

De-Escalating Difficult Conversations: Turning Tension into Understanding
🌐 Language: English
♿ Not Wheel-chair accessible
💶 Free of charge
🎟️ Hosted by: Can Coler
Driving meaningful change, especially social and environmental change, often means challenging established beliefs, navigating opposing perspectives, and engaging in difficult conversations. Yet when emotions run high, even well-intentioned discussions can quickly turn into defensiveness, confrontation, and conflict, making collaboration and progress increasingly difficult.
In this highly interactive workshop, participants will explore how emotional reactions shape communication and how to respond constructively when conversations become heated. Through experiential exercises, they will practice staying grounded under pressure, reducing defensiveness, and redirecting tension without avoiding difficult topics or compromising their position.
This workshop focuses on the communication challenges that arise when advocating for change and engaging with people who hold different perspectives. It is particularly relevant to those working in climate action, grassroots movements, corporate sustainability, and community initiatives, where building trust and bridging differences are essential for creating lasting change.
Please note that photographs and video recordings will be taken during the event for documentation, reporting, and public communication purposes; for online events, this includes recordings of the session and screenshots. If you do not wish to be included in such recordings, please let us know on site or, for online events, at the start of the session (e.g. via chat) – you are also welcome to keep your camera switched off. We will take this into consideration.