Building Resilient Staff in Humanitarian Organizations

• Do you want to create healthy work environments while operating in difficult settings?
• Would you like to improve your capacity for managing stress?
• Do you need more skills for managing conflict and decision making in difficult situations?

In partnership with The KonTerra Group, EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding offers seminars designed to support people working in difficult situations. CJP faculty and staff bring renowned international experience in conflict transformation, restorative justice, trauma healing, development, and organizational leadership.

Each seminar is designed to be presented in either three- or six-hour formats. Individual seminars can be lengthened for deeper exploration of the subject matter, or can be combined with others for a multi-day seminar.

Contact CJP staff at or call (540) 432-4651 for more information on the following seminars.

To learn more about The KonTerra Group, visit their website at www.konterragroup.net or e-mail

Self-care and stress management

Almost by definition, aid agency staff are exposed to ongoing situations of stress. Learning to manage stress in healthy ways is key to long-term sustainability for humanitarian workers. This seminar will discuss common effects of ongoing stress on mind, body, and spirit, and will provide resources and tools that help minimize its effects. Participants will be assisted in developing personal stress-management plans, including ways to ensure success in implementing these plans in their day-to-day activities.

Personality and work styles

Every person has a unique way of leading and working with others. Using the Gilmore-Fraleigh Styles Profile for Communication at Work, participants will learn the strengths and "excesses" of their individual styles along with specific tools to communicate and work with co-workers given their particular style. The seminar explores how individual working styles change under conditions of stress. This is a must for anyone working in teams and especially those who are managing others.

Managing individual and group conflict in difficult situations

Leaders in humanitarian organizations often face internal conflict among team members. As the level of difficulty and stress of the situation increases, so may conflict. This seminar addresses understandings, skills, and structures needed to address interpersonal and team conflict: When and how to confront others, how to identify and address power dynamics, and effective ways to model speaking and listening that transforms the conflict. Participants will also learn a technique to facilitate group dialogue when input is needed on important and/or controversial issues.

Dealing with traumatic events

Trauma resulting from working in difficult situations affects individuals, families, communities and societies. This seminar increases awareness of the various types of trauma, its effects on our body, mind, heart and spirit and common trauma responses. Participants will examine the links between unhealed trauma and cycles of victimhood and violence, and identify where they have seen these cycles in their own experience, family or community. Tools for addressing the physical and emotional issues will be explored, as well as social and spiritual components which are contextually and culturally appropriate.

Planning and leading decision making in difficult situations

How can a leader move an organization forward – with as many people "on board" as possible – when the organization faces major decisions and differences of opinion among stakeholders? This seminar will teach participants how to plan and lead a process for moving the organization through potentially divisive decisions and change. Participants will learn models for group decision-making and consensus-building. ("Managing individual and group conflict in difficult situations" suggested as a prerequisite.)

Building personal resilience

Resilience is the capacity of individuals and communities to adapt, survive, and bounce back in the midst of or after experiencing hardship and adversity. Long hours, challenging environments, separation from loved ones, and constant stress erode resilience of humanitarian workers. Individuals and communities are resourceful and resilient and have many of the keys to healing within themselves. This seminar explores practical and tested strategies for building resilience among humanitarian workers.

Communicating and working across cultures

Humanitarian workers consistently work within diverse cultures where there is need to understand our own and others’ culture and practices. Cultural differences can provide both richness and pain to our lives, and communication often determines which it will be. This seminar explores general differences between cultures, as well as specific communication/work-related experiences of the instructors and participants. This seminar can be tailored to explore specific cultures.

Compassion fatigue

Professionals who support others in difficult situations often pay a high personal cost. The values and internal capacities that move people to work in helping professions make them vulnerable to compassion fatigue – a situation in which the caregiver becomes overwhelmed by the needs of suffering people. This can lead to a debilitating state of physical, emotional and spiritual exhaustion. This seminar will explore the causes and symptoms of compassion fatigue, provide strategies to increase resilience, and support recovery from existing signs of compassion fatigue.