September 15, 2016
Last year, the mentees from kite-mentoring already had the chance to take part in Dr. Peter Modler's "Arroganztraining für Frauen". This September, Dr. Modler came to kite and held a one-day-workshop titled "Machtspiele im Hochschulkontext".Dr. Modler's concept is based on the theory of the famous American professor of linguistics and bestselling author Deborah Tannen. The writer from You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation is mainly analyzing the use of language in daily communication situations. Tannen is presuming that there are two different communication systems. In the first system, the so-called "vertical communication system", the factors rank and territory are of high importance. The representatives of this system are mainly male and they are contrasted with the primarily female representatives of the "horizontal communication system" who are interested in affiliation and content.This approach is providing the theoretical basis of Dr. Modler's concept. In his trainings, he is explaining how the representatives of the two systems think and act. Moreover he is imparting helpful advice that will help by identifying vertical and horizontal communication types.Since the interaction between persons from different communication systems often leads to misunderstandings and conflicts, Dr. Modler was focusing in the workshop on answering the question how to deal with each communication type. Therefore, the mentees reenacted incidents from their professional life with a male sparring partner. The role plays have been repeated until they developed an idea with the assistance of the group of how they should have acted in the according situations.The surprising result of these simulations: quick-wittedness is not always the only and best solution. A better reaction to a verbal attack is often body language. Dr. Peter Modler gave a lot of useful suggestions to the participants so that they know in the future how they can solve and prevent conflicts in their working life.