SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2025

10.00am - 12.00pm

Hyde Park Room
Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park

MASTERCLASS

Working with Neurodivergent Clients in Conflict

with Dr Samantha Hardy

2.30pm - 4.30pm

Hyde Park RoomSheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park

PRACTITIONER FORUM

Dispute Resolvers in the Climate Wars

An Engagement with Dr Laurence Boulle AM

Working with Neurodivergent Clients in Conflict

with Dr Samantha Hardy

Sunday 21 September 2025
10.00am - 12.00pm

This practical skills based masterclass is designed for anyone working with clients in conflict—HR professionals, complaints handlers, counsellors, social workers, lawyers, mediators, and coaches. It offers essential insights for creating more inclusive, effective, and accessible approaches to conflict.

Conflict management and resolution processes are often built with neurotypical assumptions in mind, which can leave neurodivergent clients at a disadvantage. This two-hour masterclass will help you re-think those defaults and build more inclusive, responsive approaches to conflict.

Drawing on current research and practice wisdom, together we’ll explore how neurodivergent individuals experience conflict, process information, and communicate in ways that may differ from neurotypical expectations. You’ll learn practical strategies to support constructive engagement, reduce barriers, and create space for diverse strengths to emerge.

In this masterclass you will:

• Develop a clear understanding of neurodiversity and its many forms.
  
  
• Explore how neurodivergent individuals may experience conflict differently.
  
  
• Identify common assumptions in typical conflict management approaches that may exclude or disadvantage neurodivergent clients.
  
  
• Learn practical strategies to support neurodivergent clients to engage effectively in conflict.
  
  
• Discover ways to incorporate flexibility into your practice to better serve diverse client groups.

Dr Samantha Hardy is a neurodivergent conflict management specialist, with over 30 years of experience including research, training, practice and lived experience.

COST: $220 PER PERSON incl GST

Dispute Resolvers in the Climate Wars:

An engagement with Dr Laurence Boulle AM

Sunday 21 September 2025
2.30pm - 4.30pm

This session is designed for all those working in climate-related conflict or concerned about their impacts as professionals on the changing climate.  In a wide-ranging and reflective exchange, Laurence will assist participants to explore how awareness of our own roles and approaches as dispute resolvers can influence perceptions of climate change and treatment of related societal issues. Placing climate disputes in the context of the four levels of conflict management, this conversation takes a deep dive into a complex and controversial topic, challenging conventional approaches. 

The seminar/workshop begins and ends with the ‘self’, including the shifting baseline syndeome, and deals with the following key factors:

• Framing and its implications for behaviour: the use and abuse of key concepts and terms, including ‘climate change’, , ‘the Anthropocene’, ‘net zero’, ‘renewable’, ‘carbon offset’, ‘market substitution’, ‘sustainability’, ‘scope 3 emissions’, ‘capture and storage’. 
  
  
• The Shadow of the courts: the effects of judicial findings (Federal Court of Australia and the International Court of Justice) on dispute resolution, including on facts, science, legal responsibilities and remedies. This includes the inspiring  story: ‘From Port Vila to The Hague – the Student Rescuers’.
  
  
• The roles of Dispute Resolution: the strengths and limits of negotiation, facilitation and mediation in climate disputes; dealing with scientific differences, game theory, probability, biases , power dynamics and enforcement.
  
  
• ‘Greening’ Dispute Resolvers: what is happening, individually and collectively, in terms of Green Pledges, adjusting practices, changing mindsets, adding to skills and techniques, integrating AI and becoming determinative?
  
  
• The influence in the climate wars of Values, Feelings, Hope, Cognitive Dissonance, Timing, Biases and Plato’s Cave.
  
  

COST: $220 PER PERSON incl GST