Proactively Addressing Conflict Within A Community - Community Hygiene Part 2
Last December I drafted a process for proactively addressing conflict within a community. The working title for this process is “House Resolution.” You can read the original post here.
Nearly a year later, my house has gone through the process several times. The way it raises issues, clears the air, and culminates in actionable steps has led us to scheduling it every two months regardless of whether we believe it’s necessary or not.
Given the benefits of the process, the general tension and distance between groups in the world right now, and my belief in sorting one’s own stuff out before being critical of others I’ll be revisiting the House Resolution process today with refinements and recommendations from my experience using and facilitating it.
Everyone shows up on time with something to write with and write on. We give three hours for the whole process. People’s attention fades too much after three hours.
We like to have everyone sit in a circle this way everyone is equal and everyone can be seen.
The group is reminded of the purpose of our gathering.
“We’re here to proactively take care of our community by speaking truthfully and tactfully. We’re here to listen with curiosity and a desire to understand. We’re here because we know that together we can be greater than the sum of our parts and we are willing to do what it takes to actualize that.” Say whatever is true for your group.
Ten minutes is given for everyone to reflect on two prompts. 1. What grievances am I holding towards someone in the house/group? 2. What grievances do I believe are present between others in the house/group?
Give folks a five minute warning to make sure they answer both questions.
We’ve found “grievance” to be a slippery word. A grievance is intended to be any tension, bad feeling, current resentment or thing which could harbor resentment in the future.
For the purpose of the gathering, a grievance is best formulated as something like, “I have a grievance with <Name> over <specific thing>.” “I believe there’s some tension between <Name1> and <Name2> over <specific thing>.”
I have a grievance with Carole over the way she treats our house dog. I believe there’s some tension between Dillon and Jesse over the party Dillon threw last week.
Everyone takes a turn reading their list out loud while the facilitator compiles them all into a master list. Afterwards the facilitator reads them all back to make sure they captured them correctly.
The above steps take about 25-40 minutes for our group of nine. This time might be emotionally challenging.
After everyone shares, give a 5-10 minute break for folks to use the bathroom, get tea, do whatever. Meanwhile, the main facilitator goes through the list of grievances and gathers the ones they believe are the highest leverage for the group. These are often the ones that most people brought up or the ones that are underlying others in a cause-effect dynamic.
In our three hours we rarely go through all the grievances.
A rule of thumb is to expect to reach 4 of them comfortably so prioritize accordingly. I like moving between known bigger issues with smaller “easy wins” to mix up the pace and emotional tenor. It’s also wise to start with a less contentious one while people settle in to the process.
When folks come back the facilitator proposes their list of ones to talk through and provides context as to why.
This should connect to the greater benefit of the people present or the community as a whole. If they choose well, everyone is in agreement because they can see the benefit of shining light on those areas as well.
Propose one to start and begin the process.
The relevant parties enter the circle or move next to each other in the circle and start talking.
These folks are the people the group has agreed are most central to the grievance at hand.
If you’re upset about finding the kitchen a mess on a regular basis it’s more helpful to use the process to talk with the person who contributes to the mess the most instead of every single person who leaves a fork on the counter.
Ideally, everyone gains something from the conversation by watching the two most involved people share. If you have to pivot to someone else use your best judgement and feel free to do so.
The people in the process start with reflective listening where just one person talks and the other reflects back what they heard.
This is a practice where someone starts by saying what is real for them from their perspective. Use “I language” and own your experience. After they share the other person summarizes back what they heard the first person say until the first person feels understood. “What I heard you say was X, Y and Z, is that correct or not quite right?”
As the conversation evolves and rapport is built this formality can be rolled back.
The facilitator is present to pay attention to the meta conversation.
If one or more parties become defensive the facilitator should step in to bring them back to reflective listening. This can look like someone aggressively justifying their actions, blaming their actions on someone else or circumstances, or making accusations of the other person in the conversation (to name a few ways).
If the people in the process go down a rabbit whole that isn’t relevant to the conversation or more fundamental to the issue then the facilitator should bring them back to their original topic.
If the conversation gets stuck or ceases to evolve then the facilitator steps in and gives it a push in the form of a suggestion, a question or an insight from watching the discussion taking place.
The facilitator is in service to what brings unity and closure to the primary grievance at hand in such a way that preserves the relationship of the people in the discussion.
Once the participants feel like there’s nowhere else to go or they feel complete the observers can ask questions about the context that’s been shared by the participants.
Ideally, the audience hasn’t spoken yet, they’ve just been listening.
These questions, comments or clarifications should be on topic or about things the participants have said. The facilitator can deem a question too far off topic. They may invite the asker to rephrase it in a way that is relevant or ask that they speak with the participants after the time for House Resolution is complete. This is done in the interest of getting to more grievances while the whole group is gathered.
Everyone present brainstorms next steps or action items for the issue that was discussed.
Not all sessions need action items. Sometimes clearing the air in the process is all that’s necessary.
The proposals that feel most important for the people close to the issue are touched up so they are specific, actionable, time bound and owned by a specific person.
The participants rejoin the circle.
If the session was particularly tense or long (more than 15m) give a five minute break.
Choose the next group and go again.
Repeat until you run out of time or the group agrees to be done. I prefer to end early instead of late. Stay in tune with the vibe of the group and don’t ask for too much of everyone. You don’t want to make more grievances because of how it’s facilitated.
The first time my house did this process we had a large handful of grievances get raised. We talked through what we could get to and the house felt lighter when we were done.
The second time we did this there were over 50 grievances named. The air was thick after they were all shared. The first hour alone was taken just by having everyone name and clarify their grievances. We finished this one feeling heavy but hopeful. I encouraged everyone to follow up with the people they had unresolved grievances with in order to proactively dig into their issue and seek understanding.
We all did this. We listed all of them in our house Slack channel just for #Stories-And-Annoyances. People talked, they did the work, and they followed up in the thread detailing the results of their time together.
That is the real benefit of doing a process like this. Culturally shifting the way our group approaches conflict has lowered our total level of conflict across the board. We had our most recent session for the process yesterday and, for the first time, we got through all of the grievances given.
That’s not to say it was easy; tears were shed. That’s not to say there won’t be more conflict in the future.
That IS to say that we are demonstrating more resilience. If you try this process out yourself maybe you’ll have a similar outcome.
For more specifics about how I facilitate or think about this, feel free to email or DM me.
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