What if you could understand disagreement and conflict as a source of learning, creativity, and possibility rather than as something to fear and avoid? What if you could support your team to disagree in ways that build more authentic relationships, lead to better decisions, and even transform systems? This is a generative approach to conflict. Leaders and organizations that take a generative approach to conflict are more confident and resilient in their ability to respond to challenges and adapt to change. Join Big Waves as we find a path to healthier conflict.

Generative Approach to Conflict

This online training will bring together a small cohort of people in leadership positions who want to build their capacity for generative conflict as a tool for transformation. We will engage in interactive and experiential learning sessions, large and small group discussions, self-reflection, peer support and creative learning.

This training will help you:

  • Develop your awareness of your reactions, triggers and patterns, and how you can create more choices for yourself

  • Deepen your ability to participate in and support open and respectful dialogue

  • Build your toolbox of conflict transformation skills such as curious listening, clear communication, and perspective taking

  • Identify some next steps on your personal journey of developing healthier relationships

  • Lead your team more effectively in conflict, and create spaces that are safe enough for bravery

  • Understand disagreement and diverse perspectives as a source of growth and creativity, rather than as something to fear or avoid

  • Identify and be proactive about what goes on under the surface of a conflict

  • Build your capacity to identify and intervene in the power struggles that happen in conflict, and be aware of how your leadership power impacts the situation

  • Strategize about how to create the conditions for psychological safety and healthy conflict in your workplace.

What is included?

  • Eight weeks of 2.5-hour online sessions of intimate small group learning

  • A wide range of practical tools that will support you to take the learning into practice

  • Optional homework invitations between sessions to deepen your learning and apply to your context

  • Connection with other workplace leaders who are committed to creating healthy teams

Special Offer

With registration for Generative Conflict, you will also receive a free subscription to Annie Bray’s somatic library, RESOURCED. It is an easy-to-access, organically expanding library of tools and practices that Annie uses with her somatic coaching clients. It includes audio, video and printable PDF resources. Annie Bray is a Trauma-Informed Massage Therapist, Somatic Coach and Educator. She supports clinical caregivers and creatives who want to show up for the people and the work they love, without burning out or losing heart. Her approach is informed by 20+ years of hands-on experience and concurrent studies in movement, meditation, the neurobiology of attachment and trauma and other related topics.

The path we will take together

  • Week 1: Introduction to Generative Conflict and Building a Container that Supports Relationships

  • Week 2: Conflict Survival Responses and Caring for the Group and Individual Nervous System

  • Week 3: Befriend and Expand Our Embodied Responses to Conflict

  • Week 4: Communication Skills for Leading in Conflict

  • Week 5: Exploring Our Leadership Power in Conflict

  • Week 6: Understanding and Influencing Workplace Culture

  • Week 7: Creating Workplace Cultures of Care and Respect

  • Week 8: Putting it All Together

Upcoming Dates

The dates for the next Generative Conflict cohort have not been determined. If you would like to be notified as soon as they are booked, sign up at the link below to be added to the Priority Notification List.

Yes notify me!

Interested for your whole team?

Big Waves is proud to offer this course customized for organizations. Contact us for more information about a range of ways you can bring Generative Conflict to your workplace.

Get started now

Feedback

from Past Participants

Laura S., Coach, Facilitator and Community Organizer

I highly recommend enrolling for Brook’s Generative Conflict course. Brook’s approach is practical, intelligent, forward thinking, informative and refreshing. I completed the course feeling well-resourced with tools and new ways to think about conflict from a trauma informed lens. I have new ideas of ways I can lean into conflict as a leader that feel brave and full of possibility. I also loved that there was space to hear from a community of other participants to learn from real life examples and struggles from the field.

Shaleah Dawnyel

Brook is an expert teacher and facilitator! The way she holds space for process while simultaneously instructing and guiding creates the kind of safe spaces in which true transformation can take place!

Tracy Boyer, Shift Change Coordinator, YWCA Halifax

Our world is full of conflict and we meet it every day in our families, at work, in the media we consume, in community and in our play. This course gives me hope for the future and a way to be better for myself and the people I care about regardless of where I am. The facilitator modelled the practice, took care of the group and brought both challenging questions and thoughtful reflections. This work helps us be better people and it’s really worth the time.

Jamiey Kelly, People and Culture Manager

I worked with Brook for the 8-Week Generative Conflict training and am walking away more informed about the embodied elements of conflict. This immersive training included role play, group work and reflection activities that empowered me, and left me feeling more competent in managing interpersonal conflict and the emotions that accompany it. What a gift!

Bonnie Hunter, Executive Director

I honestly expected this course to be more theory and scenario-driven and, while those components are really solid, this experience requires an ‘all in’ type of participation to really get the most out of it. If you’re not willing to be open, authentic and vulnerable, you’ll miss the deepest and most insightful lessons. Brook makes it safe to do that and guides the group to create a supportive learning experience together – that’s what makes this course so impactful and rare.

Erin Melvin, Learning and Development Consultant

I had the opportunity to take Brook’s Generative Conflict course this spring, and I couldn’t help but wonder why I didn’t learn this in high school instead of trigonometry. Every time I have experienced conflict I vowed to get better at it but rarely found good resources. Brook’s course is that resource. We looked at frameworks and guidelines to create a better understanding of all of the many things that could be happening for people leading up to and during conflict. The course was super interesting, very enlightening, and really practical. I like to have things that I can take out into the world and try out. The course was expertly facilitated with just enough content and lots of time to work with it in different ways. I couldn’t recommend this course enough to anyone who would like to embrace conflict as an opportunity for growth.

Louise Pitre, Leadership Coach and Facilitator

As a seasoned leader, change maker, and coach, I already have a strong foundation (or so I thought) in navigating conflict with teams and organizations. I wasn’t sure how much Brook Thorndycraft’s course Generative Conflict would add to my toolkit, but I was happy to find it was one of the best investments I made this year in my professional development and learning. I walked away from the course with increased capacity and competence to get underneath a conflict and assess what is really happening at the individual and system levels. We learned to apply a trauma-informed approach to engaging in difficult conversations, understand our own responses and ways of showing up in conflict, and practice new tools to listen more deeply. Since the course finished, I have pulled out the resources and tools almost on a weekly basis. If you are looking to build your conflict competence and skills and add practical tools to your toolbox, I highly recommend the Generative Conflict course. It’s one of the best courses on the market to support leaders, coaches, and facilitators in deepening their ability to engage in generative conflict. And Brook is a very skilled facilitator!