The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  The initiative of implementing and developing the use of dialogue as a means of communication to build peace through active involvement of the citizenry worked well here. There were leaders in place who had the energy and skills to recognize the importance of this initiative and a population looking for a way to heal and rebuild community. They knew they would continue to live and work together in interdependence and were determined to create relationships that would allow peaceful coexistence. The focus of SD in this case was on building relationship.

  World Café

  The World Café developed by chance when a group of business and academic leaders who were gathered for a large circle dialogue in a town in northern California were rained out and instead engaged in smaller group dialogues. They randomly and periodically rotated members of each small group to share and build on insights with the other groups. At the end of that morning, they realized they had developed a new method for gathering collective intelligence that fostered more creative and critical strategic thinking. They wanted to capture what it was that enabled this to take place and through action research in several countries developed the seven design principles of the World Café and the foundational concepts of what they refer to as “conversational leadership” (www.theworldcafe.com/principles.html):

  Set the context so the purpose for bringing the participants together at this time is clear

  Create hospitable space so the participants feel comfortable and safe to openly share their ideas

  Explore questions that matter to the participants so they feel the relevance of this dialogue to their own lives

  Encourage everyone’s contribution and in doing so acknowledge that people may choose to participate in different ways at different points in the process

  Connect diverse perspectives by having people rotate to different tables and connect the distinct conversations

  Listen together for insights, patterns, and themes that emerge, as the success of the World Café is determined by the quality of the listening that participants do

  Share collective discoveries that is done at the end in the “harvest” portion of the process when the individual table conversations are connected to the whole by identifying common themes and patterns

  The World Café design and process is most closely related to being a dialogue event rather than focusing on relationships or context.

  Case Study.

  There are many examples of the ways in which World Café has made a difference in communities, organizations, and the everyday lives of the participants. Even a few examples demonstrate the breadth of applications for this dialogic event:

  Many people believe that climate change is a growing concern, and they believe people who can do something about it are not paying enough attention to the topic. A World Café was held in Boston, Massachusetts, with its main purpose to strategically develop ways to foreground the conversation on climate change to engage politicians and the public at large to the conversation.

  In the United Kingdom, a World Café entitled “Transforming Conflict” focused on creating innovative ways in which to introduce and develop life skills for children through education.

  In Thailand, over three thousand citizens gathered in conversation about the country’s future. Their recommendations were sent to the future political leaders, an especially poignant outcome considering the escalating conflict of political factions in Bangkok.

  In Mexico, the National Fund for Social Enterprise gathered a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss the focus of the social economy in Mexico and the rest of the world. Decisions were made for the next year’s agenda, and a follow-up World Café was scheduled to build on the year’s initiatives.

  By joining diverse voices together to collectively address issues that pertain to them all through a World Café event, more voices are heard and acknowledged and the chances for these recommendations to be implemented and followed are increased. When stakeholders are invited to give voice to their concerns, they have a vested interest in making their recommendations successful. This can be directly linked to more cohesive and peaceful communities.

  Public Conversations Project

  The Public Conversations Project (PCP) is an organization whose mission is to support individuals, organizations, and communities to be able to have difficult conversations in a respectful and civilized manner. They do this through the use of dialogue, which they define as “a structured conversation or series of conversations, intended to create, deepen and build human relationships and understanding” (www.publicconversations.org/dialogue). In their work with individuals and communities, they train and facilitate members to use qualities of dialogic communication in their conversations. This includes such characteristics of dialogue as listening so that all are mutually heard, speaking respectfully so that all are understood the way they want to be understood, and broadening perspectives to include those of others in addition to one’s own views. PCP focuses mostly on context aspects of dialogue, knowing that the quality of the communication in relationships needs to be paid attention to as well.

  Case Study.

  PCP works globally. One example of the work it has done to repair war-torn communities and transform the communication and relationships was in Burundi, where it worked with Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa villagers after their violent civil war. PCP worked with a local organization, Community Leadership Center (CLC), to train a cadre of master trainers to design and facilitate dialogues across Burundi. The master trainers, with the guidance of PCP, learned these skills, carried out pilot dialogues with PCP support, and then took the PCP dialogue principles and practices and localized them to their own culture. In its brochure describing the dialogue process it followed, there were a couple of points worth noting (described in the following), especially in the way PCP and CLC prepared the context for the dialogues to occur (www.publicconversations.org/dialogue/international/burundi).

  Relationships and trust were so destroyed during the years of violence that bringing people together in the same space to engage in respectful communication was an immense challenge. The first step of the process was for the participants and facilitators to create communication agreements, in effect ground rules for the dialogue. This important step makes explicit what will and will not be accepted as a practice in their dialogues as a beginning for establishing a safe environment that will support the participants in rebuilding their trust. The next step was that the facilitators began the dialogue by asking opening questions. Here the facilitators play a key role by getting the conversation started and setting the tone by modeling the types of questions and the manner in which they could be asked. Once the conversation began, participants were encouraged to ask their own questions that focused on curiosity and interest. This focused them on the potential sharing and learning that can take place and not having the conversation turn into a blaming exercise. In closing, the facilitators asked questions to bring the session to an end with the agreement on next steps, which could include more dialogue sessions. The way this process unfolded and the role of the facilitator in action weighed this more heavily on creating the conditions for dialogue to take place, locating it more centrally in the context of dialogue.

  The communities in Burundi knew that in order to continue living and building a good quality of life, they needed to shift the dynamics that existed among them. Their once thriving communities had deteriorated into bloodshed, and they needed to do something to regain the safety in their environment and rebuild their community. They elected to learn and practice dialogue as a means to this goal and to localize it so that it was culturally relevant to them.

  Other Uses of Dialogue

  The three examples present some level of detail of how sustainable dialogue, World Café, and Public Conversations Project used dialogue as relationship, event, and context. Dialogue can have a broader use depending on the purpose and how it is framed. It thus may deepen understanding of the concept and practice of dialogue and appeal to
some readers for their own specific purposes. In addition, knowing about them may trigger other ideas as well.

  Stewart, Zediker, and Black (2004), in their review of dialogue, identified five core philosophies of dialogue. In these five approaches to dialogue, one particular characteristic stood out as being common to all five, and that was the concept of holism: “For Bohm the ‘implicate order’, for Buber the wholeness of human being, for Bakhtin the whole of speech communicating, for Freire the whole of critical consciousness, and for Gadamer the whole of the relation between the human and his or her world” (p. 26). We can think of this sense of holism as the whole person being engaged, the whole relationship as the focus, the whole interaction and the whole community. In the elements of a communication model, this holism is represented by the integration of self, other, context, and relationship in meaning making, all of which are embedded in the cultural norms and practices that went before and continue. These elements influence the quality of the communication, and altering one element has an effect on all of the other components, as it operates as a dynamic and interactive system.

  Yankelovich (1999) indicates that dialogue can be used on a larger scale to bring about social change. Cissna and Anderson (1994) believe that the ideals of dialogue are difficult to sustain as the standard of communication, but that within any communication, there can be dialogic moments. Dialogue requires a high level of awareness of our assumptions, our style of communication and how we express ourselves, deeper listening skills, and that this increased intensity and focus is challenging to maintain over any extended period of time. Pearce and Pearce (2000) build on Cissna and Anderson’s notion of dialogic moments to find a longer stretch of time than a dialogic moment although shorter than a constant norm of communication. They name this an “episode,” which is a series of turns in communication in a given interaction with an agreed-to beginning and end (Pearce and Pearce, 2000). In framing communication in episodes, they view the qualities of dialogic communication as sustained within an episode, which can vary depending on the agreed-to number of turns in the conversation.

  Bohm (1997) talks about dialogue as being about collectively changing thought processes and creating the space for that to occur. The collective change of thought processes can be linked to Yankelovich’s support of dialogue as a means toward social change. Bohm’s suggestion about creating the space for dialogue to occur connects the use of dialogue as providing the context for within which it can occur, similar to how the Public Conversations Project case used dialogue.

  PROBLEMS IN COMMUNICATION DURING CONFLICT

  If we look at the factors affecting communication and assume the worst-case scenarios when these dynamics are in play, we have communication while in conflict. It starts with our not having a developed sense of self-awareness so that we do not fully understand why the actions of others affect us the way they do. This is in large part because we may not be clear about our underlying needs and interests and may be looking for satisfying our surface demands instead. In addition, this undeveloped self-awareness may lead us to not fully understand the impact our actions have on others. It then continues on to our not having a developed sense of awareness of the other party and not holding a shared understanding of what it means to be in relationship with others in the way they envision it. If the context within which these interactions take place is hostile, it can exacerbate the impact of our communication so that the negative attributes of sides are magnified. This creates, fosters, and supports a culture of destructive conflict. Add to this the eroded trust from these destructive dynamics, and we have a strong case for assuming bad intentions as a filter for interpreting and understanding others’ behavior. We will explore the impact of emotions, patterns, framing, and blaming that occur and hamper our communication when we are in conflict.

  Emotions

  Conflict brings up many emotions, usually negative, and this emotional overlay clouds our thinking, adding to the lack of clarity in our communication and exacerbating the effect of assuming bad intentions. The context may play a role in fueling the conflict if the parties are embedded in a hostile environment that puts them more on the defensive and makes them less willing to engage in open and constructive communication. This makes it easier for the hostilities and conflict to escalate and increasingly more difficult to de-escalate and resolve. The less aware we are of self and other, the easier it is for these dynamics to exist and escalate to control our communication.

  Patterns

  Our communication style generally becomes habitual and is characterized by specific patterns we use that we may not be aware of. Patterns we default to that do not improve our communication, and in fact may lead to destructive outcomes, may be referred to as unwanted repetitive patterns (URPs). Typically we have reactions that are out of habit and we are not aware of these patterns, resorting to them by default. We may end up in a repetitive rut and wonder why we are not achieving the results we want. If we were aware of these repetitive patterns, the next step would be to want to change them and do something different that is not part of our habit. We may not have alternative methods to use and so may fall back to our default pattern of reacting, knowing full well that even as we are speaking, the communication will not lead to the results we want because it never did in the past. This can lead to frustration and feelings of being stuck in a vicious cycle.

  Framing

  Our worldview created by our experiences, values, culture, and other influencing factors shapes how we see the world. This way of framing our experiences affects what we pay attention to, how we interpret it, how we understand and make meaning out of it, and how we connect it to what we know and what we believe is important. If we assume bad intentions, as in a relationship in conflict, we will more likely than not frame other people’s comments and actions in a negative light. In addition, we may be prone to interpret their communication and action as having ulterior motives, especially because we probably have a very low level of trust, if any.

  Blaming

  In destructive conflict situations, we tend to attribute all actions from others as intentionally harmful. If they insist it was not intentional, we will still probably attribute blame to them and fault them for not being more careful, not taking our wants into consideration, and wanting to take revenge against us. Even if we do the same actions to others, we will not attribute the same level of blame to our own behavior because we justify our own actions, even though the other party most likely will attribute blame to us.

  * * *

  These attitudes and behaviors lead to styles of communication that destroy relationships and are typical of what happens in destructive conflict. In this next section, I offer recommendations on how to improve relationships by shifting our attitudes and behaviors to practice more dialogic communication.

  PREVENTING AND OVERCOMING PROBLEMS IN COMMUNICATION

  At the beginning of the chapter, I mentioned that we would be looking at communication rather than through it, so that we could focus on the method and process of the communication itself. We explored the basic elements of the communication process and what is needed in self, other, context, culture, and meaning making in relationships to shift from destructive patterns of communication to constructive patterns of better relationships. We reviewed dialogue as an approach to communication that leads to more effective outcomes and improved relationships. In exploring dialogue, we saw that there are three broad categories of how dialogue is framed and approached, including focusing on the relationship, event, or context, yet in practice, the reality is that it tends to be a blended method. We also noted the broader applications of dialogic communication and some of the effects it may inspire. We explored factors affecting communication and how these factors may erode our communication when in conflict situations.

  In order to communicate more effectively and subsequently improve our relationships through coconstructing meaning making with our conversation partner, it is necessary for us to pay more attention t
o the quality and process of our communication. We need to be more deliberate about what we say and how we say it instead of relying on our default mode, which may lead us into URPs. At the risk of becoming hypersensitive, we need to be more thoughtful in how we phrase what we say, in our word choices, in our timing, in the tone we use, and in anticipating the impact on the other party in conversation with us, the surrounding environment and context, and what we hope to achieve as a follow-up to that exchange.

  The characteristics of dialogic communication common across many approaches to dialogue are that it involves listening deeply to each other, cocreating shared understanding through joint inquiry, becoming aware of and suspending assumptions, deepening the connection and strengthening the relationship, and taking place in a space or container that allows this to happen so that we get in touch with the essence of our humanity. The following framing addresses these factors in three stages—preparation, in the moment, and reflection—incorporating the themes listed in factors affecting communication (self, other, relationships, emotions, context, and episode) and problems in communication during conflict (emotions, patterns, framing and blaming) so that we can practice and integrate specific practices into our everyday communication. All of the basic elements of the communication process model are addressed in these three stages. If we practice this type of dialogic communication, there are increased chances we will prevent some conflicts from occurring, lessen the possibility that conflicts that do occur will escalate, and that we will be able to resolve our conflicts sooner with solutions that are mutually beneficial.