Conflict in community

[Chris Corrigan]

Hi Folks:

An inquiry for you.

I've had a couple of conversations this week with people involved with local
school boards in the United States.  The common themes in these
conversations include high degrees of local conflict, positional politics,
an extreme lack of resources over which no one locally has any control and
labour relations that are best described as toxic.

IN a conversation today, one man said that he wanted to try Open Space
simply as a way to have all the parts of the system understand each other.
I suggested that this might not bring the peace he was looking for, as
people who would come to that kind of meeting hoping to convince others of
their righteousness would feel at the end of the day that they were either
winners or losers.  I thought that result wouldn't necessarily be
transformational.  When I asked him if instead we couldn't issue an
invitation to invite people essentially to answer the question "how can we
BE together differently in this system" he balked a little at the notion of
a smaller group of "like minded" individuals.  Of course I don;t see this as
starkly black and white, but nevertheless, he thought an "airing of the
issues and a shared understanding" were most important.

So my question goes to people who have worked in this situation, with groups
that are highly wedded to positions.  What are the kinds of invitations that
allow for "airing," generated shared understanding, and perhaps lead to
transformative relationships?

By the way, I told him I would do this for less than 1.5 days.

Thoughts and reflections welcome.

Chris

--
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
Open Space Resources:  http://tinyurl.com/r94tj

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