SKILLS WORKSHOP:
Process Design and Implementation

This workshop has no powerpoint—you will spend most of your time practicing the skills associated with mediation and facilitation. And playing a few games. The skills and philosophy are based on my experience teaching and practicing mediation as well as the latest research in collective intelligence process design. My professional background includes working with community mediation programs in Baltimore and Chicago as well as customer service training and management.

(3 hours) Part 1: Strategic Communication Skills for Work, Family, and Relationships

At the heart of mediation are communication skills designed to build understanding and make people feel heard.  This is useful in meetings, healthy in relationships, and a great toolkit for having conversation with strangers—or on dates. The core skillset is based on structured communication, which breaks conversation into component elements such as interests, emotions, topics/issues, positions, and solutions. We will practice using this skill both when “speaking to be heard” and also when “listening to understand.”

(3 hours) Part 2: Mediation as a Process of Facilitated Decision-making

This workshop uses both experiential learning and lecture-style seminar to provide a broad overview of mediation as a process, using this paradigm as a foundation for discussing decision-making more generally. This workshop offers a crash-course in all things mediation, with the main goal of teaching how the core communication skills of strategic communication and open-ended questions can be used to guide a group in building mutual understanding, brainstorming ideas, and choosing a course of action.

ABOUT ME

I began mediating in 2008, and have trained mediators and taught groups including volunteers, professionals, police, and graduate students in skills including communication and conflict resolution. I was first trained and certified by Community Mediation Maryland and I am currently a volunteer mediator with the Chicago Center for Conflict Resolution. I received my PhD in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013 and completed my postdoctoral fellowship at the Kellogg School of Management. I am now an Assistant Professor at the UCL School of Management, University College London where I teach negotiation and research group decision-making. My research has been published in venues including the Harvard Business Review, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ask me about brunch.