Difficult, Toxic, or High Conflict?

Sometimes when people are dismissed as “difficult,” “toxic,” or “high conflict,” these labels are actually related to mental disorders.

This problem has been with us for a while. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) even used the word “toxic” when providing guidance that it is wrong for employers to provide psychiatric fitness for duty exams based simply on the belief that the employee is creating a “toxic” work environment.

Our training pre-survey revealed that 81.3% of dispute resolvers have been exposed to training materials calling parties “high conflict,” 50% have seen training about “difficult” people, and 31.3% were exposed to guidance about “toxic” individuals.

The 48-minute training below shares guidance to help practitioners understand how these terms related to inadvertent mental illness discrimination, and new methods to deal with challenging behaviors without making inappropriate generalizations.

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  • Access a checklist that helps parties notice when mediators are discriminating, and gives them tools to hold those mediators accountable by clicking here
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