conflict management

Key ideas for conflict and change management from dialogic

KMAadmin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:56:27 -0600

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975) was a Russian philosopher, critic and scholar who wrote many influential works of literary theory and criticism. His works, dealing with a variety of subjects, have inspired groups of thinkers who have incorporated Bakhtinian ideas into theories of their own. These thoughts on language use are particularly interesting in Change Management and Conflict Management and include:

Language is learned through contextualized social interaction. (from: Marxism and the Philosophy of Language). It lives "in a living impulse toward the object", in a specific located social interaction.
Consequently all language use is language use from a particular point of view, in a context, to an audience. There is no such thing as language use which is not dialogic (having and addressee, real or imagined), which is not contextual, and which is not therefore ideological.
Any language has certain centripetal forces which work to render it monoglossic, a "unitary language" – there are forces of regulation and discipline; this includes literary expression.
Any language, however, as it is lived, socially, over a variety of social, professional, class and so forth positions, is really an interacting and at times contesting amalgam of different language uses.
Each of these "languages" embodies a distinct view of the world, its own sense of meanings, relations, intentions
People of different generations, classes, places, professions, have their own dialects, or ideolects; there are differences among genres, among activities, even from day to day. Bakhtin suggests that at any given moment of its evolution, language is stratified not only into linguistic dialects in the strict sense of the word (according to formal linguistic markers, especially phonetic), but are also into languages that are socio-ideological: languages of social groups, "professional" and "generic" languages, languages of generations and so forth.
These dialects contain within them traces and implications of values, perspectives, and experiences; hence any contestation of dialects is in fact a contestation of these embedded aspects. Language carries as part of its nature the viewpoints, assumptions, experiences of its speakers, and it does this because it is personally and socially situated, not an abstract system.
Bakhtin sees the "language" or ideolect of a class or social position, etc., as a potentially a prison, constructing its own set of understandings beyond which the person imaginatively cannot go -- a dogma, he says, "a sealed-off and impermeable monoglossia." Bakhtin therefore believes that one can think only what one's language allows one to think.
Specialised dialects (which are also social and ideological sites) can be internal as well, that is, a person can speak from different social sites; in fact the psyche is a made up of different socio/cultural sites, is inherently dialogic in itself.
Consciousness is "inner speech", which, like outer speech, is a social formation.
People can occupy different ideolects without being conscious of the disparity between or among them. A function of literature is to force the reader to recognize disparate ideolects and their (at times) conflicting ideologies -- "the critical interanimation of languages" is a term he uses for this forced recognition
To Bakhtin, language is inherently ideological. It is material, historically located, performative. Ideas, expressed in language, are located as outcomes of social and historical processes. As an interactive part of ongoing historical processes, language, and hence ideology, is open to change; and it is open to it through dialogue and narrative, interaction, history, and the parodic.
Within the same community one will find approximately the same vocabulary and grammar, as well as people with differently oriented social interests and perspectives.
We can view reading itself as dialogic, a process of entering into exchange with a voice or voices. This would revolutionize our reading of texts with which we "disagree", for we could see them as a process of interaction with our own views, not as a simple embodiment of feelings or positions we find alienating. One could think of such reading as being four-pointed: ourselves, our cultural milieu and the questions we have to face, the text, the text's milieu and the questions it had to face.

From Art and Science of Change Ubuhibi Media used with permission

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Conflict and Passive Aggression

KMAadmin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:51:56 -0600

In terms of aggressive behaviours, one could imagine a continuum between Active Aggression (which includes violence & brutality) and Passive Aggression. Passive-aggressive behaviour refers to passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to authoritative instructions in interpersonal or occupational situations. Sometimes a method of dealing with stress or frustration, it results in the person attacking other people in subtle, indirect, and seemingly passive ways. It can manifest itself as resentment, stubbornness, procrastination, sullenness, or intentional failure at doing requested tasks. For example, someone who is passive-aggressive might take so long to get ready for a party they do not wish to attend, that the party is nearly over by the time they arrive.

Someone who engages in passive-aggresive behavior typically won't confront others directly about problems, but instead will attempt to undermine their confidence or their success through comments and actions which, if challenged, can be explained away innocently so as not to place blame on the passive-aggressive person.

In some instances, the passive-aggressive may solicit the confidence of others as to their ability to perform duties, and then purposely sabotage those duties through procrastination or mishandling responsibility. Subsequent demands for performance are laid aside with claims of interference by the demanding parties or some other condition outside the control of the influence of the person who is engaging in passive-aggression, when in fact the delays and poor performance are due to the person's internal perception that to perform the task at another's demand is a demeaning insult to them. The omission of performance leaves the person in control of the situation, and allows that person to continue the aggressive behavior toward others. In cases where passive-aggression behaviors may indicate a personality disorder, these behaviours can persist even if it means personal loss to the passive-aggressive person, i.e. job loss or loss of esteem by others.

Some passive-aggressive behaviour may result from society's conditioning of individuals; direct confrontation can lead to harmful consequences. For example, confronting one's manager may lead to the loss of opportunities, such as being passed over for a promotion or even losing one's job. Not all passive-agressive behavior is problematic or a sign of a disorder.

Often passive-aggressive behavior manifests itself in individuals who view themselves as "peaceful." These individuals feel that expressing their anger through passive-aggressive behaviour is morally favorable to direct confrontation. Indeed, there are many cases where passive-agressive behavior may be more effective than direct confrontation, so many times individuals who are engaging in passive-aggresive behavior are acting rationally.

Passive-aggressive personality disorder is a controversial personality disorder proposal, said to be marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.

A passive-aggressive may not have all of these behaviours, and may have other non-passive-aggressive traits.

Ambiguity
Avoiding responsibility by claiming forgetfulness
Blaming others & not taking responsibility
Chronic lateness and forgetfulness
Complaining
Does not express hostility or anger openly
Fear of competition
Fear of dependency
Fear of intimacy
Fears authority
Fosters chaos
Intentional inefficiency
Making excuses and lying
Obstructionism
Not returning email or telephone messages
Avoiding eye contact
Using BCC: on email messages
Procrastination
Resentment
Resists suggestions from others
Sarcasm
Sullenness

"Merely being passive-aggressive isn't a disorder but a behaviour — sometimes a perfectly rational behavior, which lets you dodge unpleasant chores while avoiding confrontation. It's only pathological if it's a habitual, crippling response reflecting a pervasively pessimistic attitude". Cecil Adams

When the behavior is part of a disorder, the lack of repercussions resulting from passive-aggressive behaviour can lead to an unchecked continual attack, albeit passive, on one's acquaintances. The treatment of this disorder can be difficult, mostly because efforts to convince the person that they have this problem are met with resistance, and the passive-aggressive will frequently leave a treatment regimen claiming that it did no good. Since the effectiveness of various therapies have yet to be proven, these individuals may be correct.

In the psychoanalytic theory of transactional analysis, many types of passive-aggressive behavior are interpreted as "games" with a hidden psychological payoff, and are classified into stereotypical scenarios with names like "See What You Made Me Do" and "Look How Hard I've Tried".

Compiled using DSMIV and Wikipedia

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Feedback, learning and change

storytelling — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:02:49 -0600

When most of us were at school failure was seen as something that was negative, should be avoided and often worth punishment. And yet most learning theorists agree that it is only through failure that we really learn – as opposed to just memorising. Failure is useful when it helps us critically appraise our own performance. This is evaluation is an example of feedback. A simple way to think of feedback is experiencing the output of your own performance as a new input.

Students of psychology and education are becoming increasingly aware of the vital role that feedback plays in how we learn. All complex systems (like your body, your organisation, your family, your community) change their behaviour or learn through feedback - even if this means weaving in and out of the best path (like Wiener’s boat example) rather than sticking to the best path in any strict way.

The concept of feedback was developed by Norbert Wiener, who used the analogy of someone steering a boat: “When the boat deviates from the present course, say to the right, the steersman assesses the deviation and then countersteers by moving the rudder to the left. This decreases the boat's deviation, perhaps even to the point of moving through the correct position and then deviating to the left. At some time during this movement the steersman makes a new assessment of the boat's deviation, countersteers accordingly, assesses the deviation again, and so on. Thus he relies on continual feedback to keep the boat on course, its actual trajectory oscillating around the present direction. The skill of steering a boat consists in keeping these oscillations as smooth as possible.” (Capra 1996:57)

Even if you cannot predict the outcome, turning up the volume of feedback will always produce more sustainable results. As long as all the bits are talking to each other, something better will emerge. Feedback can be seen as a flow of information, in the in-between spaces, that constantly invites new responses from all the parts, improving the quality of all relationships within the system and allowing a system to learn how to do more for less effort. Sometimes something completely new and unexpected can arise out of the in-between spaces and take the whole system to another level.

Feedback allows you to make those corrections to your own behaviour that are necessary to lift your performance to another level. But how, and from where, can we get effective, reliable and performance enhancing feedback in the systems in which we live and the organisations in which we work?

Many people respond quite negatively to feedback, irrespective of how well intentioned it might be. Many people resist useful feedback because they fear failure and rejection. They therefore experience critical feedback as a personal attack. People who live in short timeframes experience critical feedback as something that defines them as a failure. By contrast, people who live in long timeframes experience critical feedback as data on how to succeed and grow on their own learning path.

Those who resist feedback are unlikely to change their behaviour when they receive it. This has important implications for the way your organisation deals with performance appraisals and the way it helps members design career paths. Opportunities for feedback are often misappropriated to make people feel worthless and incompetent. For feedback to be effective, organisations have to link feedback and learning and commit to both as core values in their corporate cultures.

One solution is to engage feedback as an ongoing conversation in your organisation, rather than a formal summary of someone’s performance, at a single and arbitrary point in time, with an abstract mark attached to it.

if you are not failing at something, you aren't learning anything new

People often fear their appraisals or assessments, whereas they could be looking forward to an opportunity to learn and to grow both themselves and the organisation. This is what Weiner called “reciprocal modification” – the change in me is a change in you. This ongoing “conversation” is what is often referred to as continuous assessment as opposed to summative assessment.

Effective feedback also has implications for top performers. In the old days people who were getting 80% were “better” than everyone else and did not have to try as hard. In the philosophy of Outcomes-Based Education, people should not be measured against each other. Individuals should be measured against their own potential and expectations. If they are getting high marks it does not mean they can rest in the knowledge of their superiority. It means it is time to find a new growing edge, a new challenge on their learning path. If you are not failing at something you are not learning anything new.

Members of your organisation need to be coached in the mechanisms and dynamics of effective feedback and how it relates to their own learning path. They need to begin to see feedback as an opportunity to improve and grow rather than as a personal attack or a defining statement of their identity. It should also help people to experience their lives in long timeframes in which criticism doesn’t define them but is experienced as useful information on a long and fruitful learning path. It should also encourage them to experiment with behavioural changes in a way that is slightly demanding, but is relatively safe, enjoyable, creative and rewarding.

Some questions about the feedback you're getting

How are you providing feedback?
Is it working?
How would you know that it is working?
How do you respond to feedback?
Are you growing?
What tells you that you are growing?
What are the current mechanisms of feedback in your organisation?
How could you evaluate and improve their function?
How does cooperation pay in your organisation?
Are you ready to experiment with new feedback processes?

From Art & Science of Change - A Resource for Management and Leadership - (ISBN-978-0-9802550-3-4) Ubuhibi Media used with permission

Fireside Chat

How to decode your position of power

eugenie — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01:18 -0600

While we all know something about power, working in conflict or change management requires a clear understanding of power and how to decode and understand it. So what is power really and how is it constructed? Our world identifies certain individuals as 'having power' and then proceeds to make them more powerful by talking about them in the media. Politicians, high profile business leaders, characters from the entertainment industry and those frequently in the public eye are often said to examples of ‘powerful people’.

A useful way of decoding any phenomenon is to go beyond the 'what is it?' question and rather look at 'what does it do?'. In organisations, power can do many things. It can speed things up, slow things down, alter trajectory, transform our understanding of ‘what is going on’ and divert attention to something altogether different. We each have some measure of power and your position of power could be defined by:

Knowing what you want – having a clear vision of where you are going
The timeframes of your visions and strategies – how far into the future does your story go? (tip: a Long Timeframe contains a greater sense of power than than visions with short timeframes)
The way you talk and think about yourself and your frustrations
Your ability to learn & pay attention
Authority over the way others perceive you and what they say about you
Your choice of language and metaphors
Control over the money and the PIN numbers
Control over the story (are you in your own story or someone else’s story?)
Ability to mete out brutality and violence in all its forms (such as exclusion / ostracising, disapproval, withholding sex and intimacy, firing, physical punishment, active / passive aggression etc..)
Knowledge / Know-How
Freedom of choice
Your ability to sacrifice / let go / move on / forget the past
Access to powerful, interesting people in positions of power (who are as smart or smarter than you are)
Know-how to access to information that will help your get what you want
The ability to tell a good story that arouses emotion on others
Access to the internet and an interest in communication & networking technology
Access to software tools that enable you to stay current and in touch with thought leadership from diverse fields
Having a good story to tell
Having interesting stimulating people with budgets whom you tell your story to
Your preparedness to experiment and try new things
The ability to network powerfully with the people with whom you desire to network
The scary stories people tell about you, particularly tales of what you have done in the past / the mythologies of violence you have enacted
The ability to make people uneasy or frightened and your ability to be unpredictable & ruthless (you might be able to do this better than you think!)
Your ability to actively work and play with your own metaphors
Keeping up with new metaphors, jargon
The ability to say NO and to absolutely, positively mean it
The ability to say YES and to absolutely, positively mean it
Knowing about power and how it works

Steve Banhegyi steve@storytelling.co.za
used with permission from the Trans4mation Blog

Fireside Chat

Open Space Technology approach to conflict management

KMAadmin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:06:59 -0600

Open Space Technology (sometimes called Open Space) is a self-organizing practice that allows diverse people in any kind of organization to create meetings and events with a difference. It is known to stimulate positive energies and achieve useful, well-documented results. Participants of an open space event create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance. By inviting people to take ownership and responsibility for what they care about it stimulates the emergence of the inherent creativity and leadership in people, establishes an ideas marketplace of reflection and learning. The technique can be used to work with groups - some say between 5 to 800 people, for events of two hours to several days. It works best when work to be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for resolution (and potential for conflict) are high, and time is very limited.

The technique is useful in conflict management where more traditional meeting formats fail and may be one of the few approaches that could work in a complex situation where there is diversity of thought or people, and short decision-times.

Creating an Open Space event

OST meetings have a single facilitator who initiates and concludes the meeting and explains the general method. The facilitator has no other role in the meeting and does not control the actual gathering in any way.

Select a focusing statement/question that frames the higher purpose and widest context for discussion in a positive way (eg. what kind of organisation would we like to work in? What are the advantages (and disadvantages of our corporate culture?
Invite all stakeholders and/or who you feel should be part of it
Prepare the workplace with a free space and writing materials in the centre (noting down of ideas), a blank agenda wall (posting of issues and ideas for discussion or work) and a news wall (reporting back from sub-groups)
Explain theme and process of the event and invite people to write down what is of heart and meaning to them (form: topic, name, time and space for meeting)
Open the marketplace – “offers” are put on the agenda wall, let people sign up and have them work independently (incl. reporting back to news wall).
Make closing round to collect and share highlights.
Mail out report created (collection of reports of sub-groups) to all participants

KM for Conflict & Change Management

KM for Conflict & Change Management

KMAadmin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:26:29 -0600

There is a wealth of know-how in Africa about how conflict and change can be mediated and managed in creative ways to the benefit of all. The KM, Conflict & Change SIG provides a space to discuss approaches to Conflict Management, Change Management and the management of post-conflict scenarios, particularly in an African context. Here we combine cutting-edge knowledge with ancient approaches and stories that can be usefully applied in a wide range of situations. In addition to exploring some unusual and very African approaches, we also look at continental efforts by NEPAD, the UN and the AU to ameliorate conflict.

Factors and behaviours that may cause and complicate conflict

storytelling — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:07:49 -0600

The following factors may be causes or complicating factors of conflict:

Time
Structural design
- task interdependence , power distributions , resource scarcity, goal incompatibility , uncertainty
Personal Differences
- Faith , Ego , Experience , Personality , Prejudice , Poor training , Oversensitivity , Values , Aims , Substance use (Caffeine & other stimulants / narcotics may amplify and distort the emotional impact of conflict situations)
Communication - miscommunication (semantics and cultural differences) & Signal to Noise (S/N ratio) of communications & poor listening skills

Behaviors that may cause/complicate conflict

Intellectual
Emotional
Interpersonal
Managerial / Leadership
Communication - miscommunication (semantics and cultural differences) & Signal to Noise (S/N ratio) of communications & poor listening & storytelling skills
Language use / misuse

Steve Banhegyi steve@storytelling.co.za

Based on the Creative Conflict Management Workshop by Steve Banhegyi & Associates (c) used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Reframing Conflict

storytelling — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:09:13 -0600

The way in which we define something has a tremendous impact in our approach to that subject - this is as true for the term KM as it is for conflict. Here we present some ideas for facilitators that may stimulate a different and more creative experience of conflict:

Defining conflict

“An expressed struggle between at least 2 interdependent parties, who perceive incompatible goals, scarce rewards, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals.”
"a disagreement through which the parties involved perceive a threat to their needs, interests or concerns"
"state of open, often prolonged fighting; a battle or war."
"A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.
"A psychic struggle, often unconscious, resulting from the opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, or tendencies." (Psychology)
"Opposition between characters or forces in a work of drama or fiction, especially opposition that motivates or shapes the action of the plot.

There are many different definitions of conflict available to you - what is important to consider is that you need a definition of conflict that is empowering to yourself. I recall in a workshop for a financial services company some years ago, participants were invited to provide their own personal definitions of conflict and one particularly enthusiastic individual from the DRC immediately opined; "For me, I define conflict as success". When pressed further, he revealed that this definition came from his own personal experience and that whenever he found himself in a situation of conflict, he would 'get what he wanted'. Therefore for him, conflict equaled success. He admitted later that as he had realised this fact early on in his life, he would often stimulate a conflict situation so that he could 'get what he wanted'. He later became CEO of the company. This also hints that an unusual and productive attitude to conflict is an important tool for management and leadership for initiating change of a certain kind and getting things done. It also suggests why many people are conflict-averse; conflict always precedes change.

Behaviours related to conflict can be said to exist on a continuum and range between Passive Aggression to Active Aggression/Violence. Irrespective of how it manifests, a situation of unresolved conflict can have a profound and negative impact on participants. The words we use to frame conflict have much to do with our experience of conflict. It is likely that our earliest experiences of conflict and its emotional content came from our home of origin. Any subsequent experience of conflict and its emotions can evoke early childhood memories making a conflict situation difficult to handle for many people.

Steve Banhegyi steve@storytelling.co.za

Based on the Creative Conflict Management Workshop by Steve Banhegyi & Associates (c) used with permission.

The vision of AU and NEPAD in Conflict Management

DriesVelt — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:07:29 -0600

The vision of the AU is based on a united and strong Africa and on the need to build a partnership between governments and all segments of civil society in order to strengthen solidarity and cohesion among the peoples of Africa. As a continental organisation, it focuses on the promotion of peace, security and stability on the continent as a prerequisite for the implementation of the development and integration agenda. African leaders should therefore be held accountable by the people of Africa to deal vigorously and effectively with conflict resolution and the implementation of good governance principles. (Venter 2005, 139).

The current priorities for NEPAD are to eradicate these causes through the prevention of conflict, resolving it where it occurs, managing it when it is still in a stage of being resolved and to reconstructing society once the conflict has been resolved, removing all obstacles towards the revival of Africa. Intrastate and interstate political violence continue to form a critical mass of conflict that affects the every day life of the peoples of Africa. Long-running African conflicts such as those in the Sudan and Somalia, as well as in Sierra Leone, the DRC and Burundi, remain deep-rooted. There is therefore little sign that AU and NEPAD policies on conflict resolution have beneficiated sub-Saharan Africa to date. The gap between political policy development and policy implementation remains substantial (Venter &
Rohan-Irwin, 2005).

Herbst and Mills (2005) posed the question whether regional integration through NEPAD and the AU and its sub-regional bodies is possible or desirable among diverse countries. Seeing the problem from the perspective of unstable states, they reply that before integration of African states with one another is attempted, some internally unstable countries need to pull themselves together. With this proposition, the scholars draw the attention to the question of peace and stability as a prerequisite for success. Several factors are inhibiting the efforts of the AU and NEPAD, especially conditions in post-colonial states. Afro-pessimists have published ample material on the causes of instability and conflict in Africa; extensive content analysis of reliable literature revealed that inadequate governance, scarcity of resources, human rights abuses and lack of skills to implement plans currently impede human security and development in Africa. The socio-economic decay in terms of health, education, and food production is also a matter of concern. Environmental realities such as floods and droughts contribute to these conditions.
Added to that is the mostly negative role of armed groups that act beyond the control of the state, with resultant threatening coups and the proliferation of small arms and land mines. Moreover, reaction to global influences is a matter of concern: some countries have become havens and targets for international terrorism, diamond smugglers, mercenaries, and international crime syndicates. (Velthuizen 2005, 7).

This work is (c)opyright to Dr Dries Velthuizen African Wisdom site and is used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management