Community Boards’ Conflict Resolution Clinics are intensive, two-hour workshops designed for both new and experienced conflict resolution practitioners, attorneys, HR managers, specialists, and other interested individuals. Led by seasoned professionals, these clinics cover an exciting variety of topics and conflict resolution and restorative justice practices.
2025 Conflict Resolution Clinics
DECEMBER
Fighting Right
Applying the Lessons of Successful Couples to Family Mediation
With Anna Grace
Thursday, December 11, 5:30-7:30pm PST
CB Member: $25 | Public: $45
Live Interactive Workshop on Zoom
Registration closes on December 11, 4:00pm PST
Family mediation often brings deep emotions, entrenched patterns, and high stakes to the table. This training draws on research from Drs. John and Julie Gottman, authors of the book Fight Right, to offer tools that make the family mediation process more attuned to the emotional dynamics at play and open up opportunities for understanding and connection.
Participants will learn practical strategies rooted in decades of relationship science to help families move through conflict with high stakes conversations. By applying the Gottmans’ core insights into communication, emotional regulation, and relationship repair, mediators can reduce tension, increase engagement, and support more sustainable agreements.
Whether you’re working with co-parents, adult siblings, or intergenerational families, this session will provide practical tools and insights to guide clients through high-stakes conversations with more compassion and clarity. Rather than just facilitating compromise, you’ll be better equipped to guide families toward mutual understanding—even in the face of disagreement. You’ll come away with language, strategies, and frameworks to help people move from stuck patterns to shared progress.
When people learn to “fight right,” they gain the skills to stay in dialogue, make thoughtful decisions, and maintain relationships—even through hard conversations. Mediation becomes not just a resolution process, but a pathway to healing and possibility. This session is ideal for mediators, coaches, and anyone supporting families navigating change, separation, or complex dynamics.
What you’ll gain from this workshop:
- Recognize different conflict styles and adjust your approach accordingly.
- De-escalate conflict using softened start-ups and gentle framing with family dynamics in mind.
- Spot and address emotional flooding before it derails conversation and use repair strategies and positive reinforcement to keep dialogue on track.
- Help clients distinguish between solvable issues and long-term differences that need ongoing understanding, not resolution.
Anna Grace
Anna is a conflict navigator and strategic communications trainer and strategist passionate about expanding understanding and possibility for families, community groups, neighbors, coalitions and collectives. Her approach centers empathy, creativity, and clarity, guiding clients through complex, sometimes painful, dynamics toward shared understanding and durable solutions. Professionally, Anna has more than two decades of experience in social change communication, Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Learn more about Anna.
After registering, you will receive the Zoom information by email.
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2026 Conflict Resolution Clinics
JANUARY
Offering Restorative Justice
A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Counselors
With Sterling Morningstar
Thursday, January 22, 5:30-7:30pm PST
CB Member: $25 | Public: $45
Live Interactive Workshop on Zoom
Registration closes on January 22, 4:00pm PST
Offering Restorative Justice (ORJ) is a powerful, practical approach for parents, teachers, and counselors who want to help young people truly thrive.
Too often, traditional behavior-management tools lean on punishment, shame, or fear to get quick results. ORJ offers a different path—one grounded in strong, trusting relationships. When trust is the foundation, young people are far more open to growth, accountability, and genuine change.
In Silver’s engaging, hands-on training, you’ll learn concrete strategies that are fun, meaningful, and deeply respectful of the youth in your care.
In this workshop, you’ll learn how:
- Improve behavior without shame or fear by setting kind, firm boundaries and connecting consequences to impact.
- Build emotional intelligence through restorative circles, reflective writing, and interactive theater games.
- Address conflict in a way that uplifts everyone using structured dialogue that centers empathy and accountability.
- Create a culture of responsibility by keeping useful records and integrating restorative practices into your daily routines.
If you’re ready to foster stronger relationships, reduce conflict, and help youth grow with dignity—this workshop is for you.
Sterling Morningstar
Silver Morningstar is an experienced childcare specialist from Berkeley who has worked in schools and summer camps for over three decades. For the past ten years Silver has worked to bring lofty concepts of restorative justice down to earth in ways that are practical, uplifting, and fun. He currently works as the Restorative Justice Coordinator for Berkwood Hedge School in Berkeley. To learn more, you can contact Silver directly at offeringrestorativejustice@gmail.com.
After registering, you will receive the Zoom information by email.
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FEBRUARY
Empathy and the Art of Tracking
How Mediators Follow the Trail of Emotion
With John Ford
February 26, Thursday, 5:30-7:30pm PST
CB Member: $25 | Public: $45
Live Interactive Workshop on Zoom
Registration closes on February 26, 4:00pm PST
John Ford’s session invites mediators to refine their most essential skill: tracking emotional truth through the terrain of conflict—one careful, empathic step at a time.
Mediators are emotional trackers. We listen for more than words—we follow the subtle spoor of tone, posture, silence, and story to discover what’s really alive beneath the surface.
Drawing inspiration from Louis Liebenberg’s The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science, he explores how mediators develop the same blend of perception, imagination, and intuition that San tribesmen hunters have used to track their prey over vast distances and through difficult terrain: this time to follow the trail of emotions.
In this workshop, John will introduce the idea of faux emotions—statements like “I feel disrespected” or “I feel betrayed”—that sound like feelings but are actually judgments in disguise. Just as a tracker learns to tell true prints from misleading ones, mediators learn to distinguish genuine emotions from the stories people tell about them.
When we can see these “false tracks” without judgment, we can follow them inward—to the authentic feelings and unmet needs that guide people toward understanding and repair. This workshop invites mediators to refine their most essential skill: tracking emotional truth through the terrain of conflict—one careful, empathic step at a time.
From John’s workshop, you’ll learn how to:
- Differentiate genuine emotions from “faux feelings” that point outward in blame.
- Use intuitive empathy to track what’s beneath the narrative.
- Recognize how narratives can obscure emotional truth—and how to meet them with curiosity.
- Strengthen your ability to stay present when the emotional trail grows faint or confusing.
John Ford
John Ford is a seasoned workplace mediator and conflict resolution coach with three decades of experience. He is the author of Peace at Work: The HR Manager’s Guide to Workplace Mediation and the creator of several tools designed to enhance empathy and communication in mediation, including The Empathy Set™ of cards. John teaches negotiation and mediation at University of California College of Law, San Francisco and has trained professionals across various sectors. His innovative approach to mediation focuses on structured processes that address both the relational and substantive aspects of conflict, empowering clients to achieve lasting resolutions. For more on John visit www.johnford.com.
After registering, you will receive the Zoom information by email.
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Clinic Cancellation & Transfer Fees
If you cancel more than 24 hours before the clinic start time, there is a $7.50 cancellation fee. This fee will be waived one time if registration is transferred to a subsequent clinic that begins within twelve months of the training start date. No refunds for cancellations 24 hours or less before the clinic start time.
QUESTIONS?
Trainings: Sarah Moss, Mediation and Training Coordinator, smoss@communityboards.org
General inquiries: Jim Garrison, Communications Director, jgarrison@communityboards.org