Sometimes the peace Rotarians seek to make is a local matter. Very local.
Jean Best was about to resign from Rotary. It was a sad day for her; she loved being a Rotarian. But she had become enmeshed in a conflict with another member of her club. Although she tried to engage with that member to defuse the situation, the problem persisted. Jean left that club and joined another, where she is very happy. But she has not given up on addressing the larger issue: “Now I am looking at conflict resolution in Rotary clubs,” she says.
Conflict resolution is something we humans have been trying to master at least since the first Cro-Magnon tribal steering committee. Some scientists who study fossil records say that for much of history, people have dealt with conflict through violence. Some even theorize that our very ability to work as a team evolved out of our need to compete against other groups.
And while bench-clearing brawls may be rare at your Rotary club, that does not mean your meetings always end in a chorus of “Kumbaya” – especially at a time in history when the fractiousness of the world seems to seep into our lives in unexpected ways.
Many club and district personnel attest that “The frequency and intensity of conflict in some clubs are growing” and that “there are clear examples of bullying and people being downright rude". There are even reported cases of "people not leaving things alone, and pulling the scab off something you think has been resolved.”
While several past and current district leaders agree that “Every club has issues – they might be minor, minuscule, or not that fundamental, but, we have all got issues".
However, “It is difficult to talk about conflict in clubs because many Rotarians do not realize that there is conflict in clubs,” Jean says. “If we want Rotary to continue as the great organization it is, we need to start changing the way we conduct our Rotary club meetings. It is about clubs putting greater emphasis on how they discuss issues, rather than what they discuss. We found that people were leaving clubs because they were not listened to or were not spoken to appropriately. Talking and listening should be an important part of Rotary. Into this comes an awareness of bias, diversity, and stereotypes.”
Rotary clubs are not the only place where conflict occurs, of course. An entire field of study is dedicated to systematically learning how to ratchet down disagreements, cool emotions, and help everyone be happy with getting less than they wanted. Conflict resolution is not something that was invented recently.
It is also not the exclusive province of Western diplomats and academics. The European Union is a well-known ‘peace system’, but there’s also the Iroquois Great League of Peace and Power in New York, the tribes of the Upper Xingu River basin in Brazil, and the Aboriginal tribes of the Western Desert in Australia. According to one study of what they all have in common, the impetus behind these systems was to manage conflict between neighboring societies before it rose to the level of war. Some employ what’s known as an active peace system, while others rely on passive systems that use avoidance and toleration.
But how can we use the active system to address interpersonal conflicts, not just societal ones?
Jean has developed a four-seminar program to help keep meetings, Rotary club meetings included, moving along smoothly and openly.
“One of the watchwords we use is, ‘Get curious before you get furious’,” she says. “In other words, ask, ‘Why did you say that? Why did you do that?’ before you get angry.
In a lot of cases, people just fly off the handle and walk out the door.
It is therefore about saying, ‘Hang on a minute. Let’s discuss this. Let’s open this up. Tell me why you feel like this. What have I said that’s upset you?’
It is a way of defusing the situation.
About a year and half ago, others started working with Jean to help train incoming club presidents in conflict resolution and stated that “It’s all about listening to people. And when they say something, you need to be able to repeat it back to them. So you are saying, ‘I think this is what you said,’ so there are no misunderstandings and we both know what we are talking about.”
Jean developed a brilliant test where you have to describe something, but you cannot use nouns. The test consists of two people sitting back-to-back, so neither one can see the other. One person has to draw what the other person is describing.
What tends to happen is that you draw something completely not what was being described.
It shows you that your listening skills are not as good as you think they are and it shows that you have to listen more to what is actually being said.
The exercise also shows the speakers how their words can be misinterpreted, so everyone involved learns how communication can go wrong.
Jean makes this point, too.
“People, especially older people, in Rotary think they know how to talk to each other, but they actually may not. They think they are listening, and they are not.”
Louisa Weinstein, a mediator who wrote a guide called The 7 Principles of Conflict Resolution: How to Resolve Disputes, Defuse Difficult Situations and Reach Agreement, agrees with this approach.
“The first, basic thing is to listen – to really listen, as a mirror to the other person,” she says. “I might reflect back what the other person has said, and it might be absolutely to the letter what they said. And they may come back to me and say, ‘No, no. I did not say that.’”
This happens because often we say things that we do not mean or mean things that we do not say. But an even bigger obstacle is that we all think we are right.
“If I am going to resolve conflict, I need to be open to the fact that my judgement may not be valid, even if I think I am absolutely right,” says Louisa. “It is about trying to understand, rather than to be understood.”
In Jean’s system, once a conflict is out in the open, all parties offer ideas for resolution, which are discussed and considered.
Finally, the person who has the conflict chooses the first step forward, followed by the others. This gives each party more ownership over the outcome.
As Jean herself knows, this does not always work. Still, it is far better than just hoping a conflict will quietly disappear. Arguments within clubs, she says, have resulted in more than a few members dropping out.
“Quite often it is because of something that has been said, or someone has not been listened to properly and then there is no discussion,” she says. “We cannot afford to do this. Rotary is too important to the world to lose Rotarians over silly disagreements.”
Conflict resolution: Rotary resources
- Take the ‘Essentials of Understanding Conflict’ course in the Learning Centre
- In the Essentials of Understanding Conflict course, you will learn how to understand, manage, and resolve conflict. Visit rotary.org/learn.
- To put conflict resolution in the wider context of peace, the Rotary Peace Academy has courses and resources. Visit my.rotary.org/join-rotary-peace-academy or positivepeace.academy/rotary
5 strategies for conflict resolution
- Recognize that all of us have biased fairness perceptions.
- Avoid escalating tensions with threats and provocative moves.
- Overcome an ‘us versus them’ mentality.
- Look beneath the surface to identify deeper issues.
- Separate negotiable from non-negotiable issues.
Source: Katie Shonk, Program on Negotiation blog at Harvard Law School