Half Day Seminar, 21st March 2012: Working Professionally with High Conflict and Strong Emotions

Conflict is a part of being human and strong emotions have a destabilising effect on others both in the workplace and in your private life!.  This half-day seminar looks at the nature of conflict and how it can be resolved in more human way.

The workshop will help you:

·         Understand conflict and your own attitude to conflict

·         Recognise and effectively manage high conflict personalities

·         Understand the psychology driving challenging

personalities

·         Give practical guidance on how to deal with high conflict and strong emotions using actor based case studies

You will also learn:

·         How to spot conflict and the behaviours inherent with conflict

·         How to move people from focusing on a fixed position to looking at mutual interests

·         The stages of conflict and how to deal with these appropriately 
·         How to 'fix' conflict in your public and private life!

The session is practical and eye-opening; you will develop skills and take away practical tips to put straight into practice.

Who should attend?

HR, lawyers, senior managers and anyone who would like to learn how to deal withworplace and private-life  conflict better.

Date: Wednesday 21 March 2012

Registration and Coffee 9.30pm

Workshop 10 -1pm

Venue: In Tuition, 210 Borough High Street, London, SE1 1JX

www.intuition.co.uk

RSVP: Jacky@jackylewis.com

COST:  £125

Early bird discount 

The Facilitators

Siobhan Elliott

Siobhan qualified as a solicitor in 1993. She worked for Linklaters and DLA before joining MCI WorldCom in 2000. There, she was legal director responsible for all employment related matters ac Siobhan Elliott

Siobhan qualified as a solicitor in 1993. She worked for Linklaters and DLA before joining MCI WorldCom in 2000. There, she was legal director responsible for all employment related matters across Europe.  Siobhan now works as a mediator and trainer, training in all aspects of employment law, diversity and management skills and mediation. 

Jacky Lewis

Jacky is an existential psychotherapist, therapeutic supervisor, workplace and family mediator and Resolution Collaborative Law Family Consultant. Her field of special interest is how psychological ideas can inform legal and corporate best-practice. She is used as an expert mediator by The Official Solicitor and has a busy ADR practice.  She is a visiting psychotherapy faculty lecturer. She has contributed chapters on Mediation and on Workplace Coaching to two books to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in Spring 2012.  

Siobhan and Jacky enjoy working together as trainers and busy mediators.  Delegates will benefit from the different across Europe.  Siobhan now works as a mediator and trainer, training in all aspects of employment law, diversity and management skills and mediation. 

Booking Form: Working Effectively with High Conflict and Strong Emotions

 

21 March 2012

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Cheques payable to: Training Matters London

Sent to 17 Woodside Avenue, London, N6 4SP

BACS payments: Barclays Bank, A/C 80734098

Ref: Your Name; Sort Code: 20-29-37

Lowering the divorce temperature: 6 things lawyers should consider!

The BBC website says that January is ‘commonly acknowledged’ as the busiest month for 
 starting divorce proceedings.  This is not news to lawyers and other professionals working in the relationship field.  Shaky partnerships find it difficult to weather the intensity of togetherness at Christmas.  

People enter into a marriage or Civil Partnership with the expectation that it will be ‘til death do us part’, and these days it seems this is a redundant clause.  Marriage isn’t just any old contract and for many people divorce feels like the end of their hopes and dreams- the death of what ‘should have been’.   For lawyers, adopting a more insightful approach to dissolving a marriage or Civil Partnership may be a helpful new way forward.    

In terms of social psychology, divorce generates the broadest range of passions, and not only in the two protagonists involved. Divorce is an emotional rollercoaster that lawyers and other professionals also have to negotiate. Sometimes the passion or doggedness of the legal team gets in the way of professional clear-headedness.  This is not merely some dry commercial partnership contract that’s being dissolved, this is human lives.  The psychology of change, choice and loss wrapped up in the ending of a marriage can inflame the process to incendiary proportions.  If solicitors and other professionals involved are perceptive and manage (perhaps talk down) the high emotions that can repeatedly be triggered in the process then things may go more smoothly.  Often litigation seems like the only way forward, but going to Court on child-contact matters for example, is an unenviable task.  In addition, litigants are rarely happy with the Court route; they had wanted the judge ‘to hear’ and are upset when they can’t have their say, they find that the proceedings dry and impersonal.  Children matters could be settled so much more calmly in mediation or through round-table meetings.   

Here are some psychological insights that will help professionals to keep the divorce temperature low and their reputations higher:

In the ending of a marriage or Civil Partnership there is often the leaver and the left.  So think about:

1. The leaver:

She has ‘left’ the marriage some while ago in her imagination and is future-focused. She is planning a new, more liberated life.  Being out of the marriage is a relief for her and holds more charms than being in it.

2. The Left:

The responses in the person being ‘left’ can often be those of bitterness, shame, despair and the desire for revenge.  His feelings of self-esteem may have been severely challenged and the response to this can be to try in every way to restore the balance of power using any ‘weapon’ at his disposal.

3. Denial:

Couples are often in denial that arguing over their child contact is damaging; they are blind in their miscommunication, hurt and despair.  One partner trying to wound the other by refusing, or challenging, contact can cause immeasurable psychological harm to a child at whatever age.  Fighting over 30 minutes of contact time or whether the child will be allowed to meet daddy’s new partner can fill up several of the solicitor’s lever-arch files without resolution unless the underlying psychology is addressed.

4. Professional ‘blindness’:

Solicitors are convinced of the rightness of their client’s case. Some find themselves getting overly involved and will end up ‘fanning the flames’ of the process rather than professionally resolving it.  One example is the legal one-line ‘snotty’ letter in the divorce process which elicits an equally terse one-line response, getting  the couple nowhere….

5. Humanising the professional encounter:

If solicitors lifted the phone to each other to introduce themselves and have a short introductory conversation when they are first instructed it could have a transformatory effect on the whole case and set a better example of behaviour to the couple.

6. Encouragement:

If ‘reluctant’ parties in the divorce can be encouraged see that endings can also be beginnings the situation could look very different.

Lawyers place great store by good client care and the firm’s reputation is everything; it’s useful to remember that a satisfied client will tell his friends, but a dissatisfied client will tell the world!

Jacky Lewis

www.mediationmatterslondon.co.uk