Healing from the heart

On Thursday evening I attended a presentation by two extraordinary people from Sierra Leone. Paramount Chief Alfred Banya who is the Chair of Fambul Tok’s Moyamba District Executive Committee and his sister, Micheala Ashwood who is the National Coordinator of Fambul Tok’s growing network of peace mothers’ groups.

They told a remarkable story about how the slow process of rebuilding fractured communities after the civil war is being supported by the simple act of storytelling around a bonfire. ‘Holding the space so people can talk.”

Of course, it is not a process that guarantees success, but successful it is by any measure.

It reminded me how important it is for all human beings to have the chance to tell their story of how the dispute has affected them. In a moving video presentation, people maimed and bereft of family and friends as a result of the atrocities carried out by their neighbours and family members were able to forgive, if not forget. Storytelling can achieve that kind of reconciliation and there is a place for it in all disputes and conflict.

We shouldn’t lose sight of this and make the mediation process so focussed on money, legal merits or outcome that we forget the deeply human need to share stories of disappointment, betrayal, lost hope and humiliation with our fellow human beings, especially with those we feel need to know.

Disappearing Bust of Voltaire by Salvador Dali 1941 - may need to squint to see the ambiguity

Apparently, God did indeed bless the Irish not least with a love of ambiguity which is seen as key to future innovation, according to a recently published research on siliconrepublic.com. Hat tip to @3keyscoach for the link via Twitter this week.

Results from a sample of 117 Irish executives and entrepreneurs indicated a substantial bias towards right-brained cognition when compared with international norms.

Right-brained thinking, towards which the sample showed a preference, includes attributes such as intuition, the ability to make seemingly unrelated connections and tolerance of ambiguity. Ambiguity and the ability to hold incongruent ideas without stress is regarded as inherent to entrepreneurial activity because start-up businesses are often original, innovative ideas that require people who can think laterally and see the bigger picture.

These attributes also appeared frequently in my research into the profile of an effective mediator.

It also reminds me of a story from my very early career. I had just left university and was working in my family’s business. I was given the “deadly” job of credit control. There was a large amount outstanding from a household name and no one had been able to get to the bottom of it and so I saw this as a way to impress my father who was decidedly difficult to impress.

I did hours of research and number crunching and finally, I found where the error was. Rather pleased, I rang the accounts department of said household name company which was in Ireland. I went through the steps with the accounts lady that I had carefully prepared and which I thought would lead her to the same realization. And then they would send me a cheque.

It took about 20 minutes and at the end she said to me in a very calm and sincere tone

Is this money we owe you or money you owe us?

That was not quite the end of the conversation but very nearly. I was floored. When I told my father he simply roared with laughter and retold the story many times. So I guess I got to impress him if not in the way I had intended! I thought that I had not explained myself very well but perhaps it was the Irish love of ambiguity.

For more on entrepreneurship, innovation and creative business skills, check out the Mediation Business Summit

I found this terrific interview by Katie Couric of CBS News with Ellen Galinsky on a new book about life skills for children called Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs. Happily, the ability to resolve conflict is included (you will find the reference at about 32 minutes). It also echoes my own research into the skills of a mediator which place competence in the skills Galinsky talks about at the top of the list.

The book has been called “the best thing since Emotional Intelligence”. In the book, Galinsky identifies 7 life skills:

1. Focus and Self Control – pay attention and the ability to inhibit the desire to go on automatic.
2. Perspective Taking – knowing what others think, feel. Empathy is part of that but Ellen goes further to include the Theory of Mind (understanding what is going on in other people’s minds).
3. Communicating – the ability to put aside your own thoughts in order to understand the other, knowing how your words will be heard and know how to frame your own words so that you will be understood.
4. Making Connections – the ability to see the connections and the ability to make unusual connections which is the basis of creativity
5. Critical Thinking – looking for valid and accurate information – how to challenge and discern what is right and useful.
6. Taking on Challenges – resilience, risk taking, having a growth mindset, not giving up when that would be the easy thing to so.
7. Self Directed, Engaged Learning – curiosity, “I don’t know everything” mindset, I am not the expert, humility.

The things that stand out for me in making my own connections from this interview to my work as a mediator is that I notice the lack of these skills in my work and it is increasingly common with younger people. This suggests a change in the education system which may have something to do with the narrow focus of education to achieve higher levels of literacy and numeracy and the emphasis on measuring those to meet political agendas. The laudable intention seems to have had unintended consequences.

Despite all the books and courses on communicating skills, mindfulness, collaboration, my experience is that they are expressed less often in practice. Most of all, I notice how difficult it is for people to be empathetic as they struggle with their conviction about their rights or for them to be curious or to make unusual connections unless they are coached and encouraged to do so. I also agree with Galinsky when she says in the interview that it is never too late to learn these skills. They are essential skills not just for life but for dealing with the challenges that face us from the workplace to our relationships with other countries.

So to my mind whether we are mediator, lawyer, manager or employee we all need to

1. Show up and pay attention.
2. Put aside your own thoughts in order to understand the other and make a habit of seeing other perspectives.
3. Be humble and curious because whenever we start to think that we know best, or there is nothing to learn, we fail to inhibit the desire to ‘go on automatic’.
4. Practice giving praise and encouragement but not about the people themselves but rather on the approaches and strategies they use.

I think giving praise and encouragement to “grown ups’ is one of the most difficult things to do well without sounding patronising or inferring labels. Appreciation of effort and outcomes is a huge part of keeping people engaged and it requires real skill to do that.

Here’s the video.

Watch CBS News Videos Online
Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families in Work Institute speaks to Katie Couric about her new book, “Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs.”

It takes less effort to include people than it does to exclude them – in the long run. As Deepak Chopra said in a recent article ‘I know it’s tempting to tune out difficult people, but that’s the main reason they keep being difficult.’ I know exactly what he meant.

As part of my preparation for a recent mediation, I was speaking to the claimants’ legal advisers. During that conversation we talked about who should attend and she and her colleague were adamant that I should agree to preventing someone from the defendant’s group from attending. I had an idea that there would probably something very important that that person could contribute. I was curious to find out how that person might add value and why they should not be ‘tuned out’.  It also made me aware that there was something important going on for the people who had asked me to exclude him in the first place. I discovered that the man in question had a lot of knowledge about the dispute from the beginning, in fact he was unique in that regard. We agreed that he could attend.

On the first day of the mediation and during the opening meeting, I asked the ‘excluded person’ if they had anything to add to what a considerable number of people had already said. He started to speak and as soon as he did the advisors waved frantically at me across the table saying that he shouldn’t be allowed to speak. There aren’t many times when a mediator gets to decide things but making sure everyone is heard is one of those times. The session continued with the contribution and without falling apart. One the contrary, I believe it gave others at the table a strong sense of even-handedness and inclusion and many more felt able to tell me things throughout the mediation.

During the course of the following two days, the person they wanted to exclude turned out to be a most valuable ‘knowledge bank’.  He just needed to be heard, his knowledge and expertise appreciated and given encouragement and guidance on how he could add value to the process of reaching agreement without running away with the time available.

I learned the value of what so called ‘complainers’ can bring to productivity and problem solving many years ago when I put together a project team comprised entirely of ‘complainers’ and ‘cynics’. They were, without doubt, a most effective group who achieved the implementation of a complex nationwide IT system within 12 weeks from concept to working order and at a cost which was pennies compared with similar projects that came after that one.

People were amazed at the software, impressed with the delivery timescales and astonished at the cost. They wanted to know the ‘trick’. I told them. The project team was made up of people who were known to be difficult, argumentative, critical, outspoken and knowledgeable. I told them they had been some fire-filled project meetings but that we had made time to help people express their concerns and reservations and we had used that information to improve the processes. In the end if we could generate commitment within this group doing the same nationwide would be much easier.

My research was completed in mid 2006 but the lead times for publications are long. The final results were presented in this journal.

Bucklow CIArb Journal Feb 2007