Conducted by Dr. Joseph P. Folger, co-author of the Promise of Mediation

This workshop introduces a transformative approach to team development.  Effective team building in organizations often needs to focus on the transformation of the team's communication and interpersonal interaction.  Difficult conflicts and differences among team members often stand in the way of successful performance or personal satisfaction.  As a result, teams frequently have difficulty addressing issues or changing patterns of interaction without external intervention and support.  Those who conduct team building interventions can work within a framework that places the transformation of the team's interaction as the focus of the work.   This training  is built on the assumption that effective team development requires that practitioners have a clear vision of the third party's role in supporting team dialogue, advanced group facilitation skill, and an understanding of how organizational culture  and climate impact the design of team development work.

Length of Workshop:   2 days 

The Transformative Approach to Mediation

The Institute offers the most contemporary, distinctive and innovative training services in the conflict resolution field, based on the premises of the transformative approach to conflict. All training programs are based upon the complementary principles of empowerment (facilitating and supporting the considered, deliberate decision-making of the parties) and recognition (highlighting opportunities for voluntary interpersonal perspective-taking and understanding). These principles, so simple to understand yet so challenging to transfer to practice, guide the content of each training program as well as the training process itself.

Trainees emerge from each training with an understanding of the theory and practice skills which are appropriate to the particular training topic, as well as:

• Understanding transformative conflict theory and the concepts of empowerment and recognition.
• An understanding of the relationship between a third party intervener's motivations and the interventions used in practice;
• The skills to focus on and attend to the moment-by-moment interactions of the participants;
• The ability to truly facilitate and engage in non-directive interventions which respect the participants' competence and good faith;
• The capacity to take a responsive rather than directive or evaluative role in intervention.

Length of Workshop: 3 days

Conducted by Dorothy Della Noce, Joseph P. Folger, or R. A. Baruch Bush

This training explores the ideological bases of third party conflict intervention. The training examines how implicit assumptions about the nature of conflict, human capability, and human interaction shape and define various forms of conflict intervention work. Special attention is given to ideological assumptions underlying problem-solving, harmony, and transformative approaches to mediation practice. By studying the ideological roots of various approaches to conflict intervention, practitioners are able to approach their work without relying simply on the acquisition of intervention tools and techniques. Rather, they are able to rely on the link between purpose and practice - how core ideological assumptions drive the choices practitioners make when intervening in conflicts.

Length of workshop: 2-5 days

This two-day training is designed for mediation program managers and others who have a thorough understanding of transformative mediation and who have responsibility for assessing and improving the practice of transformative mediators under their supervision. Participants will learn a process for assessing key components of transformative practice while observing a live mediation. The process was designed for formative purposes (mediator improvement) but may also be used for summative purposes (mediator competency decisions). The specific learning objectives for participants of the training are:

• Understand the goals of formative and summative assessment.
• Be able to recognize competent transformative mediation practice.
• Be able to conduct a formative assessment of a mediator's practice in the course of a mediation session.
• Be able to conduct an assessment discussion with a mediator after a mediation session.

Length of Workshop: 2 days

Create a videotape to become a Certified Transformative Mediator™

The ISCT is under contract to provide mediators to Federal Occupational Health for its clients, including the Transportation Security Administration of the Homeland Security Department, and many others. In addition to receiving the most current training about transformative mediation, participants will make a videotaped role play to be reviewed by the trainer and other participants in the training.

Video tapes created may be submitted to the Institute as part of an application process to become a Certified Transformative Mediator™. Certified Transformative Mediators™ are listed on the Institute roster for corporate and governmental agency clients and receive priority as mediation cases are assigned.

Length of Workshop: 3 days