This highly interactive workshop often focuses on cultural conflicts, however, most conflicts tend to have a cultural dimension based on styles differences, age, gender, race/ethnicity, and a host of other variables.  The training includes skills to manage conflicts by recognizing possible sources of disagreements, discovering new ways to respond to disagreements.  All instructors of this topic are Certified Mediators who have worked in a variety of situations.

This workshop uses a carefully researched Conflict Styles Inventory that allows participants to self-identify which of five common styles they prefer to cope with conflict, based on their responses to the inventory. The inventory further identifies which conflict style the respondent prefers during interactions referred to as “Calm” and “Storm.” Anxiety and frustration may cause a “calm” conflict to escalate to “stormy.”

Participants learn what to do at those times when their own conflict style contrasts with the style(s) preferred by customers, coworkers, managers, and others. Activities, exercises, and case studies, help participants practice how to adapt or modify their own conflict style in order to alleviate further conflict and reach a positive conclusion.

“The class appreciated your interactive style and the pace
of the presentation.  You raised the group’s awareness of
the importance to understand not only our own conflict style,
but also the style of the people we deal with.”

Lynn Norman, Administrative Director
Leadership Institute of South Puget Sound

This session includes strategies to help individuals talk through and resolve cultural conflicts caused by diverse viewpoints that may be influenced by race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and other differences.

Instructed by a certified mediator and pioneer in the concept of Cultural Mediation, the practice was mastered after Lonnie Lusardo’s research in South Africa.  Cultural Mediation is a combination of practices conducted by the (South African) Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Quaker Peace Centre of Cape Town.