Effectively handling conflict requires understanding the person you’re in conflict with. That understanding is dependent on listening well to them and showing that you’re hearing what they’re sharing. In this workshop, you will learn and practice two listening skills: Active Listening and Reflection.
Active Listening is a way of listening that demonstrates with non-verbal and verbal cues that you are paying attention. It is a practice that invites the listener to quiet their own thoughts and planned responses so that they can better hear what the other is communicating.
Reflection is another practice that can be used to demonstrate that you’ve heard what someone has said. When you reflect during a conversation, you verbalize what you’ve heard the other person say. This can give that person an opportunity to add to their comments, or even correct something that the listener didn’t hear clearly.
With conflict skills, practice is essential to being able to use them so we give ample time for everyone to get a feel for these listening skills.
In organizations, conflict can build over time because of long histories of people feeling like they’re not understood. These simple skills can rebuild that trust, with regular use showing people that, in fact, you are paying attention to them and care what they have to say.
This workshop is for
Service providers: These skills will help you connect better with your clients and get clear about what they need.
Leadership: Hear feedback from outside and within the organization to make improvements.
All staff members: Build the skills to avoid misunderstandings with coworkers and quickly handle conflicts that arise.
Learning Objectives
Identify signs of active listening
Build active listening skills
Learn how and why reflection works
Build reflection skills
**This is a participatory workshop because these skills are best learned through practice: as the person showing active listening and reflection, and as the person receiving these. You will learn different things from experiencing both sides of these ways to listen.
Event Details
This event will have AI captions via Zoom’s transcription function. If you need professional captioning, or have another accessibility accommodation, please
email MCN’s program assistant with your request at least two weeks prior to the start of the event. Although we will attempt to meet all accessibility requests, late request may not be fulfilled.
Speaker Information
Kirby Broadnax is a facilitator from occupied and unceded Haudenosaunee land (Cleveland, OH) who co-creates spaces that center relationship, seek justice, and support healing. She has a master’s degree in conflict transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Kirby is interested in community trauma healing and ways that connection to the environment supports our individual and collective well-being. She is co-owner of Stone & Water Collaborative, LLC, which offers conflict support to groups working to advance social justice. Kirby brings an eye for detail, curiosity, empathy, and thoughtfulness to her practice.
Yasmiene Mabrouk has been facilitating conflicts since they were in elementary school! Through Stone & Water Collaborative, they offer conflict coaching, workshops and circle process. They believe we should all have the tools to handle conflicts better. Yasmiene has over seven years of training and practice in non-violent communication, a process for engaging with oneself and others with empathy. They use Restorative & Transformative Justice and Arts-Based Embodied Practices in their work and they are trauma-Informed. Yasmiene has in M.A. in conflict transformation.