Throughout the course, you have been keeping a weekly journal on the concepts learned from each week's assignments. This week, synthesize your journal into a 750-1250 word document that reflects back on the course material and what it means to you. Address
Project Criteria
Write a reflection paper which synthesizes your new scholarship and gives meaning to the time that you have spent reading and learning about issues related to conflict coaching archetypes. The goal of this paper is to think about the "so what, why does it matter, and how does it affect me?" aspect of course concepts and strategies. So, what did you learn that you feel was of most value and how will it change your perspective and/or actions in the future, both personally as well as in your work role? Were there any surprises or "aha" moments where your learning created an important personal or work-related insight? How can you and how will you implement conflict coaching strategies in your organization or department when you have the opportunity to do so? Identify what models will work for you. If you will use a modified model or create your own model, explain why other models would not be useful.
Process
Throughout the course, keep a weekly journal on the concepts you learn about; that is, at the end of each week you should write a paragraph or two about what you learned and why it is meaningful to you. At the end of the course, synthesize your journal into a 750-1250 word document that reflects back on the course material and what it means to you. Address the above criteria.
Assess the varying models studied throughout the course and expound on how these collective ideas collated into a conflict coaching model that you could use in your personal life and work life to help others problem-solve and seek solutions. Did you modify a model, create your own model, or did you decide to use an existing working model?
Reflect on the course conflict coaching concepts, principles, problem-solving and cognitive strategies and modify them to create your own conflict coaching model.
Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying something like, "Keep things simple, but not simpler." This precept serves conflict coaches well as they work with clients. Below are simple summaries of the two primary coaching models reviewed.
There are four guiding principles in Executive Coaching:
1. Focus on solutions and results, not the problem.
2. The coach and the executive are partners in a complicated journey. The coach must simplify the journey for the executive.
3. The coach must ask hard questions and the executive must answer them with open honesty. "What is challenging you about this situation that is keeping you from being successful?"
4. The coach must be able to link team behaviors to the overall objectives and then help the executive set specific expectations for their problem solving teams. In other words, the executive needs to keep focus on the desired results, yet have a broad enough perspective to provide the team with the help they need to successfully achieve those desired goals.
The primary conflict coaching model discussed in this course was the Jones and Brinkert Comprehensive Conflict Coaching Model that used a parallel process structured as a learning assessment. Much like narrative mediation, there are four stages to the CCC Model.
1. Discover the story by examining a coherent narrative of the client's experience of the conflict. This stage/phase involves discovering the initial story, refining the initial story, and then validating or testing the refined narrative.
2. Explore the story through the three paradigms of identity, emotion, and power.
3. Stage three is Crafting the Best Story. The conflict coach facilitates a discussion with the client to view the original conflict through the three lenses of identity, emotion and power. This subsequently creates a new story that could have resulted had the three paradigms been optimally managed to achieve constructive conflict outcomes.
4. Stage four is simply implementing the best story to achieve the desired constructive outcomes.
Throughout the CCC Model process, components of assessment and evaluation are achieved through feedback processes designed to keep the coaching model on a constructive and productive outcome track. Benchmarks are established to help the client achieve the desired success throughout the implementation stage.