Defusing Hostile Meetings and Other Difficult Encounters
Conflict often is unavoidable, but how we handle it can make all the difference in the outcome of a challenging meeting or encounter. Preparation is key, and that includes understanding how a meeting or other situation can go bad in the first place, and then employing effective strategies and tools to defuse hostility and avert further conflict.
During this highly interactive half-or full-day course, participants will:
- Review the principles of effective public participation.
- Explore why conflict occurs and how to recognize the types and level of conflict likely to occur at a public meeting or other stakeholder encounter.
- Learn how to prevent conflict from escalating and regain control over the situation.
- Practice harnessing the power of body language to convey calm and confidence – even in combative situations.
- Gain skills to recognize and handle specific types of disruptive individuals.
- Develop ways to cope with the personal discomfort that can accompany conflict.
Participants will be contacted a few weeks prior to the course and asked to bring examples of challenging meeting encounters to share with the class. The course will include videos of effective and not-so-effective stakeholder meetings and several group exercises. The full-day training will include on-camera role-playing exercises featuring real-life meeting situations. Each participant will receive a customized “Defusing Difficult Meetings and Other Difficult Encounters” handbook. A master DVD of the on-camera sessions will be provided to the coordinator of the full-day course for duplication. The workshop can accommodate up to 25 attendees.