Managing Difficult Relationships and Difficult Conversations
This course in conflict resolution and mediation is designed for
people who wish to acquire basic understandings and skills for managing
and resolving conflict. It includes basic theory and methodologies as
well as opportunities to develop skills in such areas as listening and
mediation through role playing. The course provides valuable insights
and strategies for dealing with interpersonal and group conflicts in
the workplace, home, school, neighborhood, and other community contexts.
This two-day workshop covers:
* Five approaches to dealing with hostile interactions that don't work
* Preparing for an ugly situation
* Sweetening a difficult challenge
* Saying you're sorry with your dignity intact
* Listening to your body messages
* Preventive practices in the midst of escalating conflict
* Selective disclosures in times of danger
* De-personalising tirades
* To act or not to act
* Promoting honesty and respect in difficult times
* Giving feedback that works
The workshop uses a combination of lecture, discussion, live demonstration
and small group practice.
Narrative Interventions for Collaborative Practices (One and Two Day
training)
OFFERED TO: Divorce Coaches, Attorneys, Child Mental Health Specialists,
Mediators, Financial Advisors
DESCRIPTION: A narrative approach to collaborative divorce is based
upon the notion that our lives are shaped by the stories that people
tell about us and by the stories that we tell ourselves. The practitioners'
goal in the collaborative divorce team is to co-author cooperative stories
with the divorcing couple that highlight their personal and relational
strengths and competencies, rather than their conflict. This approach
helps people separate themselves from conflict-saturated stories and
gives them the opportunity to re-author post-divorce relationships in
more cooperative and respectful ways. From this alternative position,
the resolution of conflict can often happen much more smoothly and effectively
than in traditional problem-solving approaches. The narrative approach
utilizes a range of techniques including mapping the effects, relative
influence questioning, collapsing time, and tracking unique outcomes
or sparkling moments to disrupt cyclical conflictual patterns and create
space for respectful and productive engagement.
The workshop will include a mixture of lecture, small group and large
group activities, and discussion. Participants will view a live demonstration
of the application of narrative approaches in individual meetings, and
in four-way meetings with the collaborative team and the divorcing couple.
The workshop specifically focuses upon:
* Establishing the mission statement for the transition and post-divorce
phase for the couple, children and collaborative divorce team utilizing
the
narrative metaphor.
* Understanding discursive patterns and their implications for moving
from traditional hierarchical relationships to equitable relationships.
* Techniques for ensuring the divorcing couple stay at the forefront
of the process while the specialist team coaches from behind.
* Strategies for freeing log jams and avoiding end runs.
* Circumventing sabotaging moves in order to keep things moving for
the parties and the collaborative team throughout the process.
* Practices that ensure the presence of the children's voices throughout
the process.
Techniques include the use of:
* Externalizing language to unite the divorcing couple against the problem-saturated
story.
* Mapping the effects of the problem story to build motivation, volition
and action.
* Internalized-other strategies for building empathy and understanding.
* Tracking unique outcomes and sparkling moments to develop the counterplot
of cooperation.
* Using reflecting teams for four-way meetings.
* Video and audiotape recordings of narrative interviews with children
and adolescents.
* Writing narrative letters that document the counterplot.
Training in Restorative Justice and Restorative Practices
Working with Multi-Party Disputes: (A One-Day Workshop)
This will be an interactive workshop designed for people interested
in applying the narrative mediation metaphor into group and multi-party
contexts. The presenter will introduce two vignettes which demonstrate
narrative techniques with one group and one multi-party conflict. Participants
will be presented with the following narrative techniques: externalizing
conversation, relative influence and mapping the effects questions,
historicizing questions and alternate story development. Opportunities
to practice these techniques in small groups will be offered to participants.
Throughout the presentation links will be made between underlying conceptual
and theoretical perspective of narrative mediation and practical interventions
with diverse multi-party participants. The presentation will conclude
with discussion about the application of narrative mediation in contexts
in which the participants work.
Restorative Justice/Restorative Practices Training (One and Two Day
training)
A Restorative approach brings together
people negatively impacted by the behaviors of a person or persons who
have committed a harmful act. The purpose is to have the person who
offended against others to take responsibility for their harmful behaviors
and make amends to the person or persons being victimized. Stakeholders
such as family, community members and public agency representatives
are included in restorative meetings. The purpose of these conferences
is to discuss what the problem and its impact and to generate ideas
about what might be helpful for all concerned.
Workshop participants will be trained
to facilitate restorative conferences using presentations, discussions,
videotape, and roleplays.
Mediation and Conflict Resolution in Health Care (One/Two/Three Day
training)
Exploring and understanding conflict
in the health care environment
The role of mediators in health care
Specialty OMBUDS mediators
De-escalating conflict in health care teams
Assertiveness training in multi-disciplinary
teams
Engaging in courageous dialogue in
hierarchical systems
Facilitating apology conversations
between healthcare professionals and patients and families when medical
error has occurred
Managing compassion fatigue in health
care
Workshop on Couples and Conflict (One Day training)
Couples in the midst of separation and divorce, are typically captured
by discourses of entitlement about how their partner or ex-partner should
behave. Entitlements are non-negotiable truths about how life and relationships
should be. When partners fail to live up to relationship entitlements,
conflict ensues. This presentation addresses narrative mediation techniques
for diminishing the potency of relationship entitlements and suggests
a range of approaches to building narratives of cooperation, understanding
and respect.
Collaborative Divorce
The Collaborative Divorce Process is
based on the belief that families can get through divorce in a more
emotionally healthy way when the couple is able to learn how to interact
and communicate with each other in a more respectful, honest and open
manner. Communication and self-management skills are taught to the couple
by their coaches. The couple uses these new skills in their settlement
discussions, and in their post divorce co-parenting.
With couples wishing to use a collaborative
process Gerald is available to work as a divorce coach and Child Specialist.
Collaborative divorce coach
Divorce Coaches are licensed mental health professionals, and each party
has a Collaborative Divorce Coach. Collaborative Divorce Coaching is
a focused, goal-oriented, systemic therapeutic process. In individual
and joint meetings the coaches work with the couple to:
1.) Identify and prioritize the concerns of each person.
2.) Make effective use of conflict resolution and communication skills.
3.) Develop effective co-parenting
skills.
4.) Work collaboratively with the couple, their attorneys and other
involved professionals to improve communication, reduce
misunderstandings and solve problems as they come up.
Child specialist
The Collaborative Divorce Child Specialist will work with the children
and the parents to:
1.) Provide the children with an opportunity to voice his/her concerns
regarding the divorce.
2.) Provide the parents with information and guidance to help their
children through this process.
3.) Give information to the parties and the Collaborative team that
will help the parties in developing an effective co-parenting plan for
their children.