Communicating Through Conflict: Managing Difficult Conversations and Other Life Skills

Conflict is often inevitable, and postdocs may find themselves having to have difficult conversations with their Supervisors at different times throughout their careers. The thought of having these conversations can be a source of fear and anxiety for people at any stage of their careers, but especially for postdocs, who are often aware of power imbalances between their trainee roles and that of their tenured-faculty supervisors.

In this interactive workshop, facilitated by UBC Professor and postdoc supervisor Dr. Dana Devine, participants will explore strategies and resources to approach these challenging conversations. Through the use of breakout rooms, participants will also have the opportunity to role-play difficult conversations through sample cases.

This is a highly interactive session, and participants will be expected to actively participate in the session by sharing their audio and video. The PDFO has created a community agreement for all of our events in order to foster an inclusive, welcoming, and respectful environment in which all event attendees feel safe and supported.

By participating in this event, we commit ourselves to:

• Treating one another with kindness, courtesy and respect in all interactions;
• Engaging in gracious, active listening and value others’ opinions;
• Not dominating discussions so that others can share during the session;
• Ensuring that any potentially confidential or sensitive information shared as part of the session is not shared outside of the session;
• Actively participating in the session; and
• When possible and if comfortable, sharing audio and/or video to create a greater sense of community and participation.

FACILITATOR

Dr. Dana Devine

Dana Devine is currently the Chief Scientist at Canadian Blood Services.  She is also the Director of the Centre for Blood Research and Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia.  She was formerly the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer at Canadian Blood Services. In service to the transfusion community, Dr. Devine is a member of numerous advisory committees and boards including the American Red Cross, Vitalant Research Institute, Bloodworks Northwest, the New York Blood Center, the National Health Service Blood & Transplant (UK) and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service.  She served a nine year term as the Editor-in-Chief of the blood transfusion journal Vox Sanguinis. She is president-elect of the AABB board of directors. Dr. Devine completed her research training at Duke University in North Carolina where she obtained the Ph.D. degree.  She has a longstanding research career in blood products, transfusion medicine, platelet biology, complement biochemistry, and coagulation.  Her research is funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Canadian Blood Services, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).   She is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

REGISTRATION

Registration in this session is required, and is now open. There are limited seats available in this session, and those successfully registered will receive an email within one week of the session date.

NO-SHOW PENALTY: If you register and do not attend or cancel after 3pm on the day before the event, it may affect your eligibility to join future events. To avoid this no-show penalty, please cancel by at least 3pm the day before the event by e-mailing postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca.

Accessibility

If you have a disability or medical condition that may affect your full participation in the event, please email postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca in advance of the event.

DELIVERY FORMAT

Due to the ongoing situation surrounding COVID-19, this session will be delivered online via Zoom. The following suggestions may help to improve the online experience:

• Use headphones to reduce noise and avoid feedback between your mic and speaker.
• Ensure that you are in a quiet location so that the audio does not get polluted with unwanted noise.
• Keep your microphone on mute unless you are speaking during the session.
• In case of technical problems, time for plugin downloads, etc., please attempt to log into the Zoom meeting 10-15 minutes before the start. You will be placed in the waiting room until the official start time.