[OSList] Dealing with conflicts

[Michael M Pannwitz]

Dear Marie Ann,
the gathering Harrison describes (Israelis and Palestinians in Rome) got 
him to write a book on why os events are so peaceful even in highly 
conflicting situations.
If you like, I will send you a copy of "The Practice of Peace"... of 
course, you can also get the german version I was involved in: "Raum für 
den Frieden".
In my own experience there have been a number of highly conflicting 
situations for which sponsors chose Open Space Technology. The biggest 
job I had was to convince the sponsors that you need nothing but open 
space and it worked every time (Israelis and Palestinians meeting in 
Switzerland, Parish Board and church workers at issue with each other, 
Board of Directors and Marketing Department of a Food Corporation at 
issue, Welfare Organisation with all subsystems at "war", Highschool 
with opposing factions of teachers...you name it).
Come to think of it, at the beginning of my OSpractice after 35 years of 
OD consulting, I actually had to convince mainly myself that highly 
conflicting situations is what os-events run on (one of the five 
preconditions)... unlearning the old approaches (still very much in 
vogue!!) was the hard part.
Greetings from Berlin
mmp




On 24.07.2012 22:35, Marie Ann Östlund wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I just spent a week in a community in France that is divided by quite
> a large conflict. Have anyone of you used OS with a group of people
> where the conflict is at its hight and emotions are still strong? I
> can see that OS can be used in complex conflictual situations, but
> wonder whether you would first spend time bringing down their emotions
> to a 'manageable' level before attempting to bring them together into
> an OS.
>
> Do you have any experiences in this regard? I'd be very interested in
> your reflections!
>
> Thank you,
>
> Marie Ann
> _______________________________________________
> OSList mailing list
> To post send emails to OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to OSList-leave at lists.openspacetech.org
> To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
> http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
> .
>

-- 
Michael M Pannwitz, boscop eg
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin, Germany
++49-30-772 8000
mmpanne at boscop.org	www.boscop.org


Check out the Open Space World Map presently showing 388 resident Open 
Space Workers in 67 countries working in a total of 143 countries 
worldwide: www.openspaceworldmap.org