh the relationship cost.
    The Five Conflict-Resolution Styles
  3. Transform the relationship, not just the issue
    Use each conflict as an opportunity to raise the quality of the relationship itself.
    The Third Alternative, Made Practical
  4. Catch people doing things right
    Most management attention goes to problems — systematically noticing good work is both rarer and more powerful.
    The One Minute Manager: Three Practices That Still Work
  5. Identify your default conflict mode
    Before you can choose a mode, you have to know which one you use automatically.
    The Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)
  6. Recognize when to shift modes mid-conflict
    The mode that’s right at the start of a conversation may not be right ten minutes in.
    The Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)
  7. Choose your style deliberately
    The real skill isn’t a favorite style — it’s matching the style to the situation instead of defaulting.
    The Five Conflict-Resolution Styles
  8. Use the horsemen as an early-warning system, not only a post-mortem
    Notice which horseman is present in the first 60 seconds of a conflict and intervene before it escalates.
    The Four Horsemen: Gottman's Warning Signs of Relationship Breakdown
  9. Storming: name the conflict without taking sides
    Surface the tension that’s already there rather than managing it away.
    Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
  10. The Five Conflict-Resolution Styles
    The Thomas-Kilmann model maps conflict behavior on two axes — how much you assert your own needs and how much you cooperate with the other’s — yielding five styles: competing, accommodating, avoiding, compromising, and collaborating. None is "best": each fits certain situations, and skill lies in choosing deliberately rather than defaulting to the one style you always reach for. The model is a widely used framework and instrument, not an outcome-tested intervention.

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