Falling Up

Well, the last week or so has been very eventful!  To start with, I had a very productive meeting with my advisor, who gave some great advice on how to continue with my project.  We also talked at length about me developing my Philosophy of Practice for these workshops, which I think will help me immensely in terms of the issues I was having about designing content for people I don’t know.  Thanks for your help, Dr. C!

I also ran 2 more workshops, with interesting results.  The first was for a daylong workshop for Administrative staff:  office managers, admin assistants and folks in similar positions.  The day was designed to offer workshops that are relevant to those types of positions.  My topic was Office Conflict.  It went… interestingly.  So far with these workshops, I feel like I’ve done really well at the beginning, great at the end, and the middle is sort of….flat.  Not bad, just not as dynamic as the beginning and end tend to be.  Unfortunately, the middle is usually where the most content is being revealed, so this is a bad place to fall flat.  I have noticed that if the audience is a quieter group, the problem is more noticeable.  With my more active audiences, the middle flows just fine.  But I’m still working on making sure my plan keeps folks engaged throughout the entire length of time.

Also, I had a situation that I am positive I practiced for in Consulting Skills (and in a counseling class as well!)— the participant who WOULDN’T STOP TALKING!!!  When I realized that she was going to go on forever, I almost chuckled as I remembered what we covered in class about cutting people off politly.  However, my efforts were in vain!  My boss even tried to cut her off, but to no avail.  This is a large reason that the middle segment of this workshop seemed dull- it was all about her.  I began to realize that she expected me to resolve her conflict during my 1 hour workshop, which clearly I could not do.  She definitely monopolized that part of the session, and it brought down the whole workshop.  My evaluations even reflect this; several participants noted that I should’ve cut her off sooner and kept everyone involved.  So, my failure to effectively make her stop her ranting steer the conversation back to a central point really had a profound effect.  I was a bit disappointed in that one, but next time I will be VERY blunt (and polite and kind, of course…)

After that, I led 4 sessions with high school seniors at a local all-girls high school.  These 4 sessions were interesting… again I noted that the workshops definitely varied in mood depending on the blah-ness (that is a technical term, right??) of the girls.  I tailored the topic to what I thought would be useful for graduating seniors:  communication skills that can help prevent conflicts in college.  We talked about working on group projects in schools and the idea of creating team charters (I channeled the Stone Monkeys, of course- gotta give a shout out to the greatest school project group EVER!), and issues that could arise between roommates.  Overall, it went well.  After the first session, I realized that my 2nd and 3rd activities did not flow very well.  I figured out that they weren’t really meshing well with each other, and my use of the 4 I’s (J. Vella) wasn’t quite right.  I adjusted for the next group, and found that it flowed much better.  Essentially, I had tried to introduce some “technical” information, then asked them to consider some scenarios, but those 2 activities had very little in common and the segue was poor.  I changed the first activity to draw in some of their own experiences, and after that, the scenarios went much better.  Slowly, I am getting better at this!

This Saturday, I am observing a workshop for youth that the Richmond Peace Education Center is hostng.  Next week, I have another workshop for staff at a local retirement/senior living facility.  It will be my last one before my project is due, although I have another on May 6th.  I still have a lot of writing to do, but am feeling confident about the end result.  As an added bonus, my internship boss told me today that he will consider me his ‘official’ conflict resolution consultant from now on, meaning that post-graduation, I will still get to run workshops!  That’s great news and very flattering.  I will give my boss credit (albeit anonymously) for being very supportive of me during this learning process.

Lastly, I want to say (in case any of you read this) that I got to stop by the Change Strategies class last week, and it was SO nice to see my old classmates!  I miss you guys!  If I can make a pitch, I have to say that the Adult Learning program at VCU is one of the most nurturing and supportive environments I have ever been a part of.  I was glad to have a few minutes to chat with everyone.

Stay tuned as I finish up this project and try not to have a mental breakdown doing it…. 8 days till it’s due…!!!

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

Well friends, I have now received 2 completed questionnaires and have held 2 interviews for my consulting project.  I have 2 more interviews set up, and am still waiting to hear back from the rest.  I have already learned a LOT about consulting and about the “problem” I am facing.

In my second interview, I spoke to a staff member who is fairly high up on the food chain, so to speak.  We chatted for about an hour, and from him I gained two things:  1: some insight into Consulting.  2:  His own agenda for me.  First, he was quite open about understanding what I was experiencing as a new consultant, and offered me some good advice as we talked.  Actually, it threw me off a bit at first, because I wasn’t trying to act like a student imitating a consultant, I was trying to just be the consultant.  But it felt a bit like a dress rehearsal, because at times he would interject to offer his thoughts on how I was consulting.  While unnerving, it ended up being very helpful, and I did appreciate his insight, especially because I have a lot more interviews to do! Specifically, I had a hard time not mentioning things others had said already.  Not in the sense that I was gossiping, but part of me felt like I should connect things that people said.  In this particular case, the person was saying very similar things as the person I’d interviewed earlier that day.  So I would note these things as being shared by the other person.  For the record, they were positive things.  I certainly know better than to repeat negative information!  Either way, my interviewee correctly informed me that I might refrain from referring to others’ interviews in the future.   This was a bit embarrassing, and I knew what I was doing in saying what I said, but his point is still well taken. 

The other point he made that was helpful was in terms of the problem itself.  Now, he was just my 2nd interview, so who knows what will come up in later ones.  But his opinion is that, while I am tasked with examining the relationship between X and Y, it may be that there is more happening within sub-cultures of Y.  This theory sounds likely based on the little bit I’ve discovered so far.  If I continue to see this idea come up in interviews, it will definitely put a twist on what the contracting clients “know” the problem to be and how I present recommendations.

Lastly, this particular client seemed to have his own interests in having me as a consultant.  He questioned whether there wasn’t room for me to work on several other issues within the organization that don’t seem to be related to the current one.  Towards the end, he mentioned that if I encounter trouble in tying his ideas in to my recommendations, to let him know.  To me, that seemed strange; I’m not sure that his suggestions would factor into my recommendations at all, since they are on a completely different topic.  I am happy to say that I think I responded authentically.   I noted his ideas, stated that I did not see that they fit well with this current project, but that they certainly sounded like topics that could use some fruitful discussion. 

Dealing with a higher-up staff person early in the process really made me consider what kinds of information these people can offer. While they may not be privvy to the intimate details of the conflict, they are quite handy at providing big-picture, contextual information that helps frame the conflict in terms of something larger.  I am looking forward to the next few chats as I continue to flesh out my understanding of the issues.

I’m home from Austin now, happy to be driving on familiar roads again, although already I feel like the conference has made an impact.   I’ve got a to-do list a mile long of ideas, issues, jobs and opportunities that I want to check out.  There was even a workshop on blogging! I didn’t get to attend it, but I spoke with the presenters and will be linking their blogs to mine soon.  It was altogether a very positive experience. 

I read Chapters 5 and 6 of Block this morning.  It was a bit of reiteration from the last chapters, I felt, but he does really drive home the point of the importance of contracting, and contracting well!  At the end of Chapter 6, he gives an example of a co-worker asking another for help, and the latter does a great job of constantly clarifying and re-negotiating his role in the process.  The dialogue made me realize that I do get sucked into the “pair of hands” role occasionally, without even realizing it.  Block makes a good point that it may seem whiny and badgering to keep reminding the client of your role, but it is essential if you really want to “walk the talk” for your client and remain true to acting in the same way you are recommending to him.

I spoke to my “contact client” for my consulting project this morning, and it looks like this will be a good project for me based on my conflict resolution background and my teambuilding experience.  I am thrilled to finally have an opportunity to use some of the skills I have learned over the last year.  I think this will be a really positive experience for me… check back, and I’ll continue to reflect as the project progresses.