Upcoming Events & Trainings
We are pleased to offer online mediation trainings with Beth Roy in January and March, 2025.
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To support our future classes and events, and their availability to folx in financial need, consider making a tax-deductible donation here.
Mediating Power & Emotion
Training for Beginners and Advanced Practitioners with Beth Roy
January 30th–February 2nd (Online)
Beth Roy, our lead trainer, draws on five decades of experience as a mediator. She taught conflict studies and mediation at University California, Berkeley, for many years, and has trained mediators as part of the Radical Therapy community privately throughout. She is the author of numerous studies of conflict between and within communities (The Bernal Story and Some Trouble with Cows, among others), and is a co-founder of Practitioners Research and Scholarship Institute (PRASI) which has supported people to produce research grounded in practice by people whose lived experience is otherwise missing from the literature of the mediation field. In addition to many families and friends, Beth has mediated communities and organizations in the U.S. and abroad, including university faculties, city departments, religious groups, medical clinics, theater companies, small businesses, labor organizations, and more.
When people in ongoing relationships, whether familial, friendly, professional, or otherwise, find themselves in difficult conflicts, feelings run deep and hard. The high heat of emotions often ends mediations in defeat. We may wait for tempers to cool or storms to blow through, but without full expression and attention, that may not happen. At the core of deep feelings lie conflict dynamics that call out for naming and for change. The crucial information for performing such transformation lies in the emotions themselves, properly heard and addressed.
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Who is this training for?
This 23-hour training is intended to be helpful for newcomers and seasoned practitioners alike. It draws on Beth Roy and colleagues’ many years of mediating in multicultural settings, especially guiding people to move beyond interpersonal injuries of racism by uncovering and confronting systemic inequities. Our understanding of power dynamics looks at structural and cultural as well as internal factors. Every mediation is an exercise in teaching tools and approaches for bringing together the personal and the political in order to advance negotiation of real changes.
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Skills we teach:
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When, who & whether to mediate: pre-interviews
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Advance “homework” in preparation and coaching
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Teaching and facilitating tools for honest, non-judgmental emotional communication
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Analyzing power and proposing meaningful feedback
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Facilitating the building of a shared narrative about the roots and dynamics of the conflict
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Facilitating change using cooperative negotiation skills
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Speaking appreciation
The training will meet on the following schedule.
All times in Pacific time zone.
DAY 1: January 30th 4pm–7 pm
DAY 2: January 31st 9am–12pm, 1pm–5pm
DAY 3: February 1st 9am–12pm, 1pm–5pm
DAY 4: February 2nd 9am–12pm, 1pm–4pm
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Want more info?
Please join us for a free one-hour info session on Zoom. Email broy@igc.org for link.
All times in Pacific time zone.
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Wed. January 22nd at 4:00pm
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Sat, January 25th at 2:00pm
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Can’t attend but want to support our sponsors’ work, initiatives, and community?
This is a 3 1/2-day live, online event where you’ll participate actively with Beth Roy assisted by a talented crew of Radical Therapy Practitioners. Our teaching approach relies on lots of interaction among participants. We demonstrate live fishbowl mediations when possible, engage you in exercises and role plays, and base scenarios on stories you bring, from your life or your practice.
In order to build community and protect confidentiality in the space, this event will not be recorded. If you miss a training date, we cannot provide you with a recording of the training. Live zoom captioning will be enabled.
We will send Zoom login information one week before the event, so please make sure the email you use to register is the correct one to receive this information.
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Registration for this training is offered on a sliding scale from $400 to $2000. We ask participants to determine where they place themselves in a spirit of community: do the best you can while ensuring you can take part. Some scholarships available.
Coming Next
MEDIATING POWER AND EMOTION:
Untangling Interpersonal and Organizational Conflict
A 23-Hour Training
June 12-15
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All conflict involves dignified differences of interests and needs. Equally, conflict evokes strong emotions as it challenges our sense of self and norms of behavior. When conflict occurs in group settings, whether workplaces, families, communities, or other kinds of organizations, these factors combine with complex dynamics of power, identity, and culture. Often, interpersonal conflict, skillfully mediated, leads to constructive change in organizational systems and traditions – and vice versa. Beth Roy offers a four-day training in mediating power and emotion, with a focus on organizational conflict, especially those involving differences of identity and culture. This highly participatory workshop teaches skills in analyzing power dynamics at play in multiple domains, while also facilitating constructive emotional expression.