To optimize the performance of the team, a manager has to let the team members know what is expected of them. The broad guidelines given at the beginning of an assignment may not be enough to ensure a smooth flow. By providing periodic assessments and timely feedback to team members there is a greater likelihood that the objective will be successfully met. If a manager can effectively communicate constructive feedback instead of delivering criticism, then the team members are more likely to become motivated and deliver improved performance.
How does feedback differ from criticism?
Focus
Feedback is often focused on communicating observations about how the work was performed. The recipient is informed about what is expected of their work. This may include an indication about how future performance can be improved
Criticism is often directed towards the person who did the work. If the work has a positive outcome, then the person is praised for it. If the outcome is less than ideal often blame will be laid. As a result of the focus of criticism not being directed towards the issues that comprised the work, addressing those issues and possible areas of improvement are not likely to be discussed.
Objectivity
Feedback is objective and impassionate. It assesses the outcome of an action. If the outcome is negative, possible reasons for this outcome are explored without laying individual blame. The unstated emphasis is that the individual has to assess the cause of the problem and fix it.
Criticism is subjective. A manager will likely express personal opinions on the reason for the poor outcome and will demand that the team member take corrective action. Even if the manager’s judgment is accurate, the effect of criticism is that the individual receiving it may become defensive and disagreeable
Clarity of Purpose
Clarity of purpose is inherent to feedback. The objective of the project, the person’s role in accomplishing it, and how one’s actions can impact the team and the outcome should be clearly stated
Attitude
Feedback is provided with the goal of helping to find a solution to a problem. The result may be an increase in cooperation and goodwill.
Criticism comes across as being judgmental. The recipient may become uncomfortable as a result of being scrutinized. Feelings of self-consciousness and a desire to dissociate with the issue and the person providing the criticism may be evoked.
Outcome
Feedback creates an opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas. A further analysis of the situation can lead to self-assessment and self-correction by a team member.
Criticism elicits defensiveness and may cause the opportunity for learning and self-correction to be lost. Emotions can become intensified. Arguments and a breakdown in trust between the provider and recipient of the criticism could result. Personal and professional relationships are likely to be harmed.
Advantages of Feedback over Criticism
When Dale Carnegie said, “Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain,” he must have known that providing feedback is far more effective than criticism because:
• It is readily received;
• There is no room for defensiveness and discontent;
• It brings about self-directed changes;
• It increases trust between the manager and the team members;
• It opens up an opportunity for further discussions on courses of action;
• It promotes a collaborative spirit;
• It leads to the empowerment of team members.
A manager’s tendency may be to instinctively react to a problematic situation without regard to if they are providing feedback or criticism. Effective managers have learned to take some time to reflect on the situation and to keep their emotions under control. The result will often be the communication of constructive feedback instead of criticism.
Stitt Feld Handy Group offers training in communication skills, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and alternative dispute resolution for large and small businesses, using the latest adult education techniques. Contact us today to learn more about how to get started.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
Feedback is something that we all have to give and receive at different times in our lives. Daniel Goleman says the following about feedback in his book, Working with Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books: New York, 2006):
“People with an intense need to achieve are voracious in seeking out new ideas and information, particularly as it pertains (even peripherally) to their goals. They regularly call on others to get their perspective, and recruit others into an ongoing network of informants to get fresh intelligence an essential feedback.”
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
How important is fairness to negotiated agreements?
The question of whether fairness is a learned behavior through social or cultural influence or has an evolutionary basis may have been answered. A recent study has shown that we are not the only species to value fairness.(1) Researchers studying brown capuchin monkeys, which are a highly social and cooperative species, have found that they display an aversion to unfair behavior.
In the study, two monkey exchanged tokens with a human experimenter for a food reward. The monkeys either received a cucumber or a grape, which was the more favored food reward. The monkeys observed fair treatment where they both received a cucumber for equal effort or unfair treatment where one monkey received a grape for equal effort. When the monkeys observed unequal treatment, they responded by refusing to participate in the exchange, refusing to eat the cucumber or throwing the cucumber at the human experimenter.
The researchers postulated that nonhuman primates are guided by expectations about the way they and others should be treated and how resources should be divided.
So, the next time you find yourself or the person across the table from you reacting to unfair treatment, remember that it could be the result of deeply rooted evolutionary behavior.
For a demonstration of the experiment, please go to: http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals.html
1. Brosnan, S.F. & de Waal, F.B.M. Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature 425, 297-299 (2003).
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
Men and women might interact with each another in different ways when compared to how they interact with members of their own gender. The manner in which a negotiation is conducted could be one of those ways.
The differences in gender may cause varying levels of comfort (or discomfort) in negotiating with someone of the other gender; lead to the use of different negotiation styles; and, may allow for assumptions to be made about the other negotiator solely because of their gender.
Comfort levels: An individual’s comfort level with a person of another gender can affect how they conduct themselves in the negotiation. If members of one gender dominate an industry that a negotiator works in, there may be an uneasiness of having to negotiate with someone of another gender if doing so is not familiar to that person. This discomfort may arise due to a lack of experience working with members of the other gender.
Difference in negotiation style: Men and women may have natural tendencies to demonstrate different negotiation styles when working with members of their own gender when compared to the other. Some differences in negotiation styles may include determining the level of the tone and formality of the negotiation; whether emotions should be catered to; or, if personal critiques and attacks are appropriate.
Assumptions about gender: Making an assumption about a person’s conflict resolution skills, personality, or willingness to compromise due to their gender may be disadvantageous. If a negotiator acts or chooses not to act because of an assumption made about the other negotiator’s gender, the ability to resolve the conflict effectively may be hindered. A problematic assumption might include the member of the other gender’s lack of a desire to talk about a contentious issue. Inactivity based upon such an assumption may hinder the communication that is necessary to resolve the conflict.
At Stitt Feld Handy Group, our custom workshops focus on helping our participants to identify and address their negotiation strengths and weaknesses. Our training will enable participants to learn how to adapt to other negotiators’ varying personalities, negotiation skill sets, and temperaments. If you are interested in receiving alternative dispute resolution training in Canada or elsewhere, please call our office today to learn about our current course offerings. We can help you learn to manage any gender related issues that may arise as part of the conflict resolution process.
Stitt Feld Handy Group offers training in conflict management, communication skills, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and alternative dispute resolution for large and small businesses using the latest adult education techniques. Contact ustoday to learn more about how to get started.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
Continuing our commitment to cultural change for a more cohesive Australia, The Trillium Group has partnered with Diversity@Work as a supporting partner of its 2006 Awards.
The annual Diversity@Work Awards recognise, celebrate and promote achievements in diversity. Over the past 6 years since the Awards’ inception, companies and individuals have received community recognition of their innovative diversity initiatives. These could include any activities that promote employment and inclusion of various minority groups such as people with a disability, culturally and linguistically diverse Australians, Indigenous Australians and mature age workers.
We are privileged to provide a 3-day Negotiation Workshop for up to 18 participants, including resources, catering and one of our highly experienced instructors.
Diversity@Work is offering one registration at our valuable workshop to the first 18 companies who register a table of 10 or more for the 2006 Diversity@Work Awards Gala Dinner. A night of luxury and entertainment! In the past, this dinner has included addresses from keynote speakers such as Rev Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision; Phil Bullock, Managing Director of IBM Australia; and Tom Gorman, President of Ford Australia. The occasional performing arts troupe has also been known to make an appearance!
Nominations for Diversity Awards are taken from the general public via the website (www.diversityatwork.com.au). We encourage you to support this valuable community initiative.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
Press Release
© 2005 The Official Website of The Government of the Bahamas.
NASSAU, The Bahamas – Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Perry Christie, Friday addressing the closing session of the five-day Alternative Dispute Resolution Certificate Workshop at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Studies, The College of The Bahamas on May 28. Participants in the workshop included employers, unions and government.
NASSAU, The Bahamas – Dispute resolution is one of the most challenging issues in the country today, Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Perry Christie said Friday, (May 28) at the close of the five-day Alternative Dispute Resolution Certificate Workshop held at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Studies, The College of The Bahamas. Though the theme of the workshop matter of the week – alternative ways of resolving issues on the job in the industrial sector has been of a “specialized nature”, said the Prime Minister, conflict resolution, as a subject matter, impacts Bahamians in their everyday national life. “If one were to look at the criminal statistics, one would see that over 50 percent of the crimes that had to do with murders . . .originated with domestic disputes – irreconcilable differences – that are governed by emotion, that runs amok”.
“And so I begin with admonishing all of you to see yourselves as being very special persons, who have taken time out to expose yourselves to precepts and practices, with a view to taking them back into the work place and implementing them for the general good of the business you’re in,” he said. He also told participants to extend what they have learned, shared, acquired, to the community in which they live. It is not good enough to be specialists, or perfect practitioners of all they have shared at the workshop, and then to walk out of their job place into a culture where there is hostility, and where there should be understanding that a person could disagree and not be disagreeable.
“Advocate it to the other institutions or entities that you are a part of because, unless there is momentum and movement in the direction of our addressing a culture of lethargy or indifference, then you are not going to be successful in what you are set out to do” the Prime Minister said. This Bahamas, he said, because of its vulnerable dependence on the twin pillar industries of tourism and financial services, must look to trade union leaders and employers to understand the importance of avoiding conflict.
“When one looks at The Bahamas, I continue to advocate the need to understand our country, understand the challenges of our country. Unlike any country in the hemisphere, we are a chain of islands over 100,000 square miles. The Government of The Bahamas has profound challenges to be able to ensure that every Bahamian has an equal stake in the revenue of the country and the development process of the country,” he said. According to the Prime Minister, unions have an obligation to keep track of these things.
“The problem is when you go into the work place, too many of you are limited to whether or not you get five percent increase in pay, what you get for Christmas. You do not commend and contribute to the national good that creates the basis for you being able to get your five percent.”
“The strength of our country, the magnetism for investment, is based on FNMs and PLPs being able to sit at a table and not concern themselves two three years before the election about being FNMs and PLPs, but concern yourselves about what we could agree to move our country further ahead,” he said. Prime Minister Christie said The Bahamas, has been held back by “cannibalistic” practices.
“Where brother want to eat brother and sister want to eat sister, and this politician hard and this one’s soft and this one scared of this one,” he said. “When you have an intellect you are scared of nobody. You’re either right or wrong, but you have a view. I’m talking about a new culture in our country, taking the same culture that has been advocated by the lecturers and expanding it throughout nation.”
“You are not going to be successful in this country by limiting the principles of the workshop – working out a dispute without breaking up the economy or breaking up the job place. Rational, civilized approach to dispute resolution is what you have been talking about. That my friends, must be the message that goes into boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, church brother and church sister, preacher and church member, work place owner, employer, manager, employee.”
Obie Ferguson, president of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), said employers and the trade unions sitting at the same table looking at how best they can resolve their differences says something about The Bahamas’ industrial relations for the future. The only way the country can continue to progress, said Mr. Ferguson, is if employees and employers are a part of the process.
“The message that I would want to convey to the Bahamian public is that we believe strongly in partnership. We believe that our economy cannot progress until we take advantage of all of the resources we have. If you listened during the last five days, the employers, the trade unions, persons putting forth their views and some of the complicated problems that we saw, that we read, and by virtue of the fact that we were able to sit, apply some of these principles, and find a resolution, to me Prime Minister, speaks volume to the future. The Bahamas cannot and will not progress as a nation unless, and until we continue to do precisely what we are doing here. There is no way round it” said Mr. Ferguson.
The five-day alternative dispute resolution workshop was designed to get people to explore new ways of resolving disputes. According to workshop instructor Paul Godin, an ADR systems designer and litigator at Stitt Feld Handy Group, participants were taught practical hands on skills that they can use right away in the workplace or even at home to better resolve disputes, to become more effective negotiators, and to be able to mediate or facilitate conflicts more effectively.
“Most of our workshop is not teaching at people, it is about letting them have an opportunity to try these skills out, then we give them an opportunity to discuss how to use those tools in a particular exercise, they think about how they may have done things more effectively, and it is a process that allows them to digest the material but in a way that makes it usable right away instead of being information that slips out the back of your head the day after the course. They learn by doing, and even before the end of the workshop they are already starting to do things differently in their daily lives,” he said.
The workshop also focused on improving union/management relationships, and the tri-partite relationship between union, management and government, so they can negotiate and deal with one another more effectively in the future.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
“Conflict is like water: too much causes damage to people and property; too little creates a dry, barren landscape devoid of life and color. We need water to survive; we need an appropriate level of conflict to thrive and grow as well. How we manage our natural resources of water through dams, reservoirs, and sluices determines whether we achieve the balance necessary for life. So too with conflict management: a balance must be struck between opposing forces and competing interests.”
Cathy A Costantino and Christina Sickles Merchant, Designing Conflict Management Systems (Jossey-Bass Publishers – 1996) Preface, p. xiii.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
As you may know, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is one of the many government bodies that offers mediation as process to help resolve the complaints that it receives. You may have also heard that there are going to be some changes to the way that the Ontario Human Rights Commission handles complaints. I was curious about the reforms and was able to dig up the following summary of the changes from the Ministry of the Attorney General’s website. Please click on the link below for more information.
The Need For Change
Ontario’s human rights system was created in 1962. The system is often criticized for taking too long to resolve a complaint and for giving individuals too little control over their own cases. Calls for reform of the system began as long ago as 1990.
Currently, a discrimination complaint is filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The Commission takes carriage of the case, investigates the complaint and determines whether the complaint should continue on to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. If the case is referred to the Tribunal, many steps in the process may be repeated.
There has been too much duplication in the system and with an average of 2,500 discrimination claims filed per year, the backlog of cases has become overwhelming. It can often take years to resolve a claim.
The New System
In April 2006, the Attorney General introduced legislation to bring changes to Ontario’s human rights complaints system. There was considerable public debate on the proposed reforms. Legislative committee hearings were held and more than 60 amendments were made to the bill.
In December 2006, the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2006, received Royal Assent. The Ontario government is now moving forward to implement a strengthened human rights system.
When implementation is complete, the province’s new human rights system will consist of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and a new Human Rights Legal Support Centre.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission will expand its work in promoting a culture of human rights in the province by engaging in proactive measures such as public education, policy development, monitoring, research and analysis. It will also conduct inquiries and may initiate applications or intervene in important cases before the Tribunal.
The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario will deal with all claims of discrimination filed under the Human Rights Code. The Tribunal is establishing new processes that are open, accessible and provide effective resolution of cases.
Human rights claims will be filed directly with the Tribunal, and all cases that meet the requirements of the legislation will receive early access to an adjudicator to be resolved fairly, effectively and quickly.
A new Human Rights Legal Support Centre will offer independent human rights-related legal and support services to individuals throughout Ontario, ranging from advice and support to legal representation.
As part of the 2007 budget, the McGuinty government announced an additional $8 million investment over three years for the new human rights system, with $3 million allocated for this year. This represents a 22 per cent increase in human rights funding for 2007/2008, and is the largest human rights budget allocation in the history of Ontario’s human rights system.
What’s Happening Now
The launch date for the new human rights system has been set for June 30, 2008. Until that date, the Commission will continue to process all human rights complaints filed with it under the Ontario Human Rights Code, and according to the Commission’s policies and procedures. The Commission will continue to receive and handle complaints through the inquiry, intake, mediation and investigation processes. It will also continue to refer appropriate cases to the Tribunal for a hearing.
There will be a transition period of six months following the launch date to deal with cases already in the system. A special procedure for these cases is being developed. After the launch date, all new discrimination applications will be filed at the Tribunal.
http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/ohrc.asp
And here’s another link for you if you’re interested in reading more…
http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/resources/Policies/gdpp
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
By Allan Stitt of the Stitt Feld Handy Group
This article originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of the Canadian Government Executive (www.netgov.ca).There was certainly a bit of culture shock for us from the moment we landed at the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was coming from Toronto with my wife and some colleagues to teach the Ethiopians about mediation, a project funded by CIDA and the Stitt Feld Handy Group. From the moment we landed on the runway and passed the burned out and broken down planes, I knew this would not be anything like the courses we taught in Canada or even Europe or Australia. My wife said, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas any more”.I had received an email about 6 months earlier, in the summer of 2005, from Sophie Racine of CIDA asking me whether the Stitt Feld Handy Group would be interested in coming to Ethiopia to teach some local people about mediation. Sophie told me that CIDA was funding a group called the Ethiopia Arbitration and Conciliation Centre (the EACC) to help change the culture of dispute resolution in Ethiopia. Fighting and adversarial litigation was the norm and a group of people at the EACC led by Woubshet Ayele wanted to change all that. Sophie had been working in Ethiopia and this was one of her key projects.I had been to Ethiopia before, about three years earlier, as part of a team from the Canadian Bar Association, to talk to some lawyers and judges about Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). It seems that Woubshet was in the audience when I spoke and he decided to give up his law practice to devote himself to bringing ADR to Ethiopia. Sophie learned of Woubshet’s goals and ideals and saw the potential of how cooperative forms of dispute resolution could change the way Ethiopians dealt with each other.This trip would be very different from my last one. I would spend a day with a group interested in construction disputes, a day with people who dealt with labour disputes, a day with people who dealt with family disputes, a day with people who dealt with business disputes, and a day on arbitration. Very few of the 40 or so people I taught each day were lawyers. All had taken a basic mediation course in the past, some a number of years before and some the week before from my partner, Frank Handy, and a colleague of ours, Rick Russell.After we got our bags at the airport, we headed to the Sheraton Hotel, probably the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at in my life. It had 5 fancy restaurants, a spectacular pool and health club and every convenience imaginable. The walls that surrounded it hid the extraordinary poverty that we saw everywhere else in Addis, the AIDS epidemic that was devastating Ethiopia and so many other countries in Africa, and the fact that a working man who made the equivalent of a dollar a day was not doing badly.We went on a drive to see some of the sights (one of the members of the Board of the EACC provided a driver for us) and my wife commented that the donkeys we saw up ahead looked like they were carrying heavy loads. It was only when we got closer that we realized that those donkeys were women who were carrying the heavy loads. We were told that the women did a lot of carrying while the men often sat around and drank coffee.One of the first challenges for us in the course was the language barrier. Amharic is the primary language but people learn English in the schools. We did not have a translator but were careful to speak slowly so that they could understand. Some people obviously understood better than others, but we could tell by the questions we were asked that everyone was keen and really wanted to learn about mediation. One woman had almost no accent and we asked her whether she had studied in North America or in England. “No”, she said, “I just listen to the BBC a lot to try to improve my English.”People who train in mediation know that role plays are key tools to help people learn about mediation and we decided that we would use role plays for our students. We drafted a number of role plays that we hoped would be culturally sensitive. Our Ethiopian students were not really used to role-playing (and were particularly hesitant to play the role of mediator) but were eager to eager to learn and, through the course of each day, became very engaged in the role plays.But back to the culture shock. Here is an example. During the day when we taught Family Mediation, we wanted to talk to the group about screening cases for domestic violence. It is fairly well accepted in Canada that, for a mediation relating to the breakup of a marriage, the mediator should first screen the two disputants to determine whether there has been a history of spousal abuse. If so, the mediator should use some specific techniques and skills to try to minimize the likelihood that he violence will re-occur. In extreme cases, the mediator may refuse to conduct the mediation.In Ethiopia, the perspective was quite different. We asked the group what they did when a woman wanted to leave her husband because she was being physically abused. We were told that the advice she usually received from lawyers and social workers was to go back to her abusing husband, because if she did not, she would likely have no access to her children and no money to live on. Being abused, they assured us, was better for her than living (or dying) on the street. This is the reality of life in Ethiopia. We knew we could not change a culture in a week and all we could do was to do our best to make a very small inroad into a culture where violence was accepted.There was other violence in Ethiopia when we were there. Some students at the University who were protesting were shot. Some members of the opposition party were arrested. Ethiopians were looking for a better way to live.Yet, with all of the violence, the people were absolutely wonderful to us and truly embraced the concept of mediation. To a person, the participants tried to make us feel comfortable and made sure that we had anything we wanted or needed. The concept of mediation was new to them, but they embraced it. They saw this as a beginning for them to change from a society of violence to a society of cooperative dealings. They were fascinated by the idea that disputes could be resolved, in a lot of cases, by people looking at meeting each others’ interests rather than looking for how to exercise power over the other. They told us how much they appreciated what Canada was doing for them to teach them the skills they needed to resolve disputes quickly and calmly.My wife Sari and I met some fantastic people there who were doing fascinating work. We were in awe of the people in Ethiopia who are so dedicated to helping others. People who really cared and were trying to make Ethiopia a better place. CIDA is really helping the Ethiopian people and making a difference and we thank them for giving us the chance to be part of what they are doing.Allan Stitt was a member of the Stitt Feld Handy Group team that went to Ethiopia in December of 2005 as part of a CIDA project.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
