Capacity Building

How RESOLVE Can Help

Leadership in today’s world often requires negotiating and consensus building skills. Whether representing a public or private constituency in discussions with others, convening a collaborative effort involving groups with different perspectives, or working with teams internally, nearly everyone can benefit from training that strengthens their abilities to deal with differences and to construct sound and broadly supported decisions.

RESOLVE offers an array of services to help individuals and organizations meet their goals through negotiation, consensus building and collaborative leadership. We can provide everything from a tailored training workshop to a comprehensive, year-long collaborative leadership capacity building program combining training, coaching, peer-learning and systems design components. Capacity building services can be offered as discrete learning experiences or integrated into a larger workshop or real-time consensus building effort.

RESOLVE Senior Mediators have been formally trained in mentoring and coaching to develop their own skills in providing these services. We focus on integrating attitudes, knowledge, and skills with follow-up support so that our clients acquire both the skills and the understanding to be able to adapt and apply those skills to new or unusual situations.

Training Workshops

People are not born knowing how to advocate effectively, find common ground, invent new solutions, and preserve relationships while getting the best results for their organization or cause. But these skills can be taught.

RESOLVE offers one-day to five-day training workshops tailored to the needs of individual organizations. RESOLVE training courses provide a thorough grounding in the concepts and skills of principled negotiation and collaborative problem solving, conflict assessment and process design, public involvement, and communication, facilitation, and mediation techniques. Workshops are tailored to the client’s needs from dozens of modules. The following examples illustrate commonly selected combinations, as an introduction to the range of trainings available:

• Negotiating Environmental Disputes
• Advanced Practice in Negotiations
• Building Consensus
• Integrating Public Participation Into Consensus Processes
• Work Group Leadership
• Using Alternative Dispute Resolution in Agency Negotiations
  • Introductory ADR Training
  • Advanced ADR Training

RESOLVE’s courses include basic communication and negotiation skills, as well as advanced modules dealing with such complex challenges as multiple parties, integrating complex scientific and technical information in a negotiation, cultural differences, and organizing forums for dialogue on highly polarized or visible issues. Training can also be provided to parties involved in ongoing disputes to assist their efforts to create mutually beneficial agreements.

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Building Collaborative Leadership Capacity

If you are responsible for leading collaborative processes, training alone may not be enough. People with prior training and/or experience in negotiation and consensus building often benefit from individual coaching, mentoring and participation in peer learning networks to integrate learning into practice within the context of their day to day project activities.

Recognizing the challenges faced by leaders called upon to act as consensus builders, RESOLVE has designed programs to help consensus-builders make the transition from previous experiences and training workshops to leadership in action. Our approach is based on establishing a relationship of trust and comfort in which reflective learning relationships-between the coach and trainee and members of peer learning networks are supported by:

• A shared understanding of the relationship (time commitments, roles, etc);
• A focus on building the learning partner’s competencies, beyond helping with the success of specific tasks;
• Faith in the potential of the learning partner;
• Well articulated learning goals, set with the appropriate degree of challenge for success and for growth;
• Regular practice; and,
• Routine and ending evaluations and transitions.

Individuals and organizations can access RESOLVE’s collaborative leadership services in several ways:

• Individualized Coaching and Mentoring - An individual can work with a RESOLVE coach for help with a specific project or challenge. These services are tailored to individuals’ needs, using a self assessment form, the development of a personal growth plan, and development of a “contract” which spells out the expectations, timelines and how progress will be evaluated. At the conclusion of the coaching/mentoring relationship, RESOLVE works with the individuals to develop a peer learning network to continue to support collaborative leadership development.
   
• Sponsored Training and Coaching Programs - Agencies or organizations can build coaching and peer learning into training programs or facilitation/mediation contracts. RESOLVE offers a wide variety of negotiation, alternative dispute resolution, consensus building and leadership training programs. Because of our years of experience training environmental managers, non-governmental and agency staff, we highly recommend including some form of coaching and peer learning networks into each of our training programs. The coaching and peer learning services vary depending on the needs and interests of the individuals and organizations.
   
• Collaborative Leadership Program - Groups of individuals participate in RESOLVE’s Collaborative Leadership Program. The Program consists of up to 12 people working with a common coach for about one year, with tailored individual coaching and regular peer learning sessions. A possible schedule for Collaborative Leadership Groups includes:
  • Month one: self assessment and personal growth plans
  • Month two: training workshop
  • Months three-eleven: 9 regular group meetings and individual coaching,
  • Month twelve: evaluation and individualized future plans

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