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CONFLICT
transformation
FOR FACILITATORS

Can conflict be an opportunity
for change and growth?

  • Four live online 90 min sessions.
  • First session is on Friday April, 11th 2025, 10.00am to 11.30am.
  • Costs £275.
  • Spaces limited to 12 max for a small group experience that emphasises peer learning between sessions.
  • Last session is on Friday July 11th, 2025.

BY THE END OF FOUR SESSIONS, YOU WILL HAVE:

  • A deeper understanding of your own response to conflict.
  • Explored the theory and practice of conflict transformation.
  • Looked at a particular situation in your own practice.
  • Tools to analyse and transform conflict situations.
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CONFLICT tRANSFORMATION FOR FACILITATORS

This short online course is for people who regularly hold space for others, supporting others to navigate complex, purposeful work in multi-disciplinary teams.

  • You might call yourself a facilitator, designer, consultant, or coach.
  • You design and run collaborative workshops and sessions. Perhaps you use design thinking, co-design approaches, strategic frameworks or systems thinking – or perhaps you have another framework you use to shape your work. The exact framework(s) you use doesn’t matter so much.
  • You have already noticed discomfort and conflict in your work and its influence on you and the people you hold space for.
  • You’re not sure if you’re working with the energy created by the conflict in the best way. You want to get more skilled at how you hold and steward this kind of energy.
  • You are interested in power dynamics and their relationship with privilege, and you are aware of their presence in the work that you do.*

*Note that this programme doesn’t explicitly teach power dynamics, though there is space to consider it alongside the conflict transformation practice in examples that you bring.

what it IS.

  • A space to bring your experiences and observations. We will apply what we learn to situations you have experienced to make the learning as live and applied as possible.
  • Learning how to use conflict transformation, embracing conflict as a potentially constructive force, restoring relationships.

What it’s not.

  • Purely theoretical.
  • Learning about conflict resolution. Conflict resolution focuses on solving the problems that lead to a particular conflict, and is different to conflict transformation.
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WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

  • Understand the practice of conflict transformation and when it is useful in facilitation situations.
  • Deepen your understanding of active listening, and how to use different ways to listen in your work.
  • Discover how de-escalation works, and when and why to use it.
  • Practice how to map the current situation and see where the opportunities for transformation are.
  • Unpick and understand your own response to conflict when it happens.
  • Leave with your own profile that includes your conflict response and identify ways to work with it, both during the session with your clients and after the session.
Headshot of Ruth Adams. Image shows a middle aged woman with cropped grey hair. She is smiling and looking at the camera. She is wearing a blue top with a dog collar.
Image credit: Ruth Adams.

MEET YOUR FACILITATORS – RUTH aDAMS

Ruth is a mediator, trainer and Anglican priest. She is also the Bishop’s Advisor for Resilience in Conflict in the Diocese of Ely. Throughout her career, Ruth has worked to accompany communities in difficult times.

Ruth coaches leaders and groups in times to conflict. She aims to improve the particular conflict situation and to build skills. Ruth has worked with charities, college students and staff, church leaders, and communities.

Ruth’s work is informed by her early years in Belfast during the Troubles. Ruth worked as a curate in Omagh before and after the tragedy of the bombing in 1998. Ruth also has a Master’s in Peace and Reconciliation Studies.

MEET YOUR FACILITATORS – LOU SHACKLETON

Lou is a facilitator and sense-maker with 14 years of experience. Her work combines the many practices she has learned over a varied career: psychological theories of motivation; person-centred planning and self-advocacy tools; design thinking frameworks; storytelling models; coaching techniques; participatory approaches; prototyping; business model frameworks. When she can’t call on a specific framework or tool for what she needs to do, she will often create one.

Lou has worked with and in for-purpose organisations and teams, charities, social enterprises, the health service, and community organisations. She discovered her passion for creating environments that enable and empower in her first ‘proper job’ at an award-winning self advocacy project for people with learning disabilities. This project and organisation were at the leading edge of participatory approaches. Lou moved on to push participatory approaches to their limit in inclusive community development, leading to the award-winning community bike project, You Can Bike Too.

Lou is new to the conflict transformation process and is keen to build on past experience in preventing and navigating challenging behaviour in the social care space. She is part of the team for Conflict for Facilitators because of her broad experiences as a facilitator. She loves holding space for other people to get clarity in order to do things differently.

Headshot of Lou Shackleton. Images shows a middle aged woman with large framed glasses. She has long brown hair tied back. She is wearing a red and white stripe top. She is resting her hand on her chin and is looking at the camera, smiling.
Image credit: Lou Shackleton
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WHAT IS CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION?

Conflict transformation is the process of engaging conflict as a means of generating constructive change and restoring relationships (Lederach, 2003).

Conflict transformation is a practice that was formed in the fire of conflict. It was developed by practitioners like Lederach who were (and are) working in areas prone to conflict around the world. Many of the early practitioners came from a tradition of peacemaking.

It’s also a practice – it’s not just about tools or theory. You learn it by doing it – you are the conflict transformer.

You can listen to Ruth and I discussing conflict transformation in this hour-long audio. Together, we define conflict and explore the differences between conflict management, resolution, and transformation.

Listen

KEY DETAILS

£75

Four sessions over five months.
Pay upfront or in two instalments*.

*Must be completed in full before the second session.

4 x 90 mINS

One session per month.
Each session is 90 minutes.

This includes a break.

There is homework between sessions.
You’ll be paired up with your peers for homework.

REMOTE

All sessions are remote, by video call.
Sessions are confidential.
We don’t record them.

sIGN UP

Session dates are:

  • Friday 11th April 2025.
  • Friday 9th May 2025.
  • Friday 13th June 2025.
  • Friday 11th July 2025.

All sessions are 10am to 11.30am (UK time).

Registration Please complete and submit the registration form. This helps us to gather the information we need to deliver the programme.

Payment Please use the pay now button below to make payment. Your space will not be secure until we have received payment. Please note we are not VAT registered.

PAY NOW (£275)

Any problems? If you experience any problems with the form, you can try in a different browser or on a different device. Or email me directly – lou at loushackleton.com.

Use this button to submit your message to me.

Everyone has the capacity to be resilient to conflict.
We can all develop greater resilience through experience and training.
Every situation has within it the capacity for transformation.


~ Ruth Adams

wHAT PEOPLE SAY:

Lou’s facilitation skills are second to none.
Jo Mills, Wellcome Sanger Institute.
The course with Ruth was genuinely one of the most practical and directly useful courses I have done since I began my ministry….everything could be directly applied and has already been transformational.
Wendy, Local Minister
Lou has excellent facilitation skills.
Eve Critchley, Mind (Eve has moved and is now at NS&I).