Conflict is woven into every aspect of our lives, our family lives, our friendships, our work place and our politics. Yet we often deny conflict until we are forced to deal with it. And when we do face it, we rarely use systematic processes that have been proved to achieve better results. Why is that? Ed Sketch comes from a deep background over many decades of conflict work in the corporate world. He has been trying to understand why people resist systematic approaches, especially in the emotionally fraught conflict situations we face every day. And he has been using the insights of recent neuroscience in this quest. He has developed an approach to conflict handling that not only helps us become more systematic in our conflict handling, but also to become far more creative. He will be presenting an overview of his approach which he calls Creative Conflict Wisdom in this interactive Webinar.

About the Presenters: 

Ed Sketch is currently CEO of an innovative internet and consulting start up, Ann Arbor Synergies, worked in the field of conflict, and centered on his deep experience of labor relations and his more recent research on the neuro-science of conflict. He is also Executive Advisor to The Stewardship Network, a fast growing environmental organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Prior to this, he was Senior Consultant at Denison Consulting, working on organization-culture based business turnarounds. This followed a highly successful career in Ford Motor Company. There he was Director, Global Labor Strategy, where he set the approach still followed in recent labor contract restructuring at Ford. He also undertook other Ford Director level positions in Education, Training, and Development, and Organization Effectiveness, having spent nearly ten years 24 x 7 in front line labor relations in one of the most militant car plants in the world

Ed is originally from Britain, but is now a US citizen as well. Following his education at Bristol University, UK where he obtained an Honors Degree in Economics and Economic History, he undertook Doctoral research in Regional Business History at the University of East Anglia in England. The overly theoretical nature of academic life persuaded him to leave this and join the auto industry. However, he has retained a continuing connection with research work, sponsoring Ford research into the measurement of creativity in engineers, the learning receptivity of organizations and resolving conflict/collaborative decision-making.  He is a long time collaborator since 1994 with Dr. William Ury of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, who is one of the world’s leading conflict experts, and with a variety of experts in the fields of neuro-science and social psychology.

John Turley graduated from Creighton University’s Werner Institute in December, 2010.  Since then, he worked for the Wayne Mediation Center in Dearborn (Detroit), and the Washtenaw County Dispute Resolution Center of Michigan to facilitate the settlement of disputes.   He approaches the alternative dispute resolution field with passion and commitment based on a foundation of thirty years of international corporate sales and marketing to global accounts of Fortune 500 Companies.  His focus is on resolving conflicts between disputing parties through facilitative mediation in the areas of corporate sales, marketing, supply chain management, IT infrastructure, and outsourcing.