Conflict Transformation: A Systemic Approach – Ongoing Circles (Online)

An ongoing Practice Circle
developing your ability to apply Conflict Transformation tools and theory
with a Systemic Constellations lens
in your area of work and your life.

 

 

“Milly, Ben, and The Whole Partnership provided a great service and experience for those like me, who are aiming to improve upon our paths of addressing (and confronting) conflicts, and then working to transform them. This is a valuable process that was expertly facilitated, and I am grateful to have participated.”
Joe Culhane, Systems & Ecology Consultant

 

Transforming conflict is a core leadership competency that requires a combination of courage and vulnerability.

We need to spend time with conflict. If we are resourced to listen to the wider system within which conflict has arisen – widening our perspective to include more – we enable deeper truths and resolving movements to bring gifts to us and our systems. Our organisations need leaders who are resourced to face into the difficulties of our complex world; those who can find ways to work with and through them.

As part of our Conflict Transformation Circles, you’ll participate in a resourcing and regenerative community. You’ll be alongside other leaders and change makers and, guided by international specialists in this field, will discover the power a systemic constellations lens brings you through your organisational, professional and vocational challenges.

 

“I was amazed at how resourcing this course was and more able to tap into my own resources as a leader. I feel so much more able to face my clients conflicts and my own.”
Antonia Anderland

 

The circles will introduce the principles and practices of this approach and take you on a 5-month journey of applying them to your own live conflict issues. (If you want to read more on Transforming Conflict we recommend Jean Paul Lederach’s article on Conflict Transformation).

We’ll work with a closed group format – limited to only 12 participants – to help enable the safe, intimate, resourcing and powerful container that this work requires.

We will work with where you are – and the live challenges that you bring – using a mix of short conceptual inputs, inquiries, embodied exercises and whole (or half) group constellations.

 

“Loved the duo of Milly and Ben. Their awareness and kind attention to all participants’ individualities and specific needs created a good level of safety in the group. Their compassion, capacity, willingness to be vulnerable and their trust in each other and the process modelled working in an emergent way, which we all need to be able to do in facilitating this kind of work.

“I found the structure of the programme to be excellent, with the mix of short theoretical inputs, examples, meditations and visualisations, and work on participants’ cases. It helped to bring the topics alive, and in a way that leads directly into practice… I have applied what I have learnt into my work to great impact.”
Rachel Amato, independent coach, facilitator and consultant in organisational and leadership development

 

 

Purpose of the Systemic Conflict Transformation Programme

 

• Deepening your understanding of conflict transformation on a personal and practitioner level
• To equip and resource you to apply the tools of Systemic Conflict Transformation (SCT) in your practice
• To develop a SCT community of learning and practice

 

What to expect

 

The training combines five days of teaching/practice in a closed group spread over five months. The closed group enables you to benefit from the depth of psychological safety that is possible when people commit to travel together for a length of time alongside fellow co-inquirers.

Each day in the full group is split into:

• Presencing/visualisation
• Check in
• Theory section
• Resourcing and a pair enquiry
• Practice in small groups
• Conflict Constellation
• Plenary

Additionally, you’ll receive two 1:1 coaching sessions with either Ben or Milly, who’ll support your professional and personal enquiry into your conflict.

You’ll also be invited to join a small learning hub to meet and practice between sessions.

 

What we will cover in our time together

 

Session One

Starting our journey: The Heart of Peace and The Heart of War

• Clarifying the question you’re travelling with
• Working with the four perspectives of Conflict Transformation
• Unconscious bias and the ways it impacts us as SCT practioners
• Working with the book ‘The Anatomy of Peace’
• Meeting your practice group and exploring your key learning objectives together

 

Session Two

Gathering our resources: The Drama Triangle and Including the Excluded

• Working with The Drama Triangle and The Resourcing Archetypes
• Victim and perpetrator dynamics in conflict
• Personal and collective trauma and how to work with it
• Practice groups

 

Session Three

Systemic Conscience and Ordering Forces of Conflict

• Working with the hidden architecture of systems
• Personal and systemic conscience and its impact on conflict
• How belonging and exclusion impacts conflicts
• Practice groups

 

Session Four

Finding our ‘right place’ as an SCT Practitioner

• Five systemic levels in conflict
• Finding our ‘right place’
• How to contract and be commissioned for this work
• Practice groups around our ‘live’ situations

 

Session Five

Building our confidence at SCT practitioners

• Gathering our resources as practitioners
• How to work with large systemic conflicts like the ecological crisis or war
• Understanding the ‘story’ of conflict and exploring different narratives
• Practice groups around our ‘live’ conflict situations
• Integration of learning
• Endings

 

 

Who is it for?

 

These circles are for you if you are interested in deepening your understanding of conflict transformation and practicing using the theory and tools in your work and life.

These circles are for you if you have some prior experience of working with systemic leadership with constellations lens and if your work encompasses any of the following:

• You’re a leader, entrepreneur, change maker, OD/HR professional, or if you’re a coach to people in such roles.
• You have either worked with Ben Yeger and Milly Sinclair in their foundational Conflict Transformation: A Systemic Approach training, or are working professionally in Conflict Transformation and Mediation and want to understand and embody the systemic approach. Ideally you’ll have taken part in the foundational SCT course with Milly and Ben. If not there will be an interview to better understand what your previous experience has been, discover what elements of the work you are familiar with, and identify any gaps.
• You’re working across diverse groups with diverse opinions such as social change agents/community organisers.
• You’re a practitioner of systemic constellations and are looking to refresh, renew and resource yourself by experiencing the application of the work in the field of conflict transformation.
• You want to be resourced by the systemic leadership constellations approach in an ongoing way.

 

 

How will you Benefit?

 

• You will be deeply resourced and have more capacity to transform the conflicts you face, on a personal, organisational, and societal level.
• You will deepen your understanding of Conflict Transformation frameworks and find practical, human centred strategies in the face of live conflicts and challenges.
• You will have chances to practice Conflict Transformation techniques in small groups working with live conflicts.
• You will learn from the collective intelligence of the group and from leaders facing similar (or different) challenges.
• You’ll form resourcing connections with your peers that can support your learning throughout and beyond the course itself.

 

 

Format

 

Running February – June 2024, the Circles will be held online, with a maximum of 12 participants, in a closed group format as follows:

• 2 x one-to-one 50-minute coaching sessions with Ben or Milly: one before we begin, one half-way through
• 5 x one-day online sessions
• Optional meetings in your peer hubs between day sessions for practice. Each group will have a chance to facilitate the wider group on material learned in the previous session.

You need to commit to the whole cycle to join the Circle.

 

 

Dates & Times

 

When working online we allow a spacious timing format to give us good breaks from our screens. Below are dates and times (UK times, please check your local time zone where relevant):

• Circle 1: Monday 5 February 2024, 10.00-13.00 & 15.00-18.00 GMT
• Circle 2: Monday 4 March 2024, 10.00-13.00 & 15.00-18.00 GMT
• Circle 3: Monday 8 April 2024, 10.00-13.00 & 15.00-18.00 BST
• Circle 4: Monday 20 May 2024, 10.00-13.00 & 15.00-18.00 BST
• Circle 5: Monday 17 June 2024, 10.00-13.00 & 15.00-18.00 BST

 

 

Faculty

 

Ben Yeger is Founder of Moving Conflicts and UK representative of Combatants for Peace (CfP). After serving in the Israeli Army (83-86), Ben left Israel promising himself that he would never carry a weapon again. Ben has 25 years’ experience of group facilitation and training, working with people from a variety of backgrounds and ages in conflict transformation. He creates innovative, nonviolent, and collaborative interventions which transform conflict from barriers to relationship into opportunities for change.

www.movingconflicts.org

Ben Yeger’s TED Talk on Conflict Transformation.

 

Milly Sinclair has been working as a facilitator for over 20 years, particularly around areas of leadership, conflict transformation and change. Milly has worked for many years in conflict transformation with organisations including the University of Oxford, Mitsubishi, Unicredit Bank and Amnesty International; through her interfaith, intercultural and peace work in Israel/ Palestine; and through the development of community cohesion projects.

Originally with a psychotherapeutic and theatre background, she has been a systemic practitioner and coach for over ten years, and in all her work she brings up to date psychological and business theory to life with an original and creative approach.

millysinclair.com

 

View this short video to tune into the course with this short introduction from Ben and Milly

 

 

 

What People Say

 

“Profound learning – all the exercises and the sense of narrative and evolution of the process as a whole. The constellation work was very powerful for me, and well resourced by everything that came before.”
Sholeh Johnstone – Facilitator, Mediator and Coach

 

“10/10 for the experience! Witnessing the alchemy of live constellations, even on zoom, I love the magic and insights that arise. Ben and Milly’s leadership of each constellation was so intuitive. They are almost forensic in getting it right. I loved the willingness of everybody to share some quite intimate conflicts. The trust between people was amazing. The generosity, presence, love and kindness modelled Ben and Milly and already present in the system.”
Katie Lloyd-Nunn – Education Curator, Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking

 

 

“A wonderful balance of systemic theory and practice with lots of helpful discussion with colleagues going through similar challenges.”
Andrew Gregory – Senior Chaplain at Oxford University

 

 

Price

 

The price for the whole course, including 5 days of teaching/group work plus 2 one-to-one coaching sessions, is as follows:

£950 + VAT (Self-sponsored)
£1,450 + VAT (Organisationally sponsored – 3rd sector and education)
£1,900 + VAT (Organisationally sponsored)

There is an Earlybird discount of 20% available until 5 January.

 

 

Registration

 

You can book and pay by clicking on the “Buy Tickets” button.

There is a 20% Earlybird discount live until 5 January. Enter the code EARLYBIRD20 at the Eventbrite checkout to benefit from this discount. Contact us for an offline invoice if you have any trouble with the online checkout.

Book your place in the circle here:


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