HSIRT Conference Niagara Falls 2008
1st HSIRT Conference Highlighted by David Suzuki and Quality Facilitators
by Cory Sommise
Recently I had the privilege of attending the HSIRT Conference in Niagara Falls. The experience was great! I had the opportunity to meet other CEP Brothers and Sisters from across Canada; many of whom are also in the oil refinery sector. I had the opportunity to take 5 workshops designed to improve me as a fellow union member while also using these skills in my personal life. The highlight of the conference for me was the presentation given by David Suzuki. He spoke to us about the environment and ways we can help improve the dire situation we are all facing. On his web site davidsuzuki.org you can join the David Suzuki challenge. There are 10 different ways we can improve the environment. Suzuki says that if each of us did just 3 things it would be a substantial improvement. He was a great motivational speaker and left quite the impression on everyone at the conference. Along with Suzuki the conference employed great facilitators for each workshop. Each one kept the topics interesting and relevant. Below are the courses I took and a summary of the content of each. I would like to thank our Local for allowing me to attend this conference and I hope others would like to get involved to get this type of union and life experience.
Managing Interpersonal Conflict: In this workshop we learned to recognize our own and others habitual responses to conflict – Duke it out? Avoid it? -and become aware of the consequences of these choices. In addition, we practiced an array of tools for resolving conflict in ways that can strengthen and energize our Local members. And as a bonus; how we could apply the learnings to our home life.
Who Are You?: This was an interesting workshop that uses a Myers Briggs Type Indicator test to determine what type of a person you are as well as the types of others and why we each handle situations differently; what we value and how we communicate.
Meetings that Work: Meeting “A place where the minutes are kept and the hours are lost”. Many people say they hate meetings. When questioned further, they say they really just hate bad meetings. Good meetings are a place where decisions are made or explicit results are achieved. Participants learned “Best Practices” for creating agendas, facilitating the meeting itself, the role of the Timekeeper, the Scribe and the Chair, how to encourage and control participants and much more. Make your meetings “must attend“ events; not gripe sessions!
Adventure Learning (Learning by Doing): More and more organizations are using adventure or experiential learning methods to build teams and develop leaders. Learning by doing can take the form of short problem solving scenarios, contrived rescue simulations, high ropes courses, or rock climbing. The experiential approach is both physical and intellectual and allows people to draw on a lifetime of their own experience to discover (or rediscover) latent knowledge, skills, and talents. This was a great workshop that was very participatory and could be used here at Shell as a good team building workshop.
Survival tips for Local leaders:
Learn how to avoid the three most common leadership traps (the “Me Me” trap – my needs are all that matter, the “You You “ trap – whatever the members want is what I want, and the “True Believer” trap – the cause is all that matters). Leverage seven different types of power – position, person, coercive, information, connection, reward, and expertise. And practice the art of speaking so others (including management) will listen.
Photo from conference
