A Report and Learning for Everyone
How to trust yourself, when what you’re handling feels threatening and you can’t leave.
Background
The approach made was for a daylong workshop, which would offer tools to frontline staff, which could be used to defuse, de-escalate and manage difficult situations. The desire to provide this course had been discussed over a considerable time period, and coincided with an increase in the number of reported ‘conflict incidents’ between public sector employees and members of the general public.
The Participants and The Workshop
45 participants drawn from across the department, delivering different roles and representing different levels of seniority attended one of four daylong workshops. The workshop was participant rather than topic centred, and followed an Experiential Learning model using elements of Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Psychology.
What this means within the workshop is that each participant brings their own experiences of the topic under discussion, here conflict and difficult situations, into the workshop. During which they are able to reflect on these experiences and what they learned and offer this knowledge and understanding to the group. Woven around this peer-to-peer learning are techniques and approaches that open each participant to different ways of looking at, approaching and managing conflict. While the facilitator offers structure the participants, to a great extend choose content.
The Participants and The Learning
A core theme of participant feedback was appreciation at having time and space, in a ‘safe environment’ to share challenges and discuss different ways of handling difficult situations in a productive and healthy way. The power of this process witnessed a team of three strangers guiding a fourth through a more productive approach to an on-going conflict, and another group supporting an individual who doubted that they had dealt with a sensitive situation with the right degree of kindness and compassion.
Sharing observations, during role-play, however small, allowed several participants to leave with a keener sense of self-awareness, and some tools to let it flourish.
Regardless of seniority or role, participants all left with at least one fresh insight whether round the vocabulary they use when managing conflict, their body language when experiencing stress or an understanding of how challenging they find being non-judgemental when dealing with someone else’s anger.
During the course of the four workshops discussion topics came up which are worth highlighting, regardless of whether they are already known or acknowledged. While the workshops were directed at challenges with the public quite naturally general discussions about handling internal conflicts arose. Themes such as intergenerational difference, personal autonomy, and responsibility without power were key.
Sharing the Learning – Everyone Wins
Professional experience and the voice of participants felt that mixed level experiential learning workshops should be made available to every member of the department, regardless of role or status. It is believed such a process allows for several learning outcomes, which can have on-going and long-lasting effects: greater self-awareness and empathy, recognition and utilisation of personal strengths during challenging situations, stronger alignment between policy and practice, collaborative and cooperative solutions to recurring challenges, and a more rooted appreciation of each other’s role, skills and responsibilities.