Creative Conflict Resolution Workshop
A skills-based multi-session workshop designed to build conflict competence through self-awareness, empathy, accountability, and hands-on practice.
ORGANIZATIONS AND SMALL GROUPS
Conflict resolution requires that we think creatively because there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will help us get through the difficulties of being in conflict. Thinking creatively and using our imagination allow us to move beyond the obvious, especially when it comes to addressing interpersonal disagreements that can make working together not only unpleasant, but difficult.
This workshop gives participants real, practical skills for working through conflict — reading what's actually driving a disagreement, negotiating when power and stakes aren't equal, and building self-awareness, empathy, and accountability the same way you'd build any other skill: through real guided practice. It also empowers them by teaching creative problem solving, critical thinking, adaptability, and communication skills. These are transferable skills that benefit workers and organizations across every industry.
How people treat each other — over small disagreements and serious ones alike — is what actually holds an organization together, not the org chart, not the mission statement on the wall. This multi-session, hands-on workshop gives your group the frameworks and practice to build that strength together, session by session.
THE CURRICULUM
01
Insights and Empathy
In this session, participants examine their own conflict histories and the patterns that shape how they respond when things get hard. We build a shared language for what conflict actually is, where it comes from, and why understanding the needs underneath it changes everything. The starting point for this session is self-awareness — how a person handles conflict doesn't stay personal — it shows up in the culture the moment they bring it to work. Developing insights into how we engage with conflict is useful for understanding how we think about and approach conflict in general. Empathy helps us see ourselves and each other in a different light. Bringing self-awareness and empathy together provides a way into difficult conversations that can be more productive, and lays the foundation for actual resolution.
02
Power and Culture
Conflict is not just a problem of individual behavior – it is shaped and frustrated by other factors including power and culture. We examine how power and culture — in the broader world and in your organization — shape conflict. Understanding the structural forces at play doesn't make conflict easier to avoid. It makes you better equipped to address it honestly. That analysis is intersectional from the start: race, gender, tenure, title, and other dimensions of identity don't shape a room separately, they shape it together, all at once. Seeing that clearly doesn't assign blame — it gives everyone a more accurate picture of what's actually happening, and why.
03
Feedback and Accountability
Giving and receiving feedback is a feature of every workplace. Knowing when and how to offer constructive feedback, and how to solicit it, can make a real difference to how people work together. This session focuses on the informal feedback that takes place between people at all levels of an organization because this is where misunderstanding often happens. We also explore what accountability looks like in the context of the workplace, and practice these skills using low-stakes exercises that equip participants with tools they can draw from and build upon when faced with real situations.
04
Developing Agreements and Sticking to Them
What makes agreements stick? This session uses that question as a starting point for cultivating skills to address the real underlying problems that often get sidestepped in order to end the discomfort that accompanies conflict — a discomfort that's harder to sit with at work, since the loss of income is the unnamed pressure lurking behind every other one. An agreement is not the end of conflict, but the beginning of a process that has to be attended to or it loses its meaning. We look at what those conversations look like, how to define terms, and what mechanisms exist to help everyone actually stick to them. Building communication skills that help us through the muck is how we move from agreements that fall apart to agreements that stick.
MODULAR OPTION
Need one session, not the full program?
Each session in the Creative Conflict Resolution Workshop is designed to stand alone. Start with one session, two, or any combination — and add more when you're ready.
WHO IT’S FOR
Staff across all levels of an organization. From entry-level to senior staff, everyone who's actually part of an organization's day-to-day operations, not just the people formally responsible for managing others.
New team leads. People stepping into a leadership role for the first time, learning to navigate conflict from a new vantage point — not just experiencing it, but now responsible for helping others move through it too.
Community members. People building these same skills for the relationships and spaces they navigate outside a single workplace — not tied to one employer or program.
Job seekers and workers in workforce development programs. People training for skilled roles that don't require a four-year degree, who need real conflict resolution and communication skills alongside their technical training.
People for whom steady employment isn't a given. Participants who benefit from direct, practical practice with conflict and communication before they're navigating it for the first time under real workplace pressure.
Every skill here is one you can start using right away.
Self-Awareness Skills
Reading your own conflict patterns and history; identifying the needs underneath a disagreement, not just the positions on the table. Cultivating emotional competency around your own reaction to conflict.
Interpersonal Skills
Practicing empathy — seeing yourself and others in a different light; building a shared language for naming and talking about conflict; giving constructive feedback; soliciting and receiving feedback openly. Practicing active listening and problem solving.
Analytical Skills
Reading what's actually driving a disagreement, not just the surface issue; recognizing how power shapes a conflict, in the room and across the organization; reading a room through an intersectional lens — race, gender, tenure, and title shaping things together, not separately.
Strategic Skills
Negotiating when power and stakes aren't equal; defining clear terms in an agreement; building follow-through mechanisms so agreements actually hold; sustaining and repairing agreements over time.
Accountability Skills
Practicing accountability in workplace situations; communicating through discomfort, admitting when you’re wrong and accepting responsibility, and engaging in building and re-building relationships.
Want this tailored for
your organization?
The Creative Conflict Resolution Workshop can be adapted to your specific context, your group’s composition, and what you're actually navigating.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Yes. Each session is designed to work on its own, so you can start with one, two, or any combination, and add more when you're ready.
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Sessions run with up to 20 participants. To allow room for meaningful practice and debriefing.
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All levels — this workshop is built for staff across an organization, from entry-level to senior, along with new team leads and community members navigating conflict outside a single workplace.
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In-person, on-site at your organization.
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Each workshop is tailored to the organization and people in it. While the general structure remains the same, the facilitation, the exercises, and conversations will look different each time.
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Yes, and often that's the more powerful approach. Training works best when it's connected to a broader culture or OD effort. I'm happy to design a more integrated engagement.
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Clients determine the next steps. If you’d like to bring me in for a follow-up session or conversation, or would like me to conduct a post-training assessment, I’m happy to discuss these options at any point.
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Conflict isn't neutral ground. Everyone who walks into a hard conversation brings their own history with conflict, their position in the room, and the power and culture around them — whether they're aware of it or not. Real competence starts with naming that, not skipping past it.
That's why this workshop opens with self-awareness — how you show up shapes what happens next. It moves into power and culture, because the room itself carries weight before anyone says a word. And it builds toward feedback, accountability, and agreements, because those only hold up once the first two are in place.
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I don't build this workshop around "intelligence" as a measure of anything — emotional or otherwise. Intelligence framing sorts people into a hierarchy that rewards some people and penalizes others. It sets up a binary between those who are considered “smart” and everyone else. That’s not just inaccurate, it’s actively unhelpful when the goal is building skills people can practice and grow.
Conflict competence is relational – it plays out between people, shaped by who’s present, what power is at play, and what’s actually at stake. Treating conflict as solely an individual problem strips out the thing that makes it real — relationships. Self-awareness, empathy, and accountability are built the way any relational skill is built – through real guided practice with other people.
Additionally, emotional intelligence leans on one narrow, culturally specific way of expressing and reading emotion. People who process or communicate differently — including many neurodivergent and disabled people — get read as lacking a skill they actually have. That's not a competency gap. That's a mismatch between how someone shows up and what a test expects to see.
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Most negotiation training treats agreement-building as a technical exercise — name the interests, generate options, point to objective criteria. What that leaves out is power: whoever has less of it in the room often doesn't get to name their real interest in the first place, and "objective criteria" can just encode the same inequity being negotiated around. This workshop treats power and repair as part of the work from the start, not an afterthought.
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Pricing is scoped per project and the engagement models are listed on the Training & OD page. Reach out for a quote specific to your organization.