Falling Up

In my last post, I put in writing that I was determined to make some progress on my final project this week.  Happily, progress has been made!  I still have a lot to work on, but here’s what’s happened:

1:  I finally finished my needs assessment, had it reviewed and am sending it out shortly.  You know, in all of my Adult Learner courses, we always talked about how important it is to know what the learner wants to gain from your efforts.  In my situation here, I’m faciitating some workshops soon where I won’t have the chance to assess my learners first.  I don’t know what their goals are or what they do or don’t know about conflict.  That’s tricky.  In fact, it’s MUCH harder than you’d think.  I am grateful for my professors drilling into my head the importance of needs assessments, because when I tried to plan without one, I really felt like I was drifting around without a clue as to what these people might want to discover about conflict.  Now, even though my exact learners are not completing the assessment in some cases, I hope to have enough feedback to tell me where many people stand in regards to conflict.  And, it’s a brief assessment, so in flexible presentations I can even use it at the beginning to engage in some learner-directed conversations.

Next, I finished several more books, including a great little book called “The Coward’s Guide to Conflict” by Tim Ursiny.  This is not a particularly scholarly book, and really I thought it seemed a little cheesy, but I was pleased as punch to find it, yes, an easy read, but surprisingly CHOCK full of information, questions to ask, skills to learn and teach, and much more.  If you are a bit afraid of dealing with conflict, you might check it out.  Plus, the best part of conflict resolution books is that they are loaded with these great anecdotes that many of us can relate to.  So it really was quite a helpful book both personally and for my workshop planning.

I also read a book on Extreme Facilitation (by Suzanne Ghais) that refreshed my memory on some of my previous coursework (program planning, consulting skills) as well as offered good insights for dealing with particularly sticky conflicts and being able to ‘beat the heat’ of the conflict.  Two very good reads this week!

Most excitingly, my supervisor has assigned me to 3 different workshops in the next month where I’ll be able to present my Conflict workshop.  Each opportunity is different in terms of size, length of the workshop, audience, and more, so I’ll be tweaking each one to provide the right content, activities and skills.  For 2 of the events, I’ll be working with someone else with more experience, but have been co-creating the plan for the event.  This has led to some great idea-sharing and mentoring that has helped immensely as I try to figure out if my ideas will work.  Always nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of, right? 

Even though I wasn’t done planning the workshop, having the deadlines has made it much easier to move forward and I’ve gotten almost all of the program design laid out and have found many new activities to try.  I still have a lot to do, but finally feel like I got passed the mental block (writer’s block?) I had hit.  Hooray for that.  In 2 posts or so from now, I should be able to give an update on the 1st of my 3 engagements…

This week, I am continuing to read some of the books I chose for this project.  Over the weekend I read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,  by Patrick Lencioni which is a quick read and a great story. It illustrates the challenges of being a leader (or facilitator) of a struggling team very accurately.  I’d be surprised if there’s anyone who could read it without finding parallels between the story and one’s own team experiences.   To go along with it, I got the facilitator’s guide to the book, which I’ve thumbed through in hopes of using some of the models and activities for my conflict workshop.   I’ve also started Building Conflict Competent Teams by Craig Runde and Tim Flanagan.  I still have several books to go.   I’m starting to hear some repeat info and I’m not sure I’ll need to read all of these books in their entirety, but honestly I really enjoy reading about this stuff!

I also must say that one of the most useful resources I’ve found is a blog by Tammy Lenski called “Conflict Zen”.  Lenski is currently blogging about the 7 habits of reaching your ‘conflict zen’ and her habits are very practical and easy to understand.  I highly recommend her.  I particularly enjoyed/learned from her post on kicking the criticism habit.  While offering constructive criticism can be…constructive, we also often get into the habit of offering criticism without good cause.  She points out how destructive this can be and often harms or ends relationships.  It’s a good series.  Check it out:  www.conflictzen.com.

Aside from reading, I’ve started to get my ducks in a row for my workshop.  I have to admit this is much harder than I thought.  I had a very linear way of thinking about this project, but I’m finding it hard to work in a linear fashion.  My intention was to review some theories and develop a basis for my workshop, then design the instructional strategies, then put together the “package” that is my product.  Instead, I am working on the final presentations first, after going around in circles with the other 2 items.  I will work on theories later.  I never liked theory much. 

The good news is that my boss at my internship has given me the go-ahead to present the workshop in late March and April, so I now have 2 engagements on the books!  I think the deadlines will help me make some decisions and move forward! I’ve begun my powerpoint (short and sweet!) and have started pouring over initiatives and activities to make the workshop engaging.  I haven’t found one that I love yet, but there is no shortage of options so I will keep looking.  By my next post, I hope to have completed some major steps.  There- I put it in writing, so there’s no going back now…