This 90-minute professional development workshop for staff focuses on how to (and whether to) respond in moments where someone engages in a way that is unexpected during a group conversation. An unexpected engagement could be a loaded comment, a breach of unspoken norms, both, or something else entirely.

Topics include:

• Strategies for regulating our own emotions during unexpected moments
• A simple framework for assessing the threat to the group's trust in the container
• Discerning when to intervene, considering variables in how people communicate (e.g., cultural norms, neurodiversity, power dynamics)
• How to intervene in the absence of pre-determined communication agreements

This training is offered annually in early December.