Reflections: Conflict Transformation & Belonging

The third in our ongoing series of Conversations on Transformation was on the art of “conflict transformation.”

With deep gratitude to Celia Kutz, Sadia Hameed, Ken Cloke, and Shamil Idriss for sharing their wisdom and experience, I wanted to take a moment to capture some quick reflections on this morning’s conversation:

• The gap between dominant public discourse and emerging conclusions in the field of conflict transformation is wide: this is an area where we can/should be better about narrative and messaging
• There was broad consensus that conflict is not only necessary, but good, a conclusion that stands at odds with a culture that seemingly tries at every turn to eliminate or ignore conflict
• Lots of resonance among the discussants with the notion that working on conflict transformation (as with all the subjects we discuss) requires working concurrently at all three levels of transformation (individual, interpersonal, systemic)
• I resonated in particular with Ken’s observation that “Conflict is fractally organized” and self-similar at all scales (this was in my head when I saw a quote Curtis Ogden posted on Twitter today: “If it doesn’t work at all scales, it doesn’t really work at any of them.”)
• I translated this to mean that though the tactics may differ, the underlying patterns are the same
• Broad agreement that conflict transformation is a skillset or “muscle” that we need to build and hone individually and collectively through practice. Dominant culture does not teach us this skill… but we can learn.
• General consensus of the need to reframe (or re-balance) our approach to conflict away from something narrowly oppositional; Shamil talked of moving from adversarial to collaborative
• This is less about “solving the problem” and more about repairing the relationship, though transformation is ultimately about both
• I loved the discussion on “peace” and how it often serves to silence or erase underlying conflict. The question Sadia raised of “who’s peace?” resonated, as did Celia’s observation that there is always conflict… so peace is not the absence of conflict but rather it’s ability to be managed/engaged generatively

Areas for further exploration

• The speed and scale of change: Shamil talked about lessons learned from Search for Common Ground’s overseas programs, and found an approximate time scale from initiation to transformation of 8–10 years
• We also touched briefly on the power of culture, and with it the observation that transformation can be incredibly rapid under certain conditions (I recently wrote about Cass Sunstein’s conclusions on what drives rapid change)
• What makes transformation durable? What distinguishes a temporary change from an enduring shift?
• What is the role of gender? The skillset of conflict transformation is a traditionally “feminine” skillset: holding space for complexity, focusing on relationship, willingness to repair, attending to feelings and not just facts…

Would love to hear other’s conclusions/takeaways/questions!

In community,

Brian