Falling Up

It’s been a while since I’ve written for my blog. I didn’t post over all of winter break, and I’ve gone almost a month into the spring semester without writing as well. Tonight, I decided that the blog might help me clear some cobwebs out of my head. You see, this is my last semester of school! I will graduate (let’s pray) this May. For my final semester, I am doing a project which will count as the equivalent of my thesis. I am doing this project through an internship I’ve gotten for the semester. My plan for the project was to create a conflict resolution workshop that was experiential in nature. By experiential, I mean that I hope to draw on my work as a teambuilding facilitator and create a workshop that is not a lecture, but an interactive experience (tying in, of course, many of the things I have learned in my Adult Learning classes!).

So far, my internship has been interesting. I am working with a company that does training, facilitation and consulting for businesses. My role is varied. Some days I help with the logistics, setting up for trainings, cleaning up, assisting participants, etc. Other days I’ve gotten to sit in on some meetings with clients, seeing how programs are designed specifically for clients’ needs. I will get to do a bit of facilitation as time goes on. But the main part of my internship will be creating a conflict resolution module. This was my original idea for a final project, but as it turns out, my supervisor is interested in having a conflict resolution module available at the center as well! This means that if I am able to successfully create this module/workshop, I will get a chance to practice running it with some clients.

I chose this project, by the way, because ultimately I’d like to find myself doing consulting or training. I like the teambuilding/organizational development side of conflict resolution because it attempts to address issues BEFORE the conflict, as opposed to mediation, which is after the fact. I’m all in favor of preventing the conflict whenever possible! Also, I love organizing and planning things, so creating this workshop also fulfills that desire.

So what are the cobwebs? Well, I am working somewhat independently on this, and I’m having a hard time figuring out where to start. Some questions that I am researching and writing about are: what do people want to know about conflict? What do they need “training” in and what skills or info is useful? What theoretical approach do I want to take? I am re-reading some of my CR books from my 1st year of grad school, and I am beginning to find answers to these questions. The lack of structure (no formal classroom time) means I have to pace myself appropriately, especially here at the beginning, to make sure I complete everything in time.

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that based on the little red dots on my cluster map, people DO occasionally find this blog, and hopefully they read it and aren’t just mistakenly directed here. So, I am asking any of you readers to consider the following, and post me a comment. If you had to attend a workshop or training on conflict resolution, what would you want to know? What skills would you want to learn? What would make it useful and worthwhile? If you are in fact a CR practitioner, mediator or facilitator, any advice you have would be helpful too. Any thoughts are appreciated.

Sincerely, your typical struggling grad student…Carmen