Training courses and workshops presently on offer

All workshops are held on a Saturday or Sunday, unless they are adaptations of the workshops that have been commissioned by groups or organisations, which can be held on weekdays. Please contact Alan if you have any questions regarding the training.

Workshop 1: Learning from difficult relationships.

(Length of workshop - 1 day)

Are you involved in a destructive conflict..

• At work?
• With your children?
• With your partner?
• With a friend?
• With your neighbour?

Conflict is unavoidable. What matters is how we respond to it. If a conflict continues or has escalated this will be because the responses have become destructive.

At this workshop you will learn the Principles that guide us in communicating effectively and constructively and support the resolution of conflict.

Ourselves

We often disempower ourselves simply through the way we speak about ourselves, our situation and the person or people we are in conflict with. Rephrasing our statements using the Principles to guide us empowers us to create ways forward that resolve the situation we have previously found so difficult.

The other

We often reduce the chances of resolving our disputes by denigrating the other. This drains us of time and energy that we could be putting into resolution of the dispute, support for ourselves, or spending with loved ones and doing things we enjoy. Seeking resolution because it is the ‘right thing to do’ often leads to denial of how badly a dispute affects us. Seeking resolution because it brings us peace in our minds and hearts, gives us back our lives and releases our energy for more creative, inspirational, loving pursuits.

This workshop is the Foundation workshop for all others. It is important that participants have spent some time understanding the Principles of Effective Communication on which all the workshops are based and this workshop provides the introduction to the Principles.

Workshop 2: Effective Communication Skills

(Length of workshop - 1 day)

You may not actually be in a destructive conflict situation, but may be interested in developing your communication skills in ways that are constructive responses to conflict situations and which maintain connection with others, irrespective of their approach to communication. Awareness of the Principles of Effective Communication and the underlying thinking behind conflict resolution practice, together with the application of these to communication skills leads to greater rapport and connection between us.

• ð       Learn to recognise how our simple day to day interactions can cause a distancing between ourselves and others when we do not take the Principles into consideration.

• ð       Learn how easy it is to become aware of these Principles.

• ð       Experience the challenge of applying the Principles to simple interactions.  

For more information about the Principles and the thinking that will underlie the workshops, visit the Communication and Conflict website

What else is there?

You may want to go on to do our 3 day course on

Supporting others in Resolving Conflict: Managing conflict in our own environment.

This is a course that teaches you basic Conflict Resolution and Conflict Management skills. It will be of use in any situations in which you find yourself where you may not be directly in dispute with someone else but you may be aware of or even affected by a dispute between others and want to assist them in resolving it. This may be a personal situation or a professional situation.

The 3 days will give you plenty of opportunity to review the situation, learn from others’ situations and explore the skills and practices used by mediators to support people in resolving their disputes.

In order to attend this course you must have attended at least one of Workshops 1 and 2.

Please contact Alan if you would like to attend one of the above courses. We have still to establish dates for the courses but he will be able to discuss costs and, if you are an early enquirer it may be that you can help to establish the dates on which we run the courses.

New course recently added:

This workshop will look at the three different ways in which conflict is approached and why two of the approaches never lead to resolution. By learning to identify which category our behaviours fall into we can see when we are approaching conflict in a way that can lead to growth and when we are approaching it in a way that will never achieve this and is, instead, likely to lead to stagnation in our lives and even escalation of the negative consequences of our unresolved conflict.