Hi Chris, A few thoughts prompted by your inquiry. Marshall Rosenburg (http://www.cnvc.org/) often makes the distinction between needs and strategies. He talks about how people's essential needs are rarely in conflict, but our strategies for meeting our needs often are. Perhaps an invitation that affirms the shared needs of those within the system, observes the conflicting strategies, and invites inquiry into how people can learn from all the strategies in use-how does each strategy serve our shared needs and the needs of those we serve? How can we learn together to enact a more integrated strategy that better serves our needs? It also occurs to me that folks who are entrenched in dualistic, positional frames of mind often need a larger "right" to which to attach themselves. In other words, trying to help folks engage multiplistic thinking when they are attached to dualistic perspectives is sometimes more difficult than simply expanding the frame of their "rightness" to include more. There's a little ditty that goes something like: "He drew a circle that shut me out, but love and I had the wit to win. We drew a larger circle that brought him in." so what is the circle that includes all of their perspectives and affirms all of their respective "rightness"? In my experience, invitations that offer this context are more likely to engender conversations that transcend positions. Let me know if/how I can be of help. All the best, Karen ------------------------------------------
Karen Sella Managing Partner www.luminacoaching.com Phone: 206.780.2998 Skype: luminasella lumina fr. L., light, air, opening -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Corrigan Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 8:17 AM To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Conflict in community Hi Folks: An inquiry for you. I've had a couple of conversations this week with people involved with local school boards in the United States. The common themes in these conversations include high degrees of local conflict, positional politics, an extreme lack of resources over which no one locally has any control and labour relations that are best described as toxic. IN a conversation today, one man said that he wanted to try Open Space simply as a way to have all the parts of the system understand each other. I suggested that this might not bring the peace he was looking for, as people who would come to that kind of meeting hoping to convince others of their righteousness would feel at the end of the day that they were either winners or losers. I thought that result wouldn't necessarily be transformational. When I asked him if instead we couldn't issue an invitation to invite people essentially to answer the question "how can we BE together differently in this system" he balked a little at the notion of a smaller group of "like minded" individuals. Of course I don;t see this as starkly black and white, but nevertheless, he thought an "airing of the issues and a shared understanding" were most important. So my question goes to people who have worked in this situation, with groups that are highly wedded to positions. What are the kinds of invitations that allow for "airing," generated shared understanding, and perhaps lead to transformative relationships? By the way, I told him I would do this for less than 1.5 days. Thoughts and reflections welcome. Chris -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Consultation - Facilitation Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com Open Space Resources: <http://tinyurl.com/r94tj> http://tinyurl.com/r94tj * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
