Creative Problem Solving Institute 2025

Facilitators, trainers, coaches, and change agents have all been there:  your beautiful, brilliant, potentially life-changing training/presentation/session gets derailed by one or more resistant participants, who seem fully committed to sabotaging the event.  You’ve tried everything that LinkedIn infographic recommended: smiling at them, selling the “WIIFMs,” negotiating with them. But still they won’t budge.

In this session, we’ll find more creative – and more effective – ways to address the situation. Participants will learn how to reframe the problem, engage with resistors in new ways, and leverage the potential that resistance holds for creating an even stronger session. We’ll see how a divergence/convergence approach can disarm opposition while modeling the kind of respectful and inclusive behaviors we want others to follow. And participants can share with each other what has worked – and not worked – in their own practices, to leave with an even fuller list of tools and resources for the next time a scowling attendee starts to fuss.