​Learning how to control emotions in order to better manage stressful situations is the key to improving personal and professional skills in any workplace. Self-awareness is the first step to face daily tasks and to deal with overwhelming situations that are known to cause tension and conflict in professional environments.
​ This course is designed to provide participants with tools and strategies to avoid poor management of their emotions and to develop important communication skills to deal with everyday difficulties that concern the working world. 

The latter edition of the course “Stress and Conflict Management: the way to resilience and satisfaction” took place in Palermo from 19/09/2022 to 23/09/2022 and involved a group of eight co-workers from Ośrodek Wspierania Organizacji Pozarządowych in Poland: Iwona Zaborowska, Katarzyna Lotowska, Patrycja Konopko, Krzysztof Leonczuk, Ewa Jasinska, Katarzyna Sokol, Barbara Szczerbinska and Katarzyna Kobosko.

​During the course meetings the participants had the opportunity to empower their skills through both theory and practical activities, focusing on a high range of topics that went from technical definitions about stress and its main forms to relaxation techniques like breathing exercises, muscle relaxation and visualization.
 
First of all, the participants analyzed the main manifestations of stress on both cognitive and behavioural levels, also learning how to recognize all of its outcomes to exploit them in a positive and productive way.
Moreover, they took part in group activities aiming to increase their planning and time management skills in order to avoid time stealers and make the most of their efficiency at work. 
​But the course also focused on the individual sensibility of each participant, helping them to develop healthy strategies of assertive communication and helping them to practice empathy in order to better deal with conflicts.

Participants discovered new effective communication styles through amusing activities like roleplay, reframing, creative brainstorming and drawing, that allowed them to deeply understand how our own vision of the world affects the way in which we communicate with each other.

​They also learnt how listening to each other is functional to building a better working environment and that not all the communicative approaches are verbal. 

​In this context, coming from the same working environment was a treasure for this group of co-workers during their whole experience: they had the opportunity to speak up for themselves about important issues that affected their team, finally achieving innovative solutions to turn these problems into new possibilities of growth, both individually and collectively. 

Discover more about the course here