Over the past 3 months the Assertive Engagement Community of Ongoing Practice (AE COOP) has taken the dive into exploring one of the more challenging tenets of AE. Conflict.
This important section was included into the AE training as a response to you all and the challenges our community of contracted providers experienced on a daily basis.
Facilitators of the AE training received real and valid questions like:
“How can I hold empathy for someone who is screaming in my face?”
“How can I use constructive judgment to keep myself safe while making space for folks to show valid expressions of anger?”
Many of us have been socialized from very early on to treat conflict as something to be avoided and therefore discord makes us uncomfortable. As we discovered in the AE trainings and in the AE COOP- many of us would rather not engage or think about conflict. After reframing the stigma attached to conflict, we committed to approaching conversations about discord as important learning opportunities. The journey to explore more starts here.
We engaged in a self assessment of conflict management styles. We grounded ourselves in self reflection while discussing times we engaged in conflict; this included recalling what reactions we did or didn’t have in the moment. With the knowledge of our own conflict management leanings we engaged in a strengths based visual collaboration activity in Mural, taking the time to list all the unique strengths inherent to each conflict management style. We all have the capacity to float through these different conflict management styles, but the assessment highlighted which conflict style we might lean towards most often.
We wrapped up Part 3 of our Journey with Conflict, by incorporating a beautiful resource called Turning Towards Each Other: A Conflict Workbook. While the conflict management assessment by Dr. Adkins was useful in identifying how one engages in conflict and the actions one takes during conflict situations- it did little to connect us to our mindset and heart set while in conflict. We engaged in discussions, mindfulness activities, and scenarios to discover what it looks like for us to be grounded in conflict vs. ungrounded and reactionary. We learned the strengths that come from our own conflict archetype (Turning Towards Each Other, Page 12) and how to honor our own needs while making space for others who might have different needs in the moment.
This work will undoubtedly be fruitful when we meet discord in our work with clients, coworkers, and loved ones. With the support of the AE COOP, we plan to use pieces of this work in future AE 101 trainings. A big shoutout to Jennifer Lasko, Amy Manley, Nam Kennedy and Adam Yang for being key to this journey with us. We appreciate you all!
The Assertive Engagement Team,
Rhea & Helen
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