Approaching Difficult Conversations
This in-person course provides a practical framework for initiating and navigating difficult conversations—an essential skill for resolving conflict and building stronger professional relationships. Participants will gain tools to approach high-stakes dialogue with clarity, purpose, and confidence.
- 5.0/5.0
- 4 Enrolled
- English
$156.00
This course includes
- Duration 1.5 hr
- Language English
- Next Start Date July 24th 2025
Course Description
Conflict itself is unavoidable and necessary for effective change to take place. However, when not addressed in a healthy and productive manner, conflict can be stressful, destructive, and take its toll on our wellbeing. Fortunately, like other skills, evaluating and addressing conflict skillfully can be learned, practiced, and mastered.A key component of resolving conflict is effectively having difficult conversations when needed. And while the need to have these conversations is common, many choose to delay or fail to have them due to apprehension, inexperience, fear, lack of confidence, and/or anxiety. Along with this personal burden, not having these conversations can lead to considerable inefficiencies in completing our work and organizational priorities, promote ongoing resentment, delay other efforts from being completed, and ultimately affect our wellbeing.
This interactive session helps provide a framework from which to analyze the difficult conversation and strategically develop a plan for how to initiate, conduct, and complete these conversations. Participants will learn through interactive exercises of practicing essential conversation components and will leave with new approaches and confidence to successfully engage in difficult conversations moving forward.
Whether you're a mediator, attorney, manager, clinician, or facilitator, this course offers practical strategies to improve communication and make hard conversations more productive—and less intimidating.
Please note: This course will be held virtually.
About Instructor
Martin Stillman, MD, JD, Mediator, is an internal medicine physician, lawyer, and mediator with years of experience helping others approach and resolve conflict. He developed the Conflict Resolution and Facilitation Training program (CRAFT) to enhance the approach professionals take when facing conflict in their work, and has delivered this content across the country. Dr. Martin Stillman 1) mediates conflict among and between individuals, groups, and institutions, 2) teaches practical, hands-on workshops about mediation and conflict resolution, and 3) serves as a Conflict Navigator coach for those who are having a difficult time seeing their way through particularly difficult situations and could benefit from collaborative coaching from a skilled professional in the field of conflict resolution. He currently serves as the Mediation and Conflict Resolution Officer for Hennepin Health System (HHS) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has taught advanced healthcare mediation for the national American Arbitration Association (AAA). He is a member of the national AAA Healthcare Dispute Resolution Advisory Council and is an invited coach for Mitchell Hamline Law School’s Dispute Resolution Institute’s general mediation training. Dr. Stillman has also been recognized as an outstanding educator, leader, and mentor. He has received the prestigious University of Minnesota Outstanding Medical School Teaching Award and served for six years as an invited coach, mentor, and educator for the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) year-long clinician leadership training program.
- Email:stillman@umn.edu
- Phone:
- Web:
Our Student Reviews
5.0
Average Total Rating
Tobin Lay
May 8th 2025 at 2:36pmReview on: Approaching Difficult Conversations
Dr. Marty Stillman has been an esteemed member of Mediation Center's coaching team for years. You may have been fortunate enough to have him coach one of your simulated mediations in our Civil Mediation Skills courses. Marty isn't just a mediator but he's also a lawyer and medical doctor. He also has a very warm and calming personality. He brings multiple professional and experiential perspectives into this training, which promises to expose you to unique approaches to managing difficult conversations. Marty regularly coaches doctors on how to have meaningful difficult conversations and now, in this course, he will bring that wealth of knowledge and experience to the mediation room. I hope you join me in this brand new course for a special experience!