08.14.2010
A few years back, we were hired by a municipality to work with urban core neighborhood groups in an attempt to gain their endorsement for a controversial downtown initiative.
Prior to that, a Fortune 500 company asked us to help develop a solution for unhappy retirees who woke up one morning to discover their former business units (and, therefore, their retirement programs) had been sold off to long-time competitors.
At this time, we're working for a candidate on one side of a partisan political campaign and recently suggested voters compare candidates side-by-side. To help them do so, we guided constituents to visit BOTH party candidates' websites and provided them the links to do so. Gasp! One old-school politico on the campaign staff was appalled.
Since incorporating in 1997 (originally as the Corporate Citizen Group) Elettore has positioned its face-to-face and Web communications work as critical elements of any initiative to get "large groups of people to go from point A to point B."
Invariably, however, our clients want an outcome of grassroots support for "decisions" already made. The cause, candidate, referendum, or initiative is already set. "Now go build buy-in," is the unspoken directive.
Think of it as retrofitting consensus in order to ensure victory ... or to rise above conflict.
Unfortunately, it isn't quite that easy.
The challenge is when, in spite of their goals or mission, individuals – even our clients – harbor as many intractable beliefs as they believe "the opposition" holds. An opportunity in these situations is to clear the slate and understand a world of differences without anyone feeling like the mere act of doing so constitutes an unspeakable breach of personal or corporate values.
In other words, it's all in our heads.
Political psychologist, author and Tel Aviv University professor Daniel Bar-Tal puts it much more elegantly. "A conflict begins in human mind and therefore also its ending has to be initiated in human mind," he states.
As someone who has long studied the psychological roots and dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Bar-Tal should know. "Extremists on both sides give the tone to the nature of the relations."
This is especially true when trying to get large groups of people to go from point A to point B.
Currently – but simply as a concerned neighbor rather than in any professional role – we find ourselves enmeshed in a community conflict filled with intractables.
A few months back, residents of several single-family, middle-class neighborhoods woke up to read in the local newspaper that a public agency unilaterally had decided to move 100 mentally-ill and/or chemically addicted formerly homeless into an apartment building embedded in their neighborhoods, an area of the city that residents have been working for a decade to revitalize.
The public agency also added that ("Screw you, neighbors!") it was their right to do whatever they want.
As our colleague Jeff Herrington likes to say, "Just because you have the right to do it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do."
With that publicly-funded agency's act of arrogance (compounded by the element of surprise) the community responded in kind, overfilling town hall meetings, email in-boxes, blog posts, television news reports and opinion editorial pages with passionate and, sometimes, equally as extreme responses.
Now the situation has denigrated to homeowners and homeless advocates exchanging barbs of NIMBYism, socialism, political favoritism and a full catalogue of other isms. Caught in the crosshairs are elected officials wishing the problem would just go away.
At one end of the spectrum, are passionate advocates for low-income housing and the homeless who cannot understand how helping people get back on the feet is a negative thing. They, of course, are viewed as self-centered, faith- and shame-based finger-waggers and bureaucrats out to destroy home values and a quality of life. Kids will be raped! Drugs will be sold! Gangs will be hanging out of street corners! The homeless industry is a mafia run by self-important nutballs!
At the other end of the spectrum are residents who are used to collaboration and tired of living in a part of a city that has historically been dumped on. These residents have been urban pioneers, against all odds, leading the city to reinvest and redevelop a long-neglected core. They have already witnessed the impact of this public agency's decision through an uptick of apartment building-related crimes and a decline in home sales prices. They, of course, are viewed as angry and un-Christian pains-in-the-ass, who lack compassion, don't "get it," and have no rights in the matter anyway. Neighbors are the problem! They hate homeless people! They're wasting our time in helping those in need!
Sigh.
Needless to say, in between these extremes are the affected client population and neighbors looking for solutions rather than angry rhetoric.
So how does this scenario rise above the impasse? Is it even possible given how those with extreme responses tend to fabricate conspiracies, talk around the problems, and contact lawyers?
Maybe.
Whether it is a centuries-old armed conflict, public policy debate, workplace clash or even interpersonal disconnects, the Beyond Intractability Project offers some solutions checklists applicable to all of the situations cited here.
Sponsored by the University of Colorado, the BIP's checklists can take even the most dramatic adversaries through a process that can lead all parties past ideological differences.
But as we have seen time and time again, ideologues don't agree to processes. They believe they are right, want you to accept their "rightness," and will throw into the works every tool they can get their hands on to defend their approach and beliefs.
Consensus is about acknowledging but setting intractables aside and, then, embracing a common process. Consensus means aspiring toward a shared outcome, even if it means releasing some entrenched fears.
As professor Bar-Tal has stated, "Fear prepares society for better coping with stressful situations."
"But fear may also lead to a collective freezing of beliefs."
Randall White, President
Elettore
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