Responding to Resistance: Leveraging Conflict-Stronger Leadership

Format

Workshop

Presenters

William A. Sommers PhDFollow

First Presenter's Institution

Learning Omnivores

Second Presenter's Institution

NA

Third Presenter's Institution

NA

Fourth Presenter's Institution

NA

Fifth Presenter's Institution

NA

Strand #1

Heart: Social & Emotional Skills

Strand #2

Hands: Safety & Violence Prevention

Relevance

My experience of forty years in schools, dealing with conflict diverts our energy from learning to physical and emotional safety. Developing skilled staff AND students, who can deal with conflict effectively creates a safer school. Psychological safety increases, more time is spent on learning, and students become part of an emotionally safe system.

Brief Program Description

Do you think conflict in the workplace will be going down any time soon? I don’t. With this in mind, Responding to Resistance: 30 Ways to Manage Conflict, is an accumulation of my forty years of experience working as a school leader.

I have acquired strategies to manage and leverage points of conflict to increase organizational learning, develop student leaders, and engage community in a positive way. This session will expand your repertoire, give you more agility in difficult interactions, and reduce the amount of time in conflict. I offer you the knowledge and skills for dealing more effectively with colleagues, students, parents, and community.

As I was writing this proposal I found a perfect word that makes clear my intentions—inlcusify. Stephanie K. Johnson’s states: “Inclusifying … implies continuous, sustained effort towards helping diverse teams feel engaged, empowered, accepted, and valued.” My hope is that we can leverage our differences of opinion to inclusify, create safe places where we can disagree, and move everyone to a higher level of learning.

Summary

Participants will learn and practice thirty strategies to manage conflict more efficiently and effectively. Schools and communities must be physically safe. Emotional safety will be required to get the best outcomes from collaboration, creativity, and change.

Time to practice using some of these strategies will be provided and encouraged

Evidence

There are multiple sources that is referenced. Some of these include research and literature are from some of the following:

• Genie Z. LaBorde
• Bob Chadwick
• Sam Horn
• Patrick Lencioni
• John Gottman
• Kirschner & Brinkman
• Amy Edmondson
• Kordis & Lynch
• Amason, et.al
• Susan Foreward
• Abelson
• Michael Grinder
• Pfeffer & Sutton
• Adam Kahane
• Peter Block
• Barry Johnson
• Stevie Ray

Learning Objectives

Here are some of the objectives for this proposal

• the five causes of most conflict
• learn the foundational linguistic skills that will help identify the correct issues at hand
• discover strategies for use with individuals, small groups, and large groups.
• ways to deal with problems when nothing seems to work
• to identify the difference between a problem to solve and a polarity to manage
• have the research from the literature to support each strategy
• participants will be able to use their own situations and learn from vignettes

Biographical Sketch

William A. Sommers, PhD, of Austin, Texas, continues to be a learner, teacher, principal, author, leadership coach, and consultant. Bill has come out of retirement multiple times to put theory into practice as a principal in high schools and middle schools. He has worked at inner city schools as well as in high-socioeconomic-status suburban districts. Bill has been a consultant for cognitive coaching, adaptive schools, brain research, poverty, habits of mind, conflict management, and classroom management strategies and is a Marshall Goldsmith certified Stakeholder Centered Coach.

Bill served on the board of trustees of the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward) for five years and as president for one year. He is the former Executive Director for Secondary Curriculum and Professional Learning for Minneapolis Public Schools and a school administrator for over thirty-five years. He has also been a Senior Fellow for the Urban Leadership Academy at the University of Minnesota. Bill has served as an adjunct faculty member at Texas State University, Hamline University, University of St. Thomas, St. Mary’s University, Union Institute, and Capella University. In addition, he has been a program director for an adolescent chemical dependency treatment center and on the board of a halfway house for twenty years.

Bill has coauthored ten books, Living on a Tightrope: A Survival Handbook for Principals, Becoming a Successful Principal: How to Ride the Wave of Change Without Drowning, Reflective Practice to Improve Schools, A Trainer’s Companion, Energizing Staff Development Using Video Clips, Leading Professional Learning Communities, Guiding Professional Learning Communities, Principal’s Field Manual, A Trainer’s Companion for Habits of Mind, and Nine Professional Conversations to Change Schools. Bill has also coauthored chapters in several other books.

Keyword Descriptors

Emotional Safety, Managing Conflict, Strategies to Reduce Conflict

Presentation Year

2021

Start Date

3-10-2021 3:00 PM

End Date

3-10-2021 4:00 PM

Recommended Citation

Sommers, William A. PhD, "Responding to Resistance: Leveraging Conflict-Stronger Leadership" (2021). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 69.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2021/2021/69