Exchanging memories and meaning in the resolution process

After a weekend of 50^th anniversary’s (President Kennedy’s assassination and the first episode of Dr Who) I recall in detail my own experience of 22 November 1963. My mum and dad had gone out to the cinema and left me and my twin brother and my older sister to get ourselves to bed as they would be late.  My sister was 17 and was very organised getting me and my brother in our pyjamas good and early. When we saw the announcement about President Kennedys’ assassination on our grainy black and white TV we didn’t know what to say or do. Eventually we wrote a brief note for mum and dad ‘Kennedy Assassinated’ on a scrap of paper and got on with watching what I believe was a comedy tv programme – Harry Worth ( He did a weird reflection routine in a shop window in the titles). Laughing just seemed wrong. It seemed we had lost a relative not just a politician.

We went up to bed a little late and I was startled and apparently very tearful and dozey when mum and dad came in from the cinema and woke us all up when they saw the note. They had not yet heard the news! That could not happen today with mobiles and the internet!

This story reminds me how important exchanging memories and meaning are in resolution processes. Memories often do cluster around significant events but can remain dormant until the event is recalled. It is these memories that give the event meaning. For mediators it is all about exploring narrative and exchanging meaning. Mediators will encounter at least two different versions of the same events. They do not need to decide which is true but unlock each narrative and get the parties to exchange meaning. What has happened in the conflict scenario becomes less important as what it means grows in significance.

With shared / common events a listener can get distracted by internally comparing his / her version with the speaker. This is where clean sheet listening comes in handy with each party to mediation in separate party sessions - putting aside your own experience, suspending judgement and using open questions to build narrative and understand what is important to the speaker.

With the parties together you may need a prolonged period of structured sharing and open exploration of what each party believes has happened and what it means. Resist and challenge requests to validate one version above the other. Eventually people may need to agree to differ about what significance the events have. The mediator’s role here is to move beyond the past and create a new understanding between the parties which will create a new future without disrespecting the events of the past.

By the way, although the moment may have passed please let us know what you were doing on the 21 or 22 November 1965? Sharing memories is great.

  

John Crawley

How chance remarks can be very dangerous – responsible resolution tips

Lord Feldman, the conservative party chairman has been quizzed recently over allegations that one of David Cameron’s inner circle described party members as ‘mad-swivel eyed loons’ (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-lord-feldman-to-face-questions-about-allegations-he-described-grassroots-activists-as-swiveleyed-loons-8622933.html )

Youth Crime Commissioner, Paris Brown, found her online social media comments caught up with her in the workplace (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/09/paris-brown-stands-down-twitter) 

These ill-considered derogatory remarks are all part of our attempt to establish a Social Identity[1] by identifying with a group. This gives people an important source of pride and self-esteem, a sense of belonging to the social world.

If we kept these opinions to ourselves they would not be so risky, but humans are by nature ‘leaky’ – texting, tweeting and talking with friends and colleagues in an emotionally charged, ill-considered way.

We have come across these situations time and time again when People Resolutions mediators are called in to restore working relationships, or investigators assigned to determine what happened and whether it is a disciplinary matter or not.  

Here are some tips to manage chance remarks at the workplace at source:

1) Encourage people to think before they speak, tweet, text of email.

2) Demonstrate respect at senior level – it’s easy to trash or ridicule someone, much harder to give colleagues that you disagree with constructive, non-blaming feedback.

3) Utilise mediation if all parties are willing as it can quickly create conversation about communication styles, stop the behavior and restore rapport.

4) Use ‘virtual mentors’ – a prison I worked in stemmed derogatory banter by inviting officers to create a virtual mentor panel of people who would cause them to check their language if they were in the room e.g. younger sister, grandfather, imam, priest, sport coach. They were encouraged to visualize their virtual mentor if in an emotive conversation.

5) Remind people that their remarks / tweets / texts and emails are traceable and subject to the codes of conduct of the workplace, not just their own personal moral code.

See also http://www.peopleresolutions.com/bullying-a-harassment-training 

John Crawley

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[1] http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html

All female conflicts at work perceived as more negative – implications for workplace mediators and investigators

If you are about to mediate or investigate an all-female conflict at work, watch out for a tendency to view it harshly. New research from the University of British Columbia's business school suggests men and women perceive conflict between two women co-workers as being more harmful and doing more irreparable damage than conflicts between men. (1)

Participants were asked to make judgements on a scale of one to seven on the likelihood that the two managers would be able to repair their relationship going forward, and the extent to which the conflict would affect their job satisfaction and commitment to the company.

Participants rated those involved in all-female conflicts as also being more likely to let the argument negatively influence job satisfaction than male-female or male-male quarrellers.

The study also found that female experiment participants were just as likely as males to see the all-female conflict as more negative.

"I think people perceive female conflict negatively because it violates the way they think women should be," researcher Leah Sheppard told CBC News in an interview. "We want them to be always nurturing and kind and supportive."

It's an assumption that people don't impose whenever men deal with each other, even in a hostile way, she says.

"We are hard-pressed to think of a term comparable to 'catfight' that is regularly used to label conflict and competition between two men," she notes. "This term is troubling because it dehumanizes women and suggests that competition and conflict between women is akin to a disease when, in reality, moderate amounts of same-sex hostility are natural and expected across [men and women.]"

We all have our hooks which make it difficult for us to see things as they are and remain impartial. What do you think? What implications does this have for training workplace mediators and investigators? Do we concentrate too much on the technical side and not enough on the pitfalls of human bias?

We would love to hear your view. Get in touch. 

John Crawley

(1)http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/02/25/business-sauder-female-conflict.html