Conflict in community

[Claudia Haack]

Chris,

 

I had the doubtful pleasure to be the project planner (city representative)
on a "Keep Wal-Mart Out" project many years ago.  People were very
positional, to the point of threatening each other and on both ends of the
spectrum.  At the time I didn't know about open space - or lets just say I
didn't know that there actually was a thing with a name.  What I did know
was that I had only 6 months (the time of the development moratorium) and
not a clue how to deal with this.  So, I started with some public
hand-wringing (as in : gosh, this is really complex, isn't it? ), basically
feeding the "positions" back to everybody and letting each of them really
"see" the other.  Open Space is much more elegant at this than I was then,
but it is a similar concept.  I gave them a lot of "airtime", at the same
time gently reminding them of the concept that indeed, we are all sitting in
the same boat, this is as good as it gets, and if this group of talented,
dedicated citizens cannot come up with a reasonable (or maybe even inspired)
solution, who could?  Well, they did come up with a very inspired (award -
winning) solution which was unanimously adopted by the City Council (!).

 

More directly to your question, I think I would not focus on the positional
aspects of this, but the complexity.  I believe that some of the frustration
and anger in situations like this actually comes from not being able to
"hold" the complexity long enough to be able to re-align and identify
actionable next steps.  Sharing the acknowledgement that indeed, this is
complex and that that is in itself frustrating is a great step forward and
possibly a positive outcome for a "first" Open Space. 

 

Claudia

 

Claudia Haack

KAIROS Alliance Inc.

tel. 608.288.8315

fax.480.247.4824

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris
Corrigan
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 10:17 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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