Conflict in community

Karen Sella karen at luminacoaching.com
Mon Mar 20 09:42:25 PST 2006


Hi Chris,
 
A few thoughts prompted by your inquiry.
 
Marshall Rosenburg (http://www.cnvc.org/) often makes the distinction
between needs and strategies.  He talks about how people's essential
needs are rarely in conflict, but our strategies for meeting our needs
often are.  Perhaps an invitation that affirms the shared needs of those
within the system, observes the conflicting strategies, and invites
inquiry into how people can learn from all the strategies in use-how
does each strategy serve our shared needs and the needs of those we
serve?  How can we learn together to enact a more integrated strategy
that better serves our needs?  
 
It also occurs to me that folks who are entrenched in dualistic,
positional frames of mind often need a larger "right" to which to attach
themselves.  In other words, trying to help folks engage multiplistic
thinking when they are attached to dualistic perspectives is sometimes
more difficult than simply expanding the frame of their "rightness" to
include more.  There's a little ditty that goes something like:  "He
drew a circle that shut me out, but love and I had the wit to win.  We
drew a larger circle that brought him in." so what is the circle that
includes all of their perspectives and affirms all of their respective
"rightness"?  In my experience, invitations that offer this context are
more likely to engender conversations that transcend positions.
 
Let me know if/how I can be of help.
 
All the best,
Karen
 
 
 
 
 
------------------------------------------
 

Karen Sella
Managing Partner
www.luminacoaching.com
Phone: 206.780.2998
Skype: luminasella
 
lumina fr. L., light, air, opening
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris
Corrigan
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 8:17 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Conflict in community
 
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>
http://tinyurl.com/r94tj * *
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