Peace Making?

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Hi Everyone!

Welcome to Newsletter no.16 - May 2009

OK, so I said last time that I would write about the Rescuer Syndrome this month. But you know how sometimes the feeling isn't right, the inspiration isn't there, and something else slaps you in the face so hard you can't ignore it. Well, this month it is 'Peacemaking'.

I've always resisted describing my role as a mediator as being a 'peace maker'.

This is mainly because I am not the 'maker' of any particular outcome when I mediate, the people I'm mediating are the creators of their outcome and my practices always aim towards ensuring that is so.

But also, I have a difficulty with the idea that resolution of conflict is necessarily the same as 'peace'. Sometimes it is energy and vibrancy and activity and new exciting beginnings and expression. Peace isn't the word that would fit. For me anyway. Of course, as with all things....it depends what each of us understands a word to mean.

If peace means contentment, creativity, openness, awareness, presence, energy, learning, growth....then those words 'click' with me for peace.

But if peace means no-anger, no-shouting, no frustration, no confusion, no....problems! then that is, to me, an interpretation that symbolises fear of conflict.

Such an interpretation does not allow an acceptance that conflict is inevitable and will always exist, and always has done, and that what is important is that we learn how to respond to, face up to, engage with conflict constructively, creatively and with openness to its possibilities.

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At Hillingdon Community Mediation where I work,(May 2009 - now work at CAOS Conflict Management) we mainly provide mediation for neighbours in dispute. In these situations, many issues of dispute lead to feelings, thoughts, actions of anger, frustration, confusion, paranoia, obsession, depression, resentment, fear, aggression....etc....

These are like a boiling pot of responses that need expression and direction in order to come to some form of clarity, for the energy from that 'heat' to become creatively focused towards a new way of responding and for new insights to be gained.

Suppressing the expression of those emotions, as can often be attempted when 'peace making' based on fear of conflict, is an agenda for the conflict resolution practitioner involved, leads to a temporary lid being placed on the boiling pot.

Often this is because the conflict resolution practitioner (and this could include 'unofficial' practitioners such as friends, colleagues, parents, etc.) is fearful of conflict and the emotions that arise from it and sees the main response to be to avoid expression of the emotions. For fear of WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN!

Quotation Corner: Peace It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. (Unknown)

If someone has never gone there with a conflict and allowed themselves to express their frustrations and anger and fear and vulnerability, then it is likely that they will, if involved in supporting conflict resolution, try to suppress the conflicts that exist between others. To 'keep the peace', to 'calm things down', to 'pour oil on troubled waters'.....

But, if you leave a pot boiling and just put a lid on it, it will soon boil over, usually more violently, more explosively than if, instead, the lid is left off and the fire underneath is attended to.

When we are willing to look at what is fanning the flames, what is adding fuel to the fire and what can be done instead to reduce the heat, to prevent the contents of the pot burning and tasting awful, then we are supporting the resolution of conflict. We are enabling the heat to leave the situation, in its own way, through our supporting its 'venting'.

Recommended Books Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success in Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott. The title speaks for itself but the content goes much further. The use of 'blame' is explored as an inhibitor to effective communication and conflict resolution. Right on with that Susan! And with Principles such as 'Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality', 'Come out from Behind Yourself into the Conversation and Make it Real', and 'Take Responsibility for your Emotional Wake', you can guess it is a fearless journey into how to have conversations that really count as it says on the back cover.

We are not trying to force the lid down, using ever more ingenious ways of securing it, using more and more power and resources to resist the release of the heat inside.

We are supporting conflict resolution and conflict transformation, not conflict suppression, conflict avoidance.

When peace making is about suppression or avoidance of conflict it is ultimately self contradictory. It is an avoidance of the reality of a conflict's existence without an attempt to enable its resolution.

Again, the conflict resolution practitioner has to look to themselves and their own thoughts and motivations in responding to a conflict. As has been said often on the Communication and Conflict website:

The practices of effective communication and effective conflict resolution are more about self-awareness than about techniques or 'strategies' for changing or 'dealing with' others.

And that's great news. Because it's impossible to change others, but the possibilities for changing ourselves are infinite. And we each have the power to do so.

• Seeking to control or change others in a conflict is conflict suppression and conflict avoidance. It doesn't work.
• Seeking to control or change ourselves in a conflict situation leads to conflict resolution. It does work.
• Effective support for conflict resolution empowers people to find ways of controlling or changing themselves. It doesnt' try to do it for them through 'advice' and suggestions. It supports them through listening, summarising and creativity-generating questioning.

...............and that may not always look like peace making.

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E-booklet: Listening, Summarising and Questioning - The Simple, Effective Skills of Conflict Resolution Click here to find out a bit more about these skills or purchase the booklet now for $3:

Free e-book - Contemplations on Communication and Conflict (click the link to download) This e-book is an archive of some of the early observations and anecdotes I have written for these newsletters, but now collected together in a free downloadable e-book, my aim being to make them more accessible than for you to have to scan through various web pages to read them.

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Would you like:

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• Mentoring, if you are a Mediator or other conflict resolution practitioner, to support you in reviewing and developing your practice?

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Some links that you may find interesting......

Mediate.com is an excellent resource of information relating to mediation. There are articles, links to websites and blogs as well as the possibility of locating mediators in your area.

SelfGrowth.com- - SelfGrowth.com is a comprehensive guide to information about Self Improvement, Personal Growth and Self Help on the Internet. It is designed to be an organized directory, with articles and references to thousands of other Web Sites on the World Wide Web.

Authentic-Self.com is a rich source of information, quotes and support to enable us to find and be true to ourselves.

Oh Wow This Changes Everything is a great site with an enormous number of links to articles about different aspects of effective communication and conflict resolution. Definitely worth a visit......you could be there for hours!

Kalavati.org helps people, like yourself, create change in their life and business. They share fun stress management strategies and personal development articles.

New Conversations.net This site is sooo full of great links and resources relating to Co-operative Communication skills - I would very much recommend it.

Learning Supersite is a fascinating site dedicated to the development of informal learning. "A new approach to learning, the Learning Supersite is a venue that provides personal learning community, but with state-of-the-art Web technologies."

Transforming Conflict is an excellent organisation which works with young people, and adults, in educational settings, promoting restorative approaches to conflict.

Aik Saath This is an amazing and interesting website, quite besides the work of Aik Saath that it promotes. Aik Saath works to promote conflict resolution skills in young people and the development and support of racial harmony in Slough, UK and its surrounding areas.

Would you like to build your own website?.....this is how I built mine...

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