FOR INDIVIDUALS

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FOR ORGANIZATIONS

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Confrontation is the antidote to conflict. For individuals, communities, and organizations, this skills-based training offers easy-to-apply tools and techniques to:
  • Speak your truth and get your needs met
  • Build resilience and reduce stress
  • Increase productivity
  • Prevent and de-escalate conflict
  • Find lasting solutions to complex problems
  • Build self-confidence and authentic collaborations
  • Contribute to a culture of respect, civility and mutual empowerment

Many trainings offer guidelines on how to approach tough conversations or difficult people using conflict resolution theory and specific language. Applying these can be difficult, however, when the stress is high or when confronting a bully. Without added skills to regulate the nervous system, many people become reactive, give up or simply avoid what needs to be discussed. Other programs do focus on teaching coping mechanisms that affect the nervous system, such as mindfulness, but in ways that lack integration with real life applications. Even after years of practice, people may still feel dissatisfied and disempowered, unprepared to enact needed changes.

RESPECTFUL CONFRONTATION® BRINGS ALL OF THE PIECES TOGETHER, SYNTHESIZING DISCIPLINES.

Using research from neuroscience, innovative somatic practices, martial arts disciplines, and philosophies and theories on human behavior and conflict resolution, Respectful Confrontation creates a multi-dimensional approach that helps people take theory and integrate it into daily life for a confident, dexterous use of assertiveness that is mutually empowering.

“A very useful training and book for those who believe, as I do, in respect for the humanity of the adversary. Weston is a keen and sensitive observer of the human condition.”

–James A. Joseph, former US Ambassador to South Africa

ABOUT RESPECTFUL CONFRONTATION FOUNDER

JOE WESTON

Joe Weston is an international workshop facilitator, author, consultant, coach, and advocate for lasting peace. His book, Mastering Respectful Confrontation, is selling throughout the world. Joe has almost 30 years of experience in providing training to corporations, government agencies and non-profits around the world, adapting the approach to the needs of each particular organization.

Born and educated in New York, Joe lived in Amsterdam for 18 years and now lives in Washington DC. Joe brings a wealth of insight to his work based on many teachings, including Tai Chi Chuan, mindfulness and a variety of traditions—plus his experience in theater and various organizational trainings, to create a unique style of training and coaching that combines theory with somatic exercises.

He is currently adjunct professor at Georgetown University, School of Government, Department of Conflict Resolution, teaching a course: Body-based skill building for navigating stress and confrontation.

His clients include NASA, The World Bank, Oxfam, KLM, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mitsubishi Motors and various government and educational institutions.

Joe works with women’s rights and other humanitarian organizations in the Middle East and the US, focusing on empowerment and leadership, reframing power/masculinity, and overcoming gender-based violence.

He has also worked with different veterans organizations, supporting returning and wounded veterans in their process of integration and healing, and has also volunteered for the Liberation Prison Project, teaching meditation and leadership to inmates.

Joe works in both English and Dutch.

Click here for a more comprehensive list of clients.

MEET THE RESPECTFUL CONFRONTATION

TEAM AND COLLABORATORS

Todd Hoskins

United States

As the Director of Operations for Respectful Confrontation, Todd Hoskins is responsible for making sure all the elements of RC are working together in sync. Todd is also a facilitator, change agent, and entrepreneur who has helped launch over a dozen companies. Combining his graduate work in psychology, interest in network science and ecology, and experience applying these insights with small and large organizations going through major transformations, Todd launched Canopy Gap in 2009, a consulting firm that leads and supports organizations through shifts in perspective and practices.

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Todd is passionate about systemic connection, with a focus on helping organizations build their own relational capacity leading to increased innovation, collaboration, engagement, and customer success. With a diverse background in marketing, strategy, and leadership development spanning many industries, he has helped facilitate vital shifts leading to new products, revenue, and ventures. As both a thought leader and practitioner, Todd has written and spoken extensively on corporate culture, employee engagement, trust, leadership, and collaboration. He has worked with nonprofits and startups, as well as large organizations such as Microsoft, Verizon, and Northwestern University. Todd is an advisor to Awakening Value, Aging reDesign, Revenue Ventures, REX – the Relationship Economy eXpedition, Rainworks, and serves on the board of the Chicago Wisdom Project. In 2014, Todd was named one of the top influencers in the Network Economy by SAP. He lives in the woods of southwest Michigan among sand dunes, wildlife, and quirky artists. He and his beloved enjoy tango dancing, gardening, and long nature walks with their dog, Parker.

Manon Romijn

The Netherlands

Manon Romijn is a certified Respectful Confrontation trainer and has been an international team member since 2008, serving as a co-producer and co-facilitator in the Netherlands.

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Manon studied economics at the University of Amsterdam. Her natural curiosities and a quest for something deeper prompted her to give up her career in finance. With her partner, she travelled over two years through Africa by car. After this life changing event, Manon decided to follow her true passion and become an international certified trainer in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). In her work, she combines this scientific approach with more somatic methods, including Family and Business Constellations and mindfulness. She has worked extensively in personal and business leadership development, including collaborations with Respectful Confrontation partner organizations including NASA/Goddard Space Center, Omega Institute, Oxfam in Israel and Palestine, as well as with many organizations in the Netherlands. Manon started a Respectful Confrontation community in the Netherlands would like to develop a Respectful Confrontation program for children that will be taught at school. She works in both Dutch and English. www.manonromijn.nl

Heleen Brinkman

The Netherlands

Heleen Brinkman is a creative trainer and expert in dialogue and communications. She uses her background in theater, as well as her years in corporate training, to help people bridge differences and become “mission ready” for working together.

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In collaboration with Topvrouw.nl (Top Woman), Heleen trains and coaches women leaders working in complex professional organizations, such as universities, medical institutions and in the financial sector. In the “Close Encounters” program she developed, participants explore the space between spoken words. A certified Respectful Confrontation trainer, Heleen has co-facilitated Respectful Confrontation trainings with Oxfam for humanitarian workers in Jerusalem and Beirut, and also works with Radboud University Nijmegen, various municipalities, and the Talis housing corporation.  She works both in Dutch and English. www.heleenbrinkman.nl

Catherine Frels

United States

Catherine Frels has been a Respectful Confrontation international team member since 2010, serving as a co-producer and co-facilitator of trainings in the US.

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A self-described student of human behavior, Catherine combines passions in mindfulness, neuroscience, foreign language, and the performing & healing arts to investigate and integrate scientific and intuitive approaches to authentic leadership and communication. She currently works as a facilitator of trainings across North America, assisting Fortune 500 companies in using neuroscience to increase performance and reduce unconscious bias in the hiring process. Catherine graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University with a BA in International Comparative Studies and holds an MFA in Classical Acting from The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at The George Washington University.  She speaks English and Spanish and has been a narrator of audio books in both languages for The Library of Congress.

La Sarmiento

United States

La Sarmiento is a teacher, mentor, and retreat leader with a diverse background in Buddhism, community organizing, and body-based healing. In addition to impacting Respectful Confrontation with their keen insights, big smile, and open heart, they have influenced many people of all ages in the Washington DC region and beyond through retreats, their work in Reiki, meditation, and within the LGBTIQ community.

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La works with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, and other institutions around the country. They also play the ukulele and are known for baking incredible chocolate chip cookies. http://www.lasarmiento.com.

Juanita Range

United States

Juanita Range is a mediator, facilitator, and coach with a background in training and leadership, as well as conflict, change, and innovation management. Her more than 25 years of experience supports clients in discovering, strengthening, releasing, and connecting life components that affect our presence and impact in the world.

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With her company Range Mediation & Consulting, Juanita is a private practice consultant, warmly referred to by some clients as “The Resolutionist.”  She works with educators, executives, and professionals in individual, group, team, and organizational capacity.  The core of her work is inter and intra-personal alignment in workplace environments where she helps clients align intention with impact.  Her emphasis is on unraveling issues and conflict generated by human complexity at the intersection of human and organizational needs She facilitates and coaches crucial discussions on topics of communication, conflict, race, diversity, equity, and power, in particular, how these factors generate unintended workplace consequences, and continues to be brought into institutions to mediate challenging conversations around unconscious bias and racial equity. Juanita also provides volunteer service to Multnomah County District Court Small Claims Mediation program, and previously volunteered her mediation and negotiation skills to the pilot of Clackamas County Small Claim Court program. https://www.rangemediation.com

Kevin John Fong

United States

Kevin is a nationally recognized and respected cultural translator, facilitator, trainer, and speaker in transformative justice, leadership development and organizational design. His mission is to clarify purpose, align principles, and integrate systems to cultivate health and prosperity in organizations and communities.

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Prior to founding Elemental Partners in 1995, Kevin spent four years in executive management at Macy’s CA, and ten years as the Founder and Director of the Clinical HIV Program and Teen Clinic at Asian Health Services, a community health center in Oakland, CA, that provided services in fifteen languages. Kevin was awarded a three-year fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. During his assignments in East Africa, Brazil, Guatemala, Turkey, Central and Eastern Europe, and throughout the U.S., Kevin paid particular attention to the effects of globalization on families, neighborhoods and villages from the context of community and citizen leadership. In recent years, Kevin has been called to facilitate community healing circles around the country, including: St. Louis|Ferguson, MO; Flint, MI; Dallas, TX; New Orleans, LA; Baltimore, MD; Charleston, SC; and Los Angeles, CA, and throughout rural communities in Mississippi, New Mexico, and Colorado. Kevin is a faculty member of the UCSF Center for Health Professions, a contributor with the Jackson (MS) Free Press, and serves on the Leadership Council of Within our Lifetime, a national movement to end racism. A third-generation Asian-Pacific American, Kevin earned his degrees in Physiology and East Asian Studies at the UC Berkeley. http://www.elementalpartners.net