Wilson was leaning against the front of the desk, hiding a yawn behind one hand and holding coffee with the other. He hated daylights savings time. As everybody came in and got settled, he gave the group a tired grin and pushed away from the desk.

“All right guys. First things first, I’m going to be passing around a packet of information that details out our plans for this weekend, including who your roommates will be. If you have any questions or concerns about any of this, please see me after class, catch me during office hours or give me a call on my voicemail.”

Walking up between the rows, he passed out the packets and then headed back down to the front of the class.

“Today we’re going to be discussing the importance of clear communication in resolving a conflict.”



Lecture:

And on came the dreaded overhead projector with its small novel of notes for the students to take.

Communication Skills and Techniques:

Interpersonal / Small-Scale Communication - Robert Quillen wrote, "Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of emotion." These resources explain why interpersonal communication breaks down and how to make it more effective. A handout with greater detail.

Anger Management - Anger management refers to techniques that are used to defuse, direct or contain anger.

Reframing - Bernard Meyer wrote, "The art of reframing is to maintain the conflict in all its richness but to help people look at it in a more open-minded and hopeful way."

Factual Communication

Inter-cultural communication - Complete with Handout.

Establishment of Personal Relationships - While strong personal relationships alone cannot bring about conflict resolution, they can help to transform the conflict and make it easier to resolve. Relationships between the opposing sides help to build trust, improve communication, and increase tolerance.

Safe Spaces for Communication

Dialogue - In dialogue, the intention is not to advocate but to inquire; not to argue but to explore; not to convince but to discover. These resources introduce the concept of dialogue, discusses why it is needed, and suggests ways to do it effectively.

Narrative/Stories - Stories have been vital to all cultures throughout history. Recently, they have been purposefully employed as tools to promote empathy between adversaries and to help people heal from past trauma.

Large-Scale Communication - These resources discuss ways to communicate to large groups and even whole societies. While the media is the most traditional way of doing this, other approaches are also sometimes utilized, such as community dialogues or even "national conversations." Complete with Handout.

Class Activity:

“So anyone think they can guess what I have up my sleeve for you all today?” Wilson might have looked a bit fiendish with this as he rubbed the tips of his fingers together.

“I’ve broken you all into groups of three. Two –or three of you, as one group has four people- of you will have fifteen minutes to come up with a narrative story. On paper it must be two paragraphs of at least two sentences per paragraph. The third member of your group will then have a couple minutes to read what you wrote, memorize it and then come up in front of the class and tell the story. We’ll get to see how many of you come close to exactly what was written and how many of you change bits and pieces of what was written. Make sense? Let’s get started.”

Group 1:
Naomi
Summer
Lana

Group 2:
Luke
Teddy
Annette

Group 3:
Bel
Conner
Tori

Group 4:
Peter
Blair
Layla

Group 5:
Jim
Elizabeth
Tyler
Haruhi

Group 6:
Phoebe
Pippi
Marie

[Class cribbed from The Conflict Resolution Information Resource website. Please wait for The OCDs are up, go to it!]