Conflict Coaching
Mediation & Facilitation
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"While everyone encounters conflict throughout their lives, not everyone is equipped with the tools to deal with conflict in an effective and healthy way. Conflict requires us to be OK with the fact that (1) we are feeling angry or hurt and (2) someone in our life is also angry and hurt. It also requires us to be able to identify what we're feeling, understand it, and put those feeling into words. Having these invaluable emotion skills doesn't come easily..."
- Dr. Jonice Webb *
Find this article and more in the Resources section - available to all Reset Mediation clients!
When we are immersed in a conflict, it can be extremely challenging to understand our needs or why we are acting a certain way in the moment. We all need time, space and safety to effectively problem solve - particularly if we want to implement new and unfamiliar solutions.
Conflict coaching provides you with the space and support to work through a particular problem, while developing and practicing skills required to deal with conflict in general.
Together we will look at a conflict or relationship that you are struggling with and work on identifying your feelings and the underlying needs and values that are creating those feelings. We will look at past examples of conflict to see if there are reactions and habits that you or the other person frequently rely on that are preventing successful communication or decision-making between you. Given what we know about the situation and the other person, we will figure out the best way to put your feelings, needs and requests into words and we will practice communicating in a way that the other person involved in the conflict can better understand what it is you are seeking. I will also be your sounding board as you work to discover what the other person is (or is not) communicating to you.
Conflict coaching is always part of the mediation process offered through Reset Mediation & Legal Services. As a mediator, I will get a sense through individual coaching, and then through observation during the mediation, of the unmet needs and communication challenges both people face. We might flow between joint mediation sessions and individual coaching sessions multiple times before reaching the point that barriers to communication have been managed, and information is free flowing.
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You can benefit from conflict coaching, even if the other person does not agree to participate in mediation. With conflict coaching, the focus is on you. It is about what you need and what you can do to make sure that your needs are met. Too often we become fixated on what another person has to do to make things right, and it can make us feel trapped and powerless to improve our situation. Similar to a mediation, the coaching process will be strengthened as you practice new techniques and discuss the results with your coach.
By investing some time and space to gain perspective, and making a few adjustments to your communication approach, you can prompt incredible improvements to your relationships! Even if the other person is not receptive or willing to make any changes, through coaching, you will gain information and insight into the conflict (and the relationship) that will help you make well-informed decisions on how to move forward.
When an ‘Anishinaubae’ says that someone is telling the truth, he says ‘w’daeb-awae’. It is at the same time a philosophical proposition that, in saying, a speaker casts his words and his voice only as far as his vocabulary and his perception will enable him. In so doing the tribe was denying that there was an absolute truth; that the best a speaker could achieve and a listener expect was the highest degree of accuracy. Somehow that one expression ‘w’daeb-awae’ sets the limits of a single statement as well as setting limits on all speech.
- Basil H Johnston
“One Generation from Extinction” in Terry Goldie & Daniel David Moses, eds, An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English