COnflict resilience

Conflict is something that many of us dread, acting as a disruptive force for relationships and communities. The conflict resiliency course trains us to reframe our attitude towards conflict – shifting from one of dread and anxiety to an opportunity for growth, learning, and deepening relationships. It could even be seen as an exciting and fun opportunity.

This is achieved through first cultivating awareness of our varied responses to conflict; the panoply of emotions, thoughts, stressors, values, identities, and so forth that spring forth in any conflictual situation. Participants will learn of their particular conflict styles, and will learn to see the value in multiple conflict styles. Also included are communication methods that help us navigate conflict: open-ended questions, effective ways to share your own perspectives, needs, and experiences, listening skills, delivering and receiving feedback, and so forth. Intrapersonal skills are also taught - managing our triggers and emotions, taking others' perspective, gaining clarity on our unmet needs, values and identities, turning defensiveness into curiosity, and working with narratives and judgements.

Finally, a big part of developing a conflict-resilient culture involves the repetition of regular practices that train us to become comfortable with conflict. These “dojos” provide a safe environment to cultivate conflict resilient skills, and include the “disagreement dojo,” the “curiosity dojo,” and the “perspective dojo,” to name a few.