Ch'nook Alumni - Continuing Education

Conflict Resolution for Leaders

In Conflict Resolution for Leaders, you will learn key strategies for dealing with workplace conflict including applied skills to effectively participate in collaborative, interest-based, conflict engagement and resolution. Assess your personal style and approach to conflict and practice new skills for managing conflict on both individual and team levels.

Program Content:

Sources and types of conflict, insights from brain science and psychology that help resolve conflict
Alternative ways of responding to conflict: how do you tend to respond, how do others respond differently, benefits of alternative approaches
Managing conflict resolution: defining positions and interests, framing and defining conflicts, developing an effective roadmap for resolution, facilitating the conflict management process
Communication skills in conflict resolution: obstacles to communication, shifting from confrontational to collaborative language, listening, empathy and understanding, asking the right questions
Making conflict outcomes positive: the power of motivations, avoiding/deescalating emotional responses, managing difficult conversations

The program focuses on the individual dynamics of conflict resolution, including conflicts between managers and workers as well as between co-workers. It does not cover legal or contractual conflicts or broader societal conflicts like Indigenous land claims.

Course dates

Conflict Resolution for Leaders is a three-part online series. Students enrolled in the course must commit to attending all three dates:

October 6, 2022 (6:00 – 8:30 pm PST, online)
October 13, 2022 (6:00 – 8:30 pm PST, online)
October 20, 2022 (6:00 – 8:30 pm PST, online)

Course fees

Thanks to the generous support of Ch’nook donors, including Ovintiv Inc., Conflict Resolution for Leaders is FREE for course participants.

Registration details

This three-part online course is open to all Ch’nook alumni (i.e. Aboriginal Management Program, Ch’nook Scholars, Métis Business Management Program, and Accelerated Business Program students). Sixteen students will be accepted into the program.

To ensure fairness, sixteen names will be drawn via lottery. If your name is selected, you will be offered a seat in the course. If you are interested in attending and can make ALL class dates, please submit your name and contact information below under “REGISTER NOW” for the class seat draw. Selected students will be notified at the beginning of October, 2022.

Who is this for?

Indigenous business professionals, managers, team leaders and supervisors responsible for maintaining a healthy and productive workplace.

Benefits for you

Increase your awareness of how you respond to conflict and adapt your conflict response style to particular situations
Identify behaviors and language that tend to provoke conflict
Recognize powerful unstated conflicts and make them explicit, so they can be treated
Use time-tested third-party techniques to assist others in resolving conflicts
Structure a conflict management process in ways that reduce or resolve conflict

Professor

Trevor Sones

Faculty

Trevor is an Adjunct faculty member at the UBC Sauder School of Business, where he teaches human and organizational behavior, conflict resolution, leadership and communication. He has also been a Mediator with the BC Labour Relations Board for more than 14 years, helping parties negotiate solutions to large, high-profile conflicts. He is particularly skilled at handling interactions between senior leaders on politically sensitive issues involving those under their leadership.