By Deena Gangbar
One of my most memorable experiences from this summer was presenting in front of a group of Glendon Campus Students. I presented with my co-worker, Kojo, on managing workplace conflict. The group we were presenting to were all on Glendon student council, and, in previous years, they experienced spurts of conflict in their office.
While planning the presentation, we knew that the leader wanted it to an interactive presentation. Therefore, part of the planning process was figuring out how to ensure the students were interacting with us or each other for the majority of the presentation. We decided to start with a Negotiation Style Quiz, which would determine which of the five negotiation styles each student was most dominant in. We believed that if they understood themselves better, the students would gain an understanding of how they communicate with each other.
After the quiz was complete, we had each student discuss their results, share them with the group, and discuss benefits and drawbacks of each negotiation style. The results seemed to surprise all the students, and they were incredibly excited to learn about themselves. After this discussion, Kojo and I presented “tips and tricks” on how to deal with a variety of conflicts at work. This included understanding the different levels of conflict importance, setting boundaries between work and social relationships, and determining everyone’s work responsibilities. Through this discussion, we learned more about the Glendon student council and the processes they have in place to deal with workplace conflicts.
In the final part of the presentation, we divided the group into three teams so each team could tackle a hypothetical scenario workplace conflict. Each team discussed the best practices to handle the situation and also explored the worst ways to handle each conflict. Afterwards, we discussed the three scenarios as a group and many students contributed more ideas on how to best handle these problems.
This presentation was one of my favourite parts of the summer for three main reasons. First, I enjoyed seeing younger students absorb the communications skills that we have gained as mediation students. When each student learned about their communication style, they were incredibly eager to share it with us and their peers. This was gratifying to watch. Second, I learned that with the knowledge that I have gained over just one summer, I was able to help a group of students for their entire academic year. Even after we finished our presentation, many of the students asked for suggestions on work conflicts that have happened to them and how they can handle themselves better moving forward. Lastly, I appreciated the entire planning process and how the presentation was meaningful to the students and for myself and my colleague.