{"id":20943,"date":"2018-06-11T13:52:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T17:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/its-cuthemedev1.carleton.ca\/law\/?p=20943"},"modified":"2025-06-23T11:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T15:43:10","slug":"the-many-faces-of-carletons-graduate-diploma-in-conflict-resolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/2018\/the-many-faces-of-carletons-graduate-diploma-in-conflict-resolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Many Faces of Carleton\u2019s Graduate Diploma in Conflict Resolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n The Many Faces of Carleton\u2019s Graduate Diploma in Conflict Resolution\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Written by Tyrone Burke<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If reality TV has taught us anything, it\u2019s that putting a bunch of strangers in a room for an extended period of time is a sure fire recipe for drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, \u201cstrangers+room+time\u201d is also the standard recipe for an office. Mix in a dash of cultural disconnect, and office politics can head south fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), Vanessa Laporte works as a Conflict Resolution Advisor to resolve conflicts between staff both domestically and abroad, including IRCC employees at Canada\u2019s embassies and consulates, where local residents work under the supervision of Canada\u2019s diplomats to process visas and immigration applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can have those cultural differences in Paris and London, just like you would in New Delhi and Dakar,\u201d says Laporte, who completed Carleton University\u2019s Graduate Diploma in Conflict Resolution<\/a> (GDCR) in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people make the wrong assumption that more westernized countries don\u2019t experience those differences,\u201d shares Laporte. \u201cThey absolutely experience it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laporte credits her conflict resolution training with helping her strike the right balance in resolving these conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a fine balance between doing your homework and having that curious aspect,\u201d she says, \u201cinstead of going in and assuming that you know what\u2019s going on and know their perspective. Of course, you\u2019re going to do your homework in terms of going into an embassy and understanding what\u2019s going on there \u2014 the cultural dynamics of the region are a given. Then, when you are meeting one-on-one, you\u2019re finding out what\u2019s going on for them from their perspective, and finding out if they are seeing any cultural differences that are being brought about within the consulate. You\u2019re finding out what their perspective is,,.what they think the other person\u2019s perspective is. You\u2019re getting to the interests of the individuals involved by essentially asking the parties what would you like the other person to know, and if they knew that, and you can have a conversation about that, how can things be different? How can things be improved?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Johannus Olsthoorn, Q.Med., the Graduate Diploma in Conflict Resolution built on the skills he developed in three decades of communications and citizen engagement at various federal government departments and agencies. He wanted to continue using his skills in retirement, and launched his own consultancy \u2013 Laudusk Conflict Management Services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offered through Carleton\u2019s Department of Law and Legal Studies<\/a>, the 12-month program targets professional advancement, as well as those interested in applying conflict resolution in a personal or community context. It\u2019s approved by the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario (ADRIO) and L\u2019Institut de m\u00e9diation et d\u2019arbitrage du Qu\u00e9bec (IMAQ).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Elspeth,

<\/p>\n

Elspeth Mackay, Johannua Oolsthorn, and Rebecca Browmich (director of the GDCR)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The training has been invaluable to Olsthoorn in offering a range of conflict resolution services, including mediation, workplace investigations, and conflict assessments where he acts as an independent  assessor interviewing staff to identify conflict and potential tools that could resolve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn doing a workplace conflict assessment, I made use of the courses I took, particularly Larry Sherman\u2019s,\u201d he says, \u201cthe multi-party, multi-issue conflict course. It gave me a me a lot to draw from. I went back to my notes to prepare myself to do that work and I wouldn\u2019t have been able to do this work as well without having taken that course\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faculty in the program are researchers and practitioners, and each course has an Independent Learning Initiative such as journaling, role-playing and self-insight activities. After coursework is completed, students undergo a skills assessment to help them gauge their level of competency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Alain<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Alain Babineau found role playing particularly useful in turning theory into practice, and has since used his conflict resolution training to work on \u201cdeveloping communications techniques for the use of law enforcement personnel in Canada and abroad\u201d, something the former RCMP officer felt was lacking during his time as a law enforcement officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important for law enforcement personnel to have conflict resolution skills,\u201d Babineau says. \u201cNot every encounter by law enforcement officers needs to end in an \u201carrest able\u201d scenario.\u201d You have to be able to listen to people, and to be able to communicate in a way that people will want to talk to you. Not just to give you information, but also feel free to explain to tell you their concerns. Poor communication skills can cause an incident to escalate into a situation where it didn\u2019t need to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Elspeth<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Operation Come home, Elspeth McKay deals with young people on the other side of that equation. The Ottawa-based NGO is a community economic development hub for at-risk and homeless youth, and McKay is its executive director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConflict obviously touches on a lot of the aspects of the type of clients that we work with at Operation Come Home,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re justice-involved. They\u2019ve been victimized. In many circumstances, they\u2019ve been abused.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an executive, McKay doesn\u2019t work directly with clients; she mostly uses the training to manage relationships with stakeholders and staff: mediating conflicts, facilitating policy discussions and negotiating resolutions for resignations or terminations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McKay graduated with her GDCR in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m better able to facilitate and have better discussions with people because I have that type of training,\u201d McKay says.  \u201cIt\u2019s really valuable, and if I didn\u2019t have to work full-time, I\u2019d have gone on to study more conflict resolution. I would recommend that everyone has the training. There are always times in your life where you can use the skills and the tools that we learned to resolve an issue, and let\u2019s face it \u2014 nine times out of 10 \u2013 the issue is miscommunication. It\u2019s the way that people are taking in information, and perhaps misunderstanding what was meant by it.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about the Graduate Diploma in Conflict Resolution, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Tyrone Burke If reality TV has taught us anything, it\u2019s that putting a bunch of strangers in a room for an extended period of time is a sure fire recipe for drama. Unfortunately, \u201cstrangers+room+time\u201d is also the standard recipe for an office. Mix in a dash of cultural disconnect, and office politics can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20946,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20943\/revisions\/20946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}