Negotiation, Mediation, & ADR Training

Looking for skills to help face the daily battles? Your Katalyst Resolutions workshop will be designed and delivered personally by Paul Godin, one of the most experienced negotiation and dispute resolution trainers in the world. As a practitioner, he teaches interactively from a wealth of experience.

Since 2001, he has designed and led more than 450 workshops on a variety of conflict resolution topics. He has tailored applied workshops in negotiation skills, mediation and conflict resolution, dealing with difficult people and issues, workplace coaching, and ADR system design.

Katalyst Resolutions is a pre-qualified vendor with multiple Canadian provinces, territories, and large-scale clients for delivery of training in these areas.

We have experience successfully delivering seminars and multi-day training sessions remotely using video platforms and are very comfortable with training via ZOOM and similar platforms.

We can design practical hands-on workshops for any level of experience, from introductory core skills, to highly tailored and advanced skills, applied to the context in which you operate.

We apply our teaching directly to the context in which you operate, and can use real world examples from your organization and sector.

Customized Workshops

We work with our clients to identify your key learning goals, your challenges and environment, then design a workshop tailored to those needs. We build courses with an understanding of your organization and the context in which you work.

Paul Godin uses the real life context of his clients, working with their situation and experience and building on existing skills, while weaving in his own extensive real world experience.

We can tailor a workshop to any duration and topic listed below at the agreeable timing and location of your choice. Paul has delivered everything from key note addresses to 10 day intensive skills-building workshops. His approach is hands-on, practical and tailored to you.

Past clients have praised the highly practical approach we take, and the broad-based real world experience that Paul Godin brings to the table, informing workshops with relevant examples and practical tips. See a sample of testimonials here.

To discuss how we might develop a customized workshop for your organization, please contact us to schedule a conversation about your training needs.

Fees

For more information on our training fees, please contact us to discuss your needs and identify the best options.

Our fees depend on the duration, location, and size of the workshop.

Public Workshops

Negotiation Skills for the Agri-Food Industry- in collaboration with Westphalian Way- Future dates TBD- Elmhurst Ontario- 3 Days Contact us for more details on upcoming workshops and brochure.

At this time, we have no other public workshops scheduled, but we can deliver customized workshops at the time and place of your organization’s choosing. If you have a large enough group interested, we can schedule a public workshop in your location anywhere in the world. Contact us for more details and options.

Workshop Descriptions

Courses can be designed to any level of expertise and duration desired, from introductory to advanced, from a half-day to a full week, anywhere in the world.

NEGOTIATION SKILLS TRAINING

In negotiation workshops, we can discuss a variety of negotiation styles, but our focus is on Principled Negotiation, which has the greatest value for organizations wanting win-win solutions and wanting to build/maintain fruitful long term relationships with staff and stakeholders. We do a variety of hands-on exercises, role plays etc., each with key learning points.

In our negotiation workshops, participants can learn how to:

• Negotiate and influence others effectively

• Deal with hard bargainers and difficult people

• Generate creative win-win solutions by identifying people’s interests

• Get objectively good and fair results

• Prepare effectively for any negotiation

• Understand their alternatives (Plan B)

• Maintain and build valuable long term relationships and alliances

• Problem-solve challenges effectively 

• Identify barriers to influencing and persuasion and get around them

• Know when to say yes, and when and how to say no

• Manage complex issues and multi-party negotiations

• Be persuasive and change locked in perspectives

• Deal with positional bargainers

• Negotiate with unreasonable people

• Communicate and listen effectively and minimize conflict

• Manage the use and disclosure of information

PROCUREMENT NEGOTIATION SKILLS TRAINING

We can tailor a negotiation workshop teaching all the negotiation skills noted above, but with an added advanced focus on procurement situations, contract negotiation, contract changes, and RFP management.

Help your supply chain staff get better front end results, and manage existing contracts and their roll out more effectively. Minimize the cost and stress associated with contract changes by applying interest-based techniques and a problem-solving mindset to contracts and procurement. We use procurement contract case studies.

LABOUR RELATIONS NEGOTIATION SKILLS TRAINING

We can tailor a negotiation workshop teaching all the negotiation skills noted above, but with practical focus on labour relations situations like collective bargaining, grievances, HR and front line issues. We have worked with unions, management, HR, government, and blended audiences.

We can use labour relations case studies and even work with your real world situations.

FACILITATION AND MEDIATION TRAINING

Mediation is essentially a facilitated negotiation in which a neutral third party assists other parties in conflict to reach a mutually agreeable resolution.

Mediation and facilitation can be a formal legal process or as informal as a manager helping two of their team members work out their differences or run a group meeting effectively.

We do a variety of hands-on exercises, role plays etc., each with key learning points. Demonstrations of mediation and facilitation, both live, and by video are possible. Courses can be tailored to beginners and to the advanced level for more experienced mediators.

In our mediation/facilitation workshops, participants will learn how to:

• Mediate and facilitate with a clear practical and flexible model

• Understand and use a variety of mediation styles and approaches

• Manage challenging issues and parties

• Identify parties’ key interests and viable options

• Deal with strong emotions

• Manage complex issues and power imbalances

• Mediate in the workplace

• Make lawyers a resource rather than a barrier

• Clarify and change perspectives of the parties

• Use verbal and non-verbal communication

• Deal with lying and confidentiality issues in the mediation context

• Open and close mediations effectively and with confidence

• Assist parties to produce stable enforceable settlement agreements

• Assist parties in brainstorming/creating good options for resolution

• Facilitate communication well, and build relationships

• Develop a good toolkit of mediation approaches

• Understand ethical issues and how to deal with them

• Modify the mediation model to fit your organization and its context

• Close gaps between parties

CONFLICT RESOLUTION SKILLS/ DISPUTE RESOLUTION SKILLS TRAINING

We can tailor a workshop to a broad range of conflict resolution goals and skills, by using components from the courses listed here, and adding other elements as needed to deal with your request. We can enhance communication skills such as active listening, improve relationship-building in your staff, and create a problem-solving focus. So when issues arise at ground level or the top tier, they can be resolved quickly before issues fester and grow in negative ways.

Participants can learn any of the above-noted skills, including how to:

• Understand what conflict is and its sources

• Understand the psychology and structure of conflict

• Understand their approaches to managing conflicts and negotiations

• Understand how to resolve conflicts effectively

• Develop and use good communication skills

• Apply those skills in a variety of difficult situations

MANAGING DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS AND PEOPLE TRAINING

Clients often face issues related to challenging people, issues and situations. We can provide practical tools to prepare for, engage in and succeed in such difficult conversations.
We can give you a number of tools and approaches that are key to managing difficult parties and turning arguments into productive conversations. We can tailor workshops to deal with a variety of challenging situations that your staff may be facing.

The workshop identifies why situations might be challenging, identifying key contributors to conflict, and provides tools and templates for preparing for and engaging in such conversations effectively, with a chance to practice and apply the skills. If desired, we can work with your own organization’s context and real world problems in a variety of ways, applying the skills to the very world in which you operate.

Participants in these workshops will learn how to:

• Identify the primary causes and contributors to conflict

• Understand what motivates challenging and aggressive behaviours

• Analyze and understand how you and other people are wired

• Identify your biggest triggers and how to avoid them

• Improve communication

• Understand both sides of challenging conversations

• Build teams and preserve relationships

• Prepare quickly and effectively to deal with difficult situations

• Approach difficult situations and people with more confidence

• Manage strong emotions on both sides

• Respond to surprise challenges that may occur

You will be better able to:

• Understand decision-making processes

• Prevent face issues and other secondary goals from sabotaging discussions

• Deliver hard decisions (like saying “no”) to people who don’t want to hear them, while maintaining the relationship to the extent possible

• Create flexibility where none existed

• Enter difficult conversations in optimal ways to promote better results

• Promote a problem-solving approach with a problem-solving toolkit

• Generate agreements and alignment

• Strategize ways of handling difficult people

• Deal with trust and other concerns productively

• Frame and focus the conversations

WORKPLACE COACHING FOR SUCCESS WORKSHOPS

We can show your staff how to coach others within your workplace with confidence and a practical rational structure. Add a coaching approach as one of your management tools to build and maintain strong teams. We have simple practical models for effective coaching and mentoring, both in-depth and on-the- spot. Whether your leaders need to improve employee performance, develop talent and set career paths appropriately, or assist others to manage tough situations and conflicts more effectively, we can give them the right tools. We use one simple model with four essential roadmaps to guide your managers as coaches.

Our approach to workplace coaching is hands-on, using real world scenarios that can include live issues. Our model is simple and understandable, and gives them handy tools and templates to use when coaching moments occur. Tailored to the workplace, our model understands the reality of workplace dynamics and human psychology.

Participants in coaching workshops will learn how to:

• Provide effective coaching in a variety of settings

• Engage employees in the coaching, learning, and growth process

• Understand common coaching challenges and manage them

• Tailor the coaching to identify and achieve the key coaching goals

• Add coaching skills

• Develop coaching qualities that encourage trust and engagement

• Use empathy, empowerment and listening while encouraging accountability

• Develop and motivate talent effectively 

• Improve employee performance in ways that maintain the relationship and enhance employee participation and buy-in

• Identify which tools and resources to use with which people and situations

• Ask good powerful questions that move clients forward

• Speak truth in ways that promote listening and respect

• Provide constructive feedback

• Promote self-directed problem-solving

CUSTOMER SERVICE CONFLICT MANAGEMENT TRAINING

We can design and deliver workshops for your front line staff and managers to give them key skills and a consistent simple practical model for handling customer complaints, disputes and challenges. We will build their confidence, adaptability, and patience.

Our logical five-step customer service dispute resolution model (HEARD) is straightforward and effective.

We use a variety of hands-on methods including role plays, exercises, videos, demonstrations, case studies and facilitated discussions.

In these workshops, participants will learn how to:

• Identify the primary causes of customer conflicts

• Understand what makes customers and stakeholders upset

• Understand and manage their own triggers and reactions to customers

• See such conflicts with a more balanced and goal-oriented eye in line with organizational goals and policies

• Improve customer satisfaction with a problem-solving toolkit

• Prepare quickly and effectively to deal with customer concerns

• Approach difficult situations and people with more confidence

• Manage strong emotions on both sides

• Respond to demanding and angry customers

Your improved skills will include knowing how to:

• Ramp angry customers down

• Deliver hard decisions to people who don’t want to hear them, while maintaining the relationship to the extent possible

• Redirect customers appropriately and efficiently where required

• Listen actively in ways that confirm understanding and build customer loyalty

• Enter difficult conversations in optimal ways to promote better results

• Strategize ways of handling difficult people

• Turn distrust and suspicion into respect and appreciation

MEDIATION ADVOCACY WORKSHOPS

If your staff or lawyers act as advocates in mediations, we can tailor a workshop to teach them how to be effective advocates in the mediation context.

They will learn how to:

• Negotiate legal issues effectively and flexibly, even complex and challenging ones

• Use mediators and the process as a resource to create flexibility in the opposing parties

• Avoid the pitfalls of typical legal mediations and negotiations

• Learn how to better persuade challenging positional parties

• Problem-solve issues before they get to trial

DESIGNATED RECIPIENT/ COMPLAINTS HANDLING/ INVESTIGATIONS WORKSHOPS

If your staff require training on how to process and handle complaints or manage investigations, we can deliver such training for you, and we can do so remotely.

They will learn how to:

• Understand the complaints handling process as a whole

• Identify and manage the tasks from intake through to closure on workplace complaints and investigations

• Be knowledgeable buyers and users of investigation services

• intake, assess, review and process challenging complaints of harassment, violence and inappropriate conduct in the workplace

• Manage record-keeping and reporting obligations

• Understand and apply core principles like procedural fairness, impartiality and confidentiality to the complaints handling system and process

• Navigate the complex legal framework that frames complaints and investigations.

HYBRID WORKSHOPS

We can create hybrid workshops containing any combination of the above-listed workshops for any duration.

You tell us your learning objectives, and we will shape the course accordingly to suit your needs and your context.

Let us build a course relevant to what you do.