According to the Adare Human Resource Management HR Barometer, one in four Irish employers experiences a workplace dispute each year and the average employee in Ireland spends 3.3 hours a week dealing with workplace conflict.

Conflict between individuals at work may occur in many different ways. A work issue, like poor attendance or timekeeping, can cause conflict. Conflict can also stem from a disagreement between people. It can occur across a wide spectrum of behaviour, ranging from a personality clash, and aggressive clients to more serious types of unfair treatment – like bullying and harassment.

Conflict in itself is not necessarily a negative process, but destructive conflict can consume us both professionally and personally. How we manage, resolve and transform conflict is critical to how we work with others and how we lead our teams and organisations.

Enda Young is a mediation, negotiation and conflict resolution specialist with over twenty years experience delivering training, talks and lectures. He helps people get better at dealing with conflict.

He is the Programme Director at the William J Clinton Leadership Institute at Queen’s University Belfast. He is a Director and one of the Co-founders of FactCheckNI, the first independent fact-checking organisation in Northern Ireland and a Director and Trustee of Lighthouse a suicide prevention Charity. He is also the Founder of OutdoorDadNI an initiative that focuses on the outdoors and positive mental health. Enda was named as one of the top 40 under 40 in Northern Ireland in 2019 by Business First.

Enda holds an MA in “Theory, Culture and Identity” and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Queen’s University Belfast.