Navigating Conflict: a Deep Dive for Facilitators (23-24 Feb 2027)

2-day Navigativing Conflict - A Deep Dive for Facilitators

Strengthen your confidence and capability to work with conflict as it emerges in groups. You will build both self-awareness and practical facilitation skills, while exploring how power, rank, culture and difference can shape conflict in the room. Designed exclusively for graduates of our foundational training.

As facilitators, it’s not really a question of if we will need to work with conflict, but when. Conflict is part of being human. When people come together in groups, differences will emerge in views, needs, values, experiences and expectations. Our role is not to avoid conflict, but to build the confidence and skill to recognise it, understand what is happening, and work with it in ways that support the group.

This highly experiential two-day program offers a deep exploration of managing conflict when it arises in groups. It will support facilitators to better understand their own relationship with conflict and how that can shape what they notice, avoid, lean into or react to in the room. We will explore how conflict shows up in groups, what it is and what it isn’t, and how to distinguish conflict from behaviour that may be disruptive.

The skills and capabilities you will gain:

• Better understand your own relationship with conflict and how it influences their facilitation practice.

• Develop greater capacity to remain grounded, present and intentional when conflict emerges.

• Recognise how conflict can show up in groups, including through challenging, disruptive or harmful behaviours, and develop discernment about what may be needed in response

• Identify when and how to intervene in ways that support healthy group processes.

• Apply practical approaches for working with conflict as it unfolds in facilitated groups.

• Recognise how power, rank, hierarchy and cultural differences can shape conflict dynamics and influence whose voices are heard.

• Respond more confidently to complexity, polarisation and emotionally charged conversations.

• Strengthen your facilitation practice through feedback, reflection and repeated skills practice using real-life scenarios.

Who is this workshop for?

Prerequisite: Completion of Groupwork Centre's Two-Day Facilitation Skills Training or Advanced Groupwork Program.

This workshop is a special offering designed to build directly on the two-day and advanced training. Because the curriculum is underpinned by our specific models of facilitation, it is strictly for those who already know and practice our approach.

It is particularly relevant for graduates working with:

• Teams and organisations

• Community groups and networks

• Social change initiatives

• Collaborative projects and partnerships

• Leadership and management roles

Why this training?

The program will focus strongly on practice. Participants will explore practical ways to respond when conflict emerges, including how to pause, name what is happening, support the group to stay engaged, and make thoughtful choices about when and how to intervene. We will also look at how power, rank, culture can shape conflict, and what this asks of us as facilitators.

Throughout the two days, participants will have many opportunities to practise using real facilitation scenarios and be supported by demonstration, feedback, reflection and coaching. We will also leave space on the second day to respond to the group’s particular questions, challenges and learning needs, so the program stays practical, relevant and useful.

Tiered pricing 

• Tier 1: $1045 - Community Rate / Grassroots organisation

  Tier 2: $1254- Small NGO / Sole trader

  Tier 3: $1463- Large NGO / Local Government / Educational Institution

  Tier 4: $1672 - Corporate organisations / State and National Government / Supporter

  (Prices include Humanitix ticket fees - please note, all Humanitix profits are donated to charity.)

Group discount

We offer a 10% discount to people from the same organisation who are attending the course on the same dates. Simply enter the Discount Code 'GROUP-DISCOUNT' at booking in order to apply the discount. 

Payment, Cancellation and Refunds 

Payment can be made via credit card at the time of registration

If you have any questions relating to payment for the course, please email groupworkcentre@groupwork.com.au or call 0498 351 401.

All course fees are to be paid in full prior to the course commencement date.

Please read our full cancellation and refund policy below before completing your registration.

Who is hosting the training?

Groupwork Centre has been a leader in the field of facilitation and group work for four decades. The organisation is driven by a belief in the power of conscious collaboration as a means to create sustained and systemic transformation. Since 1984 Groupwork Centre has been working with social and environmental justice groups, not-for-profit organisations, government and business. Through its training programs the organisation supports leaders and facilitators to listen deeply across difference, pool collective wisdom and harness the power of collaboration.