Conflict resolution training

[ScotHill]

My wife is a secondary school teacher, and although you might think she's dealing with toerags all day, 90% of her stress comes from the other teachers. She's recently moved to head of department and I feel she could benefit from some conflict resolution training, or 'problem people' management training or similar, to build up some techniques to help her be a bit more resilient in the face of dheadery.

Anyone know of any good online courses, even paid ones if they're worth it?

[hidetheelephants]

Does her union not have anything worthwhile?

[ScotHill]

In and around all of the 'how to be a union shill' courses they do actually do something that might be suitable, but it's miles away so not feasible.

Found a couple of accredited online courses which are pretty cheap so she may do a few of those, better than sifting through a bunch of youtube videos anyway.

[Badda]

Does she feel she needs it too?

[ScotHill]

Yes, but I don’t think she knows it exists in this form. She’s mentioned about leadership training and has done at least one such course but the majority of the problems she talks about are about people having different priorities and personal agendas to the department. The kind of conflict training I’ve done before would help with this.

[deggles]

Not a training course, but the book "Surrounded by Idiots" is worth a read.
It's a little long-winded but worthwhile; really helped me a few years ago.

Basically it's about how to recognise different personality types, and how best to deal with them.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavio...

[Badda]

ScotHill said:

Yes, but I don’t think she knows it exists in this form. She’s mentioned about leadership training and has done at least one such course but the majority of the problems she talks about are about people having different priorities and personal agendas to the department. The kind of conflict training I’ve done before would help with this.

The conflict training I’ve done in the past deals more with de-escalation, this sounds more like some basic management training is needed. I take it there’s no handover period or mentorship available?

[gotoPzero]

I moved from a blue chip career in a huge company in a very high tech role to running a tiny company with less than 10 people, dealing with the public and all the issues that brought.

It took me at least 3 years of dealing with problems every single day to actually get a handle on it.

So whilst a course might be good as a starting point the actual real world experience is what you need and that only comes with time.

Both my wife and myself would deal with these issues and we quickly discovered I was better at it than her. I don't know if its just our personalities or whatever but in the end I would always be the problem solver.

I do think running your own business is good experience for this sort of thing as you are dealing with issues with employees, customers and suppliers. So 3 different angles wanting 3 different outcomes. Do you know anyone who runs a reasonable size business? Maybe they could offer some advice?

[Tenacious]

A lot of SIA courses for door supervisors do conflict resolution courses.

[Giantt]

deggles said:

Not a training course, but the book "Surrounded by Idiots" is worth a read.
It's a little long-winded but worthwhile; really helped me a few years ago.

Basically it's about how to recognise different personality types, and how best to deal with them.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavio...

Surrounded by idiots? Rather sweeping title,would've thought you meet the occasional idiot,but if your surrounded by them... probably looking in the mirror shows the biggest?
Conflict resolution? So if she deals with children squabbling,just adapt that to other teachers ?Or have an easy life just let them get in with it,soon enough they'll hang themselves

[ScotHill]

Giantt said:

Surrounded by idiots? Rather sweeping title,would've thought you meet the occasional idiot,but if your surrounded by them... probably looking in the mirror shows the biggest?
Conflict resolution? So if she deals with children squabbling,just adapt that to other teachers ?Or have an easy life just let them get in with it,soon enough they'll hang themselves

Thanks for that.

[dave123456]

Giantt said:

Surrounded by idiots? Rather sweeping title,would've thought you meet the occasional idiot,but if your surrounded by them... probably looking in the mirror shows the biggest?
Conflict resolution? So if she deals with children squabbling,just adapt that to other teachers ?Or have an easy life just let them get in with it,soon enough they'll hang themselves

It’s a play on words. Perhaps read the book before publicly landing so wide of the mark.

[dave123456]

ScotHill said:

Yes, but I don’t think she knows it exists in this form. She’s mentioned about leadership training and has done at least one such course but the majority of the problems she talks about are about people having different priorities and personal agendas to the department. The kind of conflict training I’ve done before would help with this.

To be fair I’m probably in the same position you are OP.

My partner works in the civil service and was ‘promoted’ into a role that talked about transformation amongst other things. I work in the private sector and became worn down myself by the stories that I was getting every night. The trouble is everyone who worked in the organisation was so aware of their rights she spent her days pandering to the most bizarre requests, and it was just one long drawn out obstacle course.

So if your situation is anything like mine in the end she just dropped down to a ‘doing’ role, it wasn’t really about conflict resolution, it was a union driven free for all.

Fundamentally people who work in the private sector generally know they could get sacked if they push things too far, public sector seems to be an absolute free for all. Having said that some of the ‘sticking to the facts’ approach that I’ve always employed did seem to gain traction in what she was working on, and a few excel charts and graphs I was able to provide her were gratefully received. Interestingly when I helped her devise an argument that was difficult to contend, which she then communicated the following morning office wide, the union kicked off as she didn’t run it by then first… all it contained was a previously communicated message backed up by some statistics.

The classic I heard was that the in house KPIs on individuals were not allowed to be shared with their manager due to data protection….

[Sheepshanks]

dave123456 said:

To be fair I’m probably in the same position you are OP.

My partner works in the civil service and was ‘promoted’ into a role that talked about transformation amongst other things. I work in the private sector and became worn down myself by the stories that I was getting every night. The trouble is everyone who worked in the organisation was so aware of their rights she spent her days pandering to the most bizarre requests, and it was just one long drawn out obstacle course.

So if your situation is anything like mine in the end she just dropped down to a ‘doing’ role, it wasn’t really about conflict resolution, it was a union driven free for all.

Hmmm - my wife worked in various Civil Service departments and we have several family members who are in teaching.and they all say the unions are useless. In both jobs there seems to be a lot of favouritism, and employees are in trouble if their face doesn't fit - my wife was shocked by how badly some people she worked with were treated. Sure, there's a process to go through to sack people, but they often didn't adhere to much of it. The Civil Service loses quite a lot of employment tribunal cases. I recall reading recently the DVLA holds some sort of record for losing cases in Wales.


Re teaching, was talking to a senior school deputy head last night - to be fair he's quite outspoken about mental health 'issues' and I mentioned this thread topic and he said the problem is that the job has turned most teachers into nut-cases. The thing that's worrying him is the younger ones are worse, as no-one with anything about them would go into teaching now. They arrive with a bunch of mental health issues they mske sure management is aware of and are quite happy to use them as a shield.

[ScotHill]

Thanks for the recent replies, and the course recommendation by anonymous PM. There seems to be a thing with teachers that they're all kings and queens of their own classrooms, and they do things the way they do them, aren't always keen to change their practices, and can become resentful of those who try to get them to change, even if their current outcomes aren't particularly impressive.

Part of that is overall department management but part of it is the personal interactions in the now, some of which have been passively disrespectful in front of other teachers and pupils, so having some tools to deal with that in the moment or in a one-to-one conversation later on will come in handy.

Cheers,

[NickZ24]

hidetheelephants said:

Does her union not have anything worthwhile?

Wouldn't that be a bit harsh?

I think personal issues are solved by talking to each other.
Wait till that person is in a good and jovial mood and approach him/her.