Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/14/2016 - 04/16/2016
8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Location
Conversation Place
Public Conversations Project’s workshops will enhance your ability to plan, facilitate, and engage in more constructive conversations in your professional, civic, or personal life. Our approach has transformed conflicts across the country and the world – but its principles are widely applicable for everyday conversations and collaborations.
Our highly experiential workshops are capped at a small size to maximize each participant’s learning and allow for customization. Whether you are a beginner in dialogue or a master facilitator, you’ll develop skills you can apply across a wide range of settings. Check out our full listing of workshops.
The Power of Dialogue: Constructive Conversations on Divisive Issues
April 14 – 16, 2016
$625 (discounts available)
Power of Dialogue is Public Conversations’ flagship workshop. This is a comprehensive “deep dive” into our time-tested method for transforming conflicted conversations about divisive issues.
Even within the most contentious issues or fraught situations, the right tools enable a community to foster understanding, restore relationships, and move forward. The Power of Dialogue is a highly interactive workshop that offers a widely applicable skill set for those with a range of experience levels. As a facilitator, you will learn how to create conversations that foster mutual understanding between groups and individuals divided by deep differences.
Learning Objectives:
- Recognize the signs of polarization and dynamics of conflict, including the effects of strong emotion on how we perceive and communicate with others.
- Practice ways of speaking, listening, and asking questions that foster sincere curiosity about an opponent and open up conversations.
- Understand the gap between a speaker’s intention and impact in communicating with others.
- Experience all elements of a structured dialogue about a divisive issue: preparing participants, planning, facilitating, and participating.
Results:
As a result of this taking this workshop, you will be equipped to:
- Facilitate a challenging conversation with openness and curiosity.
- Create a healthy space for multiple complex or conflicting views in a community, group or organization.
- Transform conversations that have been frozen in silence or inflamed by shouting, connecting a fractured group and allowing people to encounter one another in new ways.
- Repair damaged relationships and break the pattern of “us” vs. “them” dynamics.
- Plan and lead structured dialogue through careful planning and intentional meeting design.
- Discuss “taboo” issues, particularly around identity, with openness and curiosity.
Who might participate:
- Educators or advocates leading dialogues about divisive topics such as race, religion, or socioeconomic class
- Clergy and lay leaders who want to help their congregations address differences in constructive ways
- Therapists or social workers facilitating difficult conversations around issues of high emotion with patients
- Professors incorporating dialogue or conflict resolution techniques to their classrooms
- Alternative dispute resolution professionals looking to facilitate more constructive communication between people unable to hear each other.
Accreditation:
This workshop is approved for 18 clock hours for national certified counselors, Massachusetts licensed mental health counselors, MA licensed marriage and family therapists, and New Hampshire pastoral psychotherapists. Credits are accepted by the NH Board of Mental Health Practice for all licensed NH mental health professionals.
This program has been approved for 18 Social Work Continuing Education hours for relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. Collaborative of NASW and the Boston College and Simmons Schools of Social Work Authorization Number D 71160-1.
This activity has been approved for 12 (HR (General)) recertification credit hours toward California, GPHR, HRBP, HRMP, PHR and SPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HR Certification Institute website at www.hrci.org. The use of this seal is not an endorsement by the HR Certification Institute of the quality of the activity. It means that this activity has met the HR Certification Institute’s criteria to be pre-approved for recertification credit.
For more information, please contact us at training@publicconverations.org or 617-923-1216 ext. 10.
