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Making Conflict Constructive
By Frances Moore
From The Quickening of America
Create an Environment “Safe” for Difference. Making
conflict constructive begins by creating environments in which people
feel
free to dissent, to offer opposing views. Conflict
by which we grow is “open, public, and often very noisy,” writes
educational philosopher Parker Palmer. What blocks such creative
conflict is fear, he says. “It is fear of exposure, of appearing
ignorant, of being ridiculed.” People feel safe to expose their
ignorance only when we work to communicate that “every attempt
at truth, no matter how off the mark,” contributes to the search.4
Recently we heard about a marvelously successful high school history teacher,
very popular with his students. “That’s a brilliant wrong answer!” he’s
been known to say to a student who ventured beyond his or her own sure knowledge.
This teacher was creating a public environment free from fear of embarrassment.
He was preparing young people who will be able to deal with differences without
fear that being wrong will bring humiliation.
Even about what appears to be a no-compromise issue — abortion — some
advocates on both sides have tired of battling. They’ve worked hard to
create an environment safe for differences. Beginning in 1991, abortion rights
advocates and those opposed in Milwaukee came together in what turned into half-
or even full-day meetings every four to six weeks. Initially, what made the meetings
possible were commitments to keep the encounters safe. Everyone agreed: no media
coverage, and “the only agenda would be to have a dialogue,” Maggi
Cage, one of the conveners, told us.
Agree to Leave Labels at the Door. Participants in the abortion discussion arrived at certain rules to foster active listening. For one, they agreed to ban the use of dichés, labels, and rhetoric. Without the distraction of defending themselves against each other’s labels, they could see beneath differences to discover that they all, as Maggi explained, do have a shared interest. It’s a “common desire to prevent unwanted pregnancies.” Stereotypes broke down; trust grew. Out of this dialogue came ideas for “sexuality education” for youth, which the group later presented to legislators.
Agree to Disagree, Then Explore Common Ground. In St. Louis, representatives
from the two abortion camps took a very different approach. While
the Milwaukee participants believed it was important to really listen
to each others~ views on abortion before finding common ground, in
St. Louis they “decided to table the abortion issue and talk
about everything else in between,” said Jean Cavender of Reproductive
Health Services. Since most of the participants were providers of
services to women and children, they found that “everything
else in between” covered quite a lot of ground—induding
common ground.
So even in the most divisive battles, participants can deliberately create
conditions allowing all sides to discover their shared interests, The idea
is catching on in the abortion debate; such groups are now forming in several
other cities.5
Keep the Focus on the Present—and on Solutions. In Berkeley,
California, a zoning plan had been stalled for years. Labor union
members and other workers wanted zoning in order to keep high-paying
manufacturing jobs. But environmentalists and some residents applauded
the exit of polluting industries. How could such opposing interests
ever converge?
Planning Commission member Babette Jee agreed to chair a subcommittee on the
West Berkeley Plan, but only with the understanding that she would bring every
interested party to the table. And she did, in a series of face-to-face meetings
that continued over many months.
“At first the meetings were a little tense,” she told us, “because
people were complaining about the past.... So we made people talk about the present
and a little about the future. We would focus not just on the rhetorical or political
point of view, but a real situation: ‘practically speaking, how do we deal
with this problem?”’
Discipline Expressions of Anger. Meeting facilitators encouraged participants in the West Berkeley Plan to get their competing feelings out on the table but to resist reacting to inflammatory statements or “under-your-breath” jabs. They encouraged people not to interrupt each other and to reflect back on a speaker’s interests before stating competing interests. After a while, participants realized that they didn’t need to be abrasive to be heard.
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Excerpted from The Quickening of America by Frances Moore Lappé and Paul Martin Du Bois 1994 pp 251-253.
Found in the Energize website library at: http://www.energizeinc.com/art.html
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