Upcoming Event - Facilitating Difficult Conversations: Essential Partners Offers Reflective Structured Dialogue Training

​Essential Partners is offering a two-day online workshop on May 5–6, 2026, focused on training participants in Reflective Structured Dialogue (formerly Basic EP Facilitation), a framework designed to help people facilitate and design constructive conversations in communities, workplaces, and other group settings. The program equips participants with practical tools to foster connection and curiosity across deep differences, build trust, and manage difficult or divisive discussions by learning how to structure dialogue with a clear purpose, encourage full participation, and navigate challenging moments effectively. The training includes hands-on instruction in EP’s facilitation methods and prepares attendees to apply these skills across a wide range of roles, including education, nonprofit leadership, clergy, healthcare, and dispute resolution. Scholarships are available based on financial need and community impact, and participants may request a completion certificate for professional development credit. The workshop costs $695.44 with an early bird discount, and registration is available through Eventbrite.

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Essential Partners is offering a two-day online workshop (May 5-6, 2026, starting 6:30 AM PDT) teaching participants to facilitate and design Reflective Structured Dialogue, formerly titled Basic EP Facilitation, where participants will learn EP's tools to hold space for tough conversations in daily life, in communities, at workplaces, or during formal dialogue sessions. The Essential Partners framework promotes connection and curiosity between those who see each other as enemies, with the organization's unique approach transforming conflicts across the country and the world for three decades while maintaining that the basic principles of EP's framework are applicable to local community issues, organizational development, congregations, and everyday conversations. Intentional communication helps individuals, organizations, and communities build trust, enhance resilience, and engage in constructive conversations despite deeply-held differences of value, belief, opinion, or identity, with the workshop designed to help participants develop a powerful set of tools to achieve those goals and adapt them to meet the needs of their contexts—preparing participants to create context for people to communicate about difficult or divisive topics, break destructive communication habits, design conversations with clear purpose and full participation, and intervene to facilitate through rough spots in conversations.

The workshop objectives include learning theory and practice of EP's Reflective Structured Dialogue framework, designing and structuring conversations to meet a group's purposes and needs, building competence and confidence in facilitating through challenging moments, and preparing participants and oneself to deal with challenges in the room. As a result of the two-day workshop, participants will be equipped to create context for people to communicate about difficult or divisive topics, break destructive communication habits, design conversations/dialogues/meetings with clear purpose, full participation, and structure for moving forward, and intervene to facilitate through rough spots in conversations—skills applicable for civic leaders and advocates, educators and administrators, corporate and nonprofit managers, human resources professionals, clergy and lay religious leaders, therapists or social workers, and alternative dispute resolution professionals. Essential Partners provides a limited number of partial or full scholarships for each workshop based on two criteria: financial need and potential for impact on the community level, with staff informing applicants of decisions six weeks prior to workshop date, and, upon request, can provide a certificate upon completion that can be used to support a request for professional development credits.

The workshop costs $695.44 with early bird discount applied, with cancellation policy stating cancellations are subject to $25 administration fee and to receive any refund cancellation must be made at least 2 weeks before event or workshop date—though Essential Partners is under no obligation to offer any refund or credit if you cancel within two weeks of event or workshop, except for medical emergency or other emergency reasons requiring contact as soon as possible. In the unlikely event that Essential Partners must cancel the workshop due to low enrollment, faculty illness, or other reason, they will give 7-10 days' notice and issue a full refund of the registration fee with no administration fees withheld. The workshop facilitators are Montressa Washington, PhD, and Molly Zuker, and interested participants can apply for scholarships through Essential Partners' scholarship application form, with the organization having hosted 37 events and having 18 followers on Eventbrite.

Register: May 5-6, 2026 workshop at eventbrite.com (early bird discount applied, $695.44)

Scholarship application: Apply at the Essential Partners scholarship form

Contact: [email protected] or (617) 923-1216