Welcome!
Conflict First Aid™ Programs are currently full. Can't wait? Click "Let's Talk" at the top of the page.
Get ready for Conflict First Aid at work and home. Take the Certification training and learn the SAFE, universal, evidence-based steps that keep the heat - and you - out of the middle.
Join the us at #conflictschool - the Conflict Navigator Community - acknowledging it can be easier working together with the skills and support to get through time times with tough people
Conflict First Aid™-equipped people, families, teams, and communities can get, sustain, and stay in good health.
The book is coming! Get pre-release chapters, practice tips, and news by joining the wait list.
What is Conflict First Aid™? Watch the quick explainer at right:
Conflict First Aid™-equipped, families, communities, teams, and organizations are healthier, happier, and better able to build the conflict competencies they'll trust.
We're clambering for change - and more and more fighting...even with friends. Conflict First Aid is proven to help, can be learned easily and stops conflict driven escalation, fear, discomfort, and avoidance.
Joan Feringa, Founder
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"Joan is the real deal when stakes are high and failure isn’t an option”
Andrea J. Lee (Author, We Need to Talk, Your Guide to Challenging Business Conversations)
Meet Joan, Founder
Joan Feringa (formerly McLeod) has been a leader, teacher and conflict management scholar-practitioner for over 25 years.
Her long-standing connection to water (she was on the water with her Dad, with Sea Cadets and the Canadian Coast Guard and lives near it today) meant being a navigator infused everything.
WHERE DID CONFLICT FIRST AID™ START?
After certifications in negotiation, facilitation, and coaching in risk and performance management, Joan's Master's and her thesis ("A Hammer or the Whole Toolbox? Conflict Management in Organizations", 2002) proved conflict management was generally inaccessible! Most couldn't find it given they didn't know what support to look for - and then it wasn't delivered at the lowest-level, quickly, or easily enough.
Evidence showed that a key question in conflict management is "where", as in where from here? Answering that question meant anyone could know where to go for help then how to navigate it: information, resources or support from the *start*.
Further experiences offering 'conflict handling at the lowest level' for complaint, conflict coaching and mediation services and training to thousands surfaced that, even early, conflict resolution options are rarely the obvious - though more effective - thing to do.
Even after so many years as a leader and conflict scholar, No wonder she, herself, was conflict averse! Indeed, research shows that mediators do NOT use other mediators for lowest level options that better solve their concerns.
What to do?
The Gap - Seeing CONFLICT FIRST AID™ at All
In 2017, after ushering her own immediate and extended family through high-conflict circumstances, Joan had finally defined what what missing and what could fill the conflict navigation, prevention, and handling gap:
Instincts in conflict management aren't there BECAUSE the basics we should trust are NOT taught, cultural, or valued.
Joan had identified a clear, critical gap. The missing piece in conflict prevention, management and de-escalation was simple and quick: accessible Conflict First Aid™.
Though our default is to react, research tells us, the best help (both short and long term) is NOT that. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn do nothing to 'stop' the fighting in ways that don't help, don't work, and cost more.
Medical (standard) first aid was unknown just a few centuries ago, but today, we know 911, have quick, inexpensive and nearly universally easy access to sterile bandages and antiseptics...most even have a sense of CPR and more and more we know routes to using defribrillators.
Mental health first aid is only a few decades old and has gone viral in communities and organizations - providing more information, resources and support for accessible wellness and prevention access and opportunities.
Conflict First Aid™ is similar: a simple to learn protocol that protects BOTH the potentially affected or injured in a relationship, family, community and the ones available to help in a group, system, situation, or dynamic.
The Moment
After proving volunteers (from all walks of life) could learn and help with evidence-based de-escalation and prevention competencies (equivalent to medical and mental health first aid), the first Conflict First Aid™ certificates were awarded in January, 2020.
Foundations of Conflict First Aid™ can be learned in just 4.5 hours.
Wish you could ask the founder a question?
She'll answer!
Email her, here: [email protected]
A SAFE sequence.
5 simple steps that are EASY to do.
Conflict First Aid™ Foundations can be learned in just a few hours so you're practice-ready.
Practice Cohorts are underway. They're currently free.
NOTE: As promised, Conflict First Aid™ Plank Owners, Community Practice Portal and Conflict School Zones are returning soon.
Ready to be Certified in Conflict First Aid™? Join the Wait List!
Want a Conflict Specialist? Need more than "First Aid"?
We can help with that too!
Leaders, teams, boards and communities or organizations as a whole?
Families? Partners? Difficult people? Need change, assessment, coaching or intervention?
After 25 years of learning, research, application and operations in all conflict management practices, we've seen it all and people love what we do.
Workshops, mentoring, project management, culture and inclusion support, coaching and MORE. Just ask - click here.
Whether conflict is disruptive, costly, difficult or impossible at home, work or your community (toxic people and problems are everywhere), conflict support and expertise can help: we work with "swift assessment" so the work happens immediately for almost instant results in calm, confidence and clarity.
With Conflict Navigator protocols we know how to help you know what to do and HOW to do it with ease.
If you need support, at the first opportunity, ask. From there, we can help you bring calm to changing the way you or others react to conflict disruption, disrespect or difficulty. Get support for yourself or for others - it changes EVERYTHING.
Or, register for one of the next courses and you'll be one step closer to knowing all you need about Conflict First Aid™ - you can get started on fixing it yourself, today.
Join the Wait List!
This is the home of Conflict First Aid™
Learn the Skill
There is a wait list.
Certificate workshops... online or on-site, in-person.
Relationships. Families. Workplaces. Communities. Difficult people. Difficult problems. We all have need for it - Conflict First Aid™ helps.
Contact us. We're all rebuilding. The answers you want can be asked...just ask them, email, here.
If there is need for help with difficult people or their problems just now, just once, or given a consistently damaging concern, fear, or frustration - we likely know how to get you started when you should or need to address it.
Keep choices, concerns, safe: they don't need to get worse.
Conflict First Aid can help...reach out, here.
Spread the word yourself!
