Newsletter #264 — August 15, 2024
by Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
July 22, 2024
I started out conversation by talking about what a mediation or conflict resolution firm might do when someone comes to them and says "we need help." I remembered, from when I worked with Susan years ago, that she always argued that extensive preparation was really important. She reiterated that in this conversation, along with the importance of local ownership:
One of the great lessons was that people need ownership of the process as well as the outcome. And today, I see people hiring consultants to come in and help with some of these polarizing issues. But one of the lessons I've learned is that communities have to be willing to commit the time to engage. And anyone who's helping them has to also commit time to do an upfront assessment and process design, before they convene people. Anyone who wants to help —and it doesn't have to be somebody from the outside — as I reflect back on my years of experience, I'm seeing more and more people internally in communities, either somebody from public sector, an appointed or elected official, or someone from a nonprofit or the business community taking leadership to try to address some issues in a collaborative way.
But you have to really do a careful job of identifying and defining what the issue is, who the stakeholders are, and who are the parties that are affected. Talk to them about the issue, so that you can see it before you get engaged in any kind of process. What are different people's perceptions of the problem? What words do they use to describe it?
She gave an example of a meeting she'd been in that morning where people were talking about DEI programs. But some people didn't like the term "diversity." They suggested the word "culture" be used instead, because some of the participants would talk about "cultural issues," but not about "diversity issues," as they saw that as a loaded or biased term.
You need to spend time upfront before you engage people in problem-solving, to look at how people see it, how they would be comfortable coming together, who should be involved, and what the process steps should be. Then I think you have a good chance of making some progress.
Often, she said, people need to be reassured about the safety of the process before they engage.
People are reluctant to even gather in a place where people of the opposition might be. And I think today, as much, if not more than before, the whole concept of ground rules and explaining what you're doing, and why you're doing it is essential to getting people involved.
Having co-sponsors is also helpful for buy-in she said. It helps give legitimacy to the process. People can also be drawn out of their silos if the topic is one they care a lot about. She gave the example of homelessness, which is a major concern in Southern California, where she lives.
Both sides agree it's a problem, and both sides want to find solutions. Our mayor has created a task force with people from both sides to try to address that. ... the participants got to know each other better through the process of looking at the history of homelessness, what the current problems are, what the options are, what they'd like to see happen. And they began to break down those stereotypes of the other.
And I think it doesn't matter whether it's homelessness or youth issues or open space, or affordable housing, you can just go through a whole litany of community issues that you're going to find in any town. And if you can have the leadership of some group, again, it could be public sector, private sector, nonprofit, or in some cases, it's our religious communities, bringing people together from different voices, political persuasions, to try to address those issues in a constructive way, then I think we can go a long way toward breaking down some of the finger-pointing.
I observed that a number of people have told me that conservatives, particularly, are reluctant to engage in such consensus-building processes, because they see it as a "liberal" or "progressive" process. I wondered if she had encountered that, and if so, what she did about it. She said, she'd never heard it framed that way, but she has had people say that they are worried about the process because of the funder, when it is a federal agency or government funding it (which it often is).
They don't want to participate in a government-funded process. It makes them nervous. I've had actually people on both sides, environmental and industry say, "I don't want to do consensus building because I'm afraid I will have to compromise my values." And I'm afraid I'm going to have to give in because once I start liking these people, then I may have to accommodate. I don't want to have to do that.
"How do you respond to that," I asked?
What I usually do is sit down with individuals, from either a conservative or environmental group and talk about what the consequences of not sitting down are, both negative and positive. What might they get out of this by participating that could be useful to them. I explain that it's an opportunity to educate them about your needs so that they're not as insensitive as they might come across in public, because they've never sat down with your side. And that has worked. I've been able to get people to the table.
Sometimes she explains that consensus building isn't a "novel" or "hippie" process; it has been around since the founding of the country. It is simply a process that allows all voices to be heard. She then explains that it gives them a chance to explain why they are so concerned about something. So rather than stressing how they will have to listen to others (whom they might not be interested in listening to), she stresses that this is their opportunity to speak to and be heard by the other side. Most people are willing to buy into that.
But she also said that you have to explain that it is a very controlled process.
Some people might be afraid to come in because they've had bad experiences in the past. Or maybe because they've seen people do loud name calling in public meetings. They don't want to be exposed to that. Nobody wants to be exposed to that. And then you can explain the protocols you might be using, whether it's ground rules, some sort of charter, something that lays out how you are expecting people to behave and what particular behaviors will be acceptable and not acceptable. So that's really critical.
But sometimes, she said, that's not enough.
Now, sometimes there are individuals who represent a group who are not ever going to be constructive in a consensus process. And most people know who those people are in a community. They'll say, (I'm just pulling a name out of a hat.) "George is never going to want to listen, and he's just going to frustrate people, and he has such a bad reputation." But his good friend Peter, (I'm just pulling that name out too) shares exactly the same views, has a good standing in the community, has actually been able to talk to folks. And I think if you could get Peter, he not only will be willing to participate, but might be able to get George to follow along. And he will keep George informed and kind of drag him along into this. So that has worked as an option. But I think that's really an important consideration, because often you'll put these together and you'll miss an important constituency group. And you don't want people firing cannons into this process.
We then switched out discussion to the processes themselves. She talked about two that she particularly likes and has done a lot. One is a problem-solving process, in which you get people together, you study the history of the problem together. You look at the current situation, and then start developing and assessing options for addressing the problem.
Knowing how history is now so often contested, I asked her if this has sometimes been a challenge in the processes she has run. She said it hasn't been.
Usually, regarding history, we bring in an historian, a community historian, who has some credibility either because they have done some writing on this topic, or they're knowledgeable about it. Most communities have a historical society, and that's often old guard folk that conservatives may be more comfortable with. And they explain some of the history about, for instance, housing in the community. Often, it's just data that you're pulling from, for instance, the housing department. Or it could be the state database showing what has happened to either, the cost of housing, the availability of housing, the quality, the type, etc.
And you then overlay some other trends in the community — what it was like 50 years ago, and then go by decades, over some of the changes, so people get grounded in the context. And then you look at a snapshot of where we are today, and then talk about what some options for the future might be.
At that point, she explained, there are two options. One is to find out how other communities facing similar situations have handled similar issues. They might do this by looking at national resources on the topic — public entities or nonprofits which have assembled information about effective ways of addressing the issue of concern, or have case studies of ways other localities have approached the problem.
You might bring in a couple of people to talk about things. It might be an adjacent community that's dealt with it or somebody in your region where it doesn't take much to bring them in. They can talk about a case or how they are approaching it. They may be just a year or two ahead of you in terms of managing some particular issue. And then people brainstorm some things they'd like to do, start working on things that they feel would be both appropriate for their community, affordable, manageable. They establish some criteria and then try to reach some agreements. That's one approach.
The other kind of process is a visioning process:
I've been doing a lot of that in both large-scale and then some community-based projects where you say, "Okay, here's where we are now. Let's talk about what we would like to see it look like in 10 years or 20 years," whatever they're comfortable with. Usually, it's in 10 years, what would you like to see this community look like if we were able to solve it to everyone's satisfaction here? And hopefully, at this point in the process, they're hooked. They've gotten to know each other a little bit. They'll even sit next to somebody who's been "an enemy," and they start talking about what they'd like to see. You can do all sorts of things at this point. It can be a verbal process — just listing of ideas. Or I might ask them — I've done this with some very high-ranking officials — to draw a picture of what they would like the community to look like, maybe with regard to housing — I'm just using that as one of a myriad of issues. If the housing problem were solved in their community and then share their picture of what that looks like.
What that does is twofold. First, it reduces people to second grade level. That's what's so much fun about it, because they say, "I can't draw and I don't know what to do." It levels the playing field. And the reason that's important is that you've sometimes brought in people from local neighborhood councils who aren't articulate like the lawyers or some of the public officials. But when they have to draw a picture, everyone is at an equal disability, and it breaks the ice. Sometimes I've asked people to draw a picture of what they'd like to see happening. You might include some things like who would be involved and they can draw either geographically or just represent what it would look like in other ways.
And you might sometimes ask them, out of that drawing, to list one or two goals that you'd like to see the community have. Then they share that, and there are so many "aha!." It is remarkable. You post their drawing, the person gets up, they describe it. There's another person who's taking down notes of all the different ideas. And what comes out of it is that the visions become so similar. There's so much overlap. And there's this aha! You realize you're on the same page, and then you start saying, "Okay, what have you learned? What are your observations here? "Oh, we have so much we could work on. There's so much we have in common." It provides the energy then to start working out a plan of what they can do, short-term, long-term. So that's been very powerful in local communities.
Other things we talked about were the importance of relationships.
I think the power of relationship is so important. You really have to invest time, talking to individuals, to get a picture yourself, educate yourself about the dynamics in the community for yourself. Know the history, what the sensitivities are. One of the questions I used to ask is, "What should I not be asking?" It sounds funny, but are there some things that I should not be bringing up?
I was thinking back to her discussion of the word "diversity" and wondered whether she asked about avoiding certain topics or certain words because they might get people too riled up. That wasn't it, really, she explained. She gave a story, again, out of California, where she got advised not to ask what people did for a living. Why, she asked? Because some of the participants grew marijuana for their livelihood — before doing so was legal (it is legal now). So people would have declined to answer, and it would have been awkward, to say the least.
Another useful thing she suggested was to find out what kinds of processes have worked and what hasn't worked in the community. Find out what other experiences people have had with conflict resolution programs, or problem solving. If they've had bad experiences, you can find out what was bad about them, and not repeat those mistakes. If they'd had good experiences, what did they like about it? Might some aspects of the earlier process be worth repeating? (She gave the example of having food at meetings, which helps bring people together. That is something she might try to replicate.)
We talked about compensating participants for their time, choosing venues, naming the process (sometimes people want "mediators," sometimes they want "facilitators," even though they don't necessarily know the difference, and the person may actually do close to the same thing.) We talked about how to do data collection in a way that everyone will believe the data collected. We talked about third party neutrality. We talked about all sorts of interesting things, and Susan has 40 years worth of stories to illustrate her points. So I hope you'll listen to or watch our full conversation!
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
About the MBI Newsletters
Once a week or so, we, the BI Directors, share some thoughts, along with new posts from the Hyper-polarization Blog and and useful links from other sources. We used to put this all together in one newsletter which went out once or twice a week. We are now experimenting with breaking the Newsletter up into several shorter newsletters. Each Newsletter will be posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....
