Agreements and Policies #8

8: Conflict Resolution Structures

by Raven

As I said in my last post, we are now into the trickier stuff, the stuff folks don’t want to think about, and conflict is the first of those things.  I wrote a piece about Communal Conflict a long time ago and in that piece, and in my piece outlining the Agreements and Policies that we would be covering here, I admitted I’m a conflict avoider.  I don’t like dealing with conflict.  I suspect that few people do.

But this is all the more reason you want to have a policy dealing with conflict resolution in place.  You may hope that you won’t ever need it and, in fact, many conflicts are small and easily resolved, but if there is a major conflict occurring, it will be very hard to get an agreement on a conflict resolution strategy when it is actually happening.  You want to have an agreement on how you will deal with conflicts now so that you have it in place for if and when real conflict occurs.

One thing that is useful in community conflicts (especially if the community is big enough) is that there is often a person or two that is not triggered by the conflict, that does not feel like they need to take sides, and who can mediate, at least somewhat.

It’s useful if the community already agrees to a process, like Nonviolent Communication (aka Compassionate Communication) or taking turns listening and then having the other person restate what they’ve heard.  I’ve heard of groups that make each person argue the other person’s position.  I also knew a couple who when they realized they were in an argument, would continue, only in gibberish.  (Humor often helps.)  Whatever you can get people to agree to now will be useful later, when things get heated.

It’s also important to remember that compromise is important.  Although it is better when each person gets what they need (which may be more possible than you think if you can figure out what the real needs are), there may be times you need to compromise.  It’s part of the tradeoff for living with a bunch of cool people.

Finally, there may be a point where your group has gotten as far as it can.  This is often the place where calling on an outside mediator may help.  An important part of your group’s conflict resolution agreements is to have a list of agreed on people that everyone feels good about being possible mediators.  Someone who is not part of your community is more likely to be able to see all sides of the issue, listen to everyone, and make useful suggestions.

As I said, this is not much fun, but it’s very important.  And there are harder things than conflict.  Next on the list is what to do if violence occurs in your community.