Branching Scenarios for Conflict Management Training

Conflict Management Branching Scenario

Business Need

A hospital needed training to help doctors and managers deal with colleagues and employees that exhibit difficult behaviours or have difficult personalities.

Challenges

  • The original expressed need was a course on how to deal with difficult personalities. While doing the learning needs analysis, we discovered that the real need was for a course on conflict management
  • No specific content was provided by the client, but rather a large set of tools and references
  • The online course duration had to be 6 hours

COMMONG MISTAKES

Soft skills tools are often presented outside of real life, with no exercises where learners can test the tool in scenarios close to their day-to-day context

OUR APPROACH

  1. We analyzed the business and learning needs. We looked at all the tools and references provided by the client to figure out how they fit together and how someone could use them to manage a conflict.
  2. We created a high-level course architecture where we chunked content into 16 short (15–20 min) branching scenarios divided into 3 levels of increasing complexity. In levels 1 and 2, the learner experimented with different tools, using them to assess difficult situations and manage conflicts, and receiving direct feedback. In level 3, the learner had to decide on which tool to use in each situation and received delayed feedback after a few interactions.
  3. For each branching scenarios, we:
    • used a mind-mapping tool to design the scenario, applying constant colours and forms to all maps
    • determined how far we let the learner stray from the “right path”
    • decided if feedback was given immediately or was delayed
    • had the learner live the consequence of a choice rather than explain it
  4. Writing one scenario at a time, we had regular meetings with the Subject Matter Expert to validate content and ensure the dialogues were realistic in their specific context.


Mind map of a branching scenario

This mind map shows generic text. Real mind maps had real questions, options, short scene descriptions and tool names.

Note: The example shown has been modified to protect real company data, but it shows our approach and work.
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