Dialog across difference #36: "DEI hire" and other dog whistles

In new research published in the academic journal Politics, the scholars did a large n discourse analysis of the very same words used by Brietbart and The New York Times, building on previous research that looked at the communication and conflict problems in multilingual societies when one ethnic group and another used the same words but with very different meanings. This 2024 study finds that, "We suggest that intralinguistic relativity can be at least as harmful to successful public deliberation and political negotiation as interlinguistic relativity" (Mor, Nash & Green, 2024, p. 319).

In other words, when the conservative, even MAGA Brietbart refers to diversity it will surround that word with scornful pejorative context in many or most cases, while a liberal publication like The New York Times may use the same word as a positive descriptor. 

A sensitive facilitator or mediator working with folks with different political or ideological baselines will seek to clarify the meaning so that assumptions can give way to a more human set of contextuals that may better identify real commonalities or at least appreciation for any authentic differences. Honest minds can differ but grasping a lifetime of radically different social environments amongst all discussants or disputants can lead to a more common language with actual common meaning.

I experienced this recently as I facilitated an interdisciplinary dialog session. Near the conclusion of the allotted time I called on one woman who had not spoken at all and happened to be Asian, ethnically. Since we were several sessions into our dialog project I felt I could be somewhat lighthearted in calling on her by noting that she had been taciturn and perhaps would like to speak. 

She took so much offense at that that she requested a private discussion with me, which I was happy to do. "I felt essentialized by your reference to me, a woman of Asian descent, as 'taciturn,' she complained. "That was a use of language that accessed a stereotype, which felt very wrong."

In my role as ongoing facilitator I was internally stunned, even angry, at an accusation I felt grotesquely unfair and based on her identification of politically incorrect words I was not allowed to use in reference to her. The inner anger was based on how completely mistaken she was; I may well have used exactly the same descriptor in a friendly manner to literally anyone who had not said a single word even though the group was nine of us, all of whom had engaged significantly except for her. 

However, I needed to deëscalate myself before I spoke, which I did, and simply asked, "What should I have said?" That's when her actual interests emerged. 

"If anyone isn't speaking, I hope you don't call on them," she said. "You would be better off just reminding the group that everyone has a voice and that we are committed to having that be a value. But if someone continues to refrain from speaking up, that's likely just where they are at that time on that day." 

I immediately agreed to do that and my inner anger gave way to a more mild inner annoyance at both her and myself. Since then, I followed her wishes and, so far so good. We both deëscalated and I will not argue for my right to use the word "taciturn," but I see her very different hearing of it and will never use it to describe her--or any other Asian person when she is in earshot. 

As is so often the case, the right and workable agreement is based on a common and mutual respect that can often only be achieved with some investigation, some compassionate curiosity.

References

Mor, F., Nash, E. J., & Green, F. (2024). Separated by a common language: How Breitbart and The New York Times produce different meanings from common words. Politics, 44(3), 319–336. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1177/02633957211012959

Dialog across difference #35: Heads up

Quick and helpful insight from professional facilitator Adriana Girdler[1]: when you are calling a meeting, give as much notice about very specific objectives at least a couple days ahead of time. 

While a psychologist could likely identify all the potential reasons to do so, one key insight from Conflict Transformation revolves around respect. If others feel like you respect them, they tend to engage with more competence, commitment, and enthusiasm. So, even though your intent may not be to show disrespect, when the meeting happens and some feel like the topic you bring up is new to them, they logically wonder how much you respect their opinion, their professional competence, or even their value to the overall enterprise. 

Avoid such unintentional outcomes. The work is hard enough without masking your actual respect by an appearance that is confusing.

---

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgRiQlLnGcM

Dialog across difference #34: Herding kangaroos: facilitation skills

Facilitating dialogs is an infinitely varied job--the factors might include, but not be limited to: categories of people, time allotted, virtual or in-person, goal/s, and much more. 

High-paid professionals often prefer to be the sole facilitator--why split $800/hour with anyone? For the rest of us, I strongly recommend co-facilitation. With the right partner and the right preparation, even fractious groups can proceed relatively smoothly toward goal achievement most of the time.

There are times when the stated goal is simply to talk to each other. In the case of destructive conflict, usually being driven by the leaders from the conflict industry, many who prefer peace long to simply begin to repair and normalize relationships and they seek to start dialog.

Conflict industry? Yup. If a person benefits from a conflict continuing or worsening, whether that benefit is in status, power, or financially, that person is part of the conflict industry (Daniels & Walker, 2001). Often the people who never supported the self-styled "champion" are the ones most distressed by the destructive conflict. Thus, for example, Jews and Palestinians who disliked the most militant and combative leaders of both Palestine and Israel were normally the ones who sought to begin dialog sessions that were "people-to-people."

In such settings, some choose facilitators who represent both sides--e.g., one Palestinian and the co-facilitator an Israeli. Others seek a third party neutral, someone with no "skin in the game." There are advantages to both approaches, and disadvantages. 

Co-facilitators with deep lived experience on both sides can read cultural cues no outsider can see or hear. They may also be unable to efface or set aside natural bias.

Co-facilitators who are true third party neutrals can run dialog sessions without bias, or at least without bias toward or against either side. They do have a harder time reading the cultural contexts. 

There is no substitute for keen and thorough preparation by the facilitators as they ready themselves to run a tight, efficient, and productive dialog that seeks to meet its stated goals. That is the first important facilitation skill. Read, watch, talk, think, map. 

Read any written record of the conflict and of the participants.

Watch any video record. 

Talk to (caucus with) as many parties as possible.

Think about it, sleep on it, think about it some more. 

Map the conflict, and the parties. 

Now you are at least ready for a great start.

References

Daniels, Steve E., & Walker, Greg B. (2001). Working through environmental conflict: The collaborative learning approach. Westport CT: Praeger.

Dialog across difference #33: No pain, no gain

"Many of us prefer to avoid short-term pain, even if it means greater pain down the road" (Stone, Patton & Heen, 2023, p. 160).

While this is not a call to seek immediate pain, the authors of Difficult Conversations do advise making those calculations as far as it's possible in real time. If you are in a difficult conversation, how much unfair play do you permit before beginning to mention it, even though you know that the other person may well scoff and escalate?

How you bring it up matters. If you call it out you will likely engender instant defensiveness, which can have consequences that range from unwelcome distraction to abrupt termination of the conflict conversation.

If you call them in, it will still involve some immediate pain--no one particularly appreciates being notified that they are engaging in activities that are unfair or annoying--but asking a simple question that can evoke some sympathy mixed in with that minor irritation at being challenged can work to help reduce or eliminate the offending behavior (interrupting, belittling, minimizing, labeling, etc.) without much risk of a blow up.

On the other hand, if you bring up a bad practice in a good way and it does precipitate an explosive response, there is a strong chance you can legitimately tell yourself and them that this is obviously not the time for this conversation and perhaps it can resume at a later point when emotions are not so flared. That might save you a great deal of time and energy, even though an improved and transformed solution has eluded you for the time being. That is part of conflict reality at times. 

References

Stone, Douglas; Patton, Bruce; Heen, Sheila (2023). Difficult conversations: How to discuss what matters most, 3rd ed. New York, NY: Penguin.

Dialog across difference #32: When the other person is irredeemable

Of course, deciding that the person is the problem, in direct contradiction to a tenet of conflict transformation, is something that most logically can only happen once you've tried best practices toward conflict transformation and they clearly rebuff and invalidate all of them. Without having done that, no matter how tempting it is to label another person as the problem, we can never be sure. 

This is not to say it can't happen; some people cannot seem to rise to decency no matter how often they are approached in an adaptive manner. In my experience, I've only had one of those in the past 25 years and he was a doozy. 

Any parent would understand my ultimate decision that, in fact, he was the problem when he endangered my son without a single care or concern, and that was after much other offensive behavior. And, like so many conflictual situations, it was made worse by forced proximity; he was a housemate, in my case renting a room from me and trashing everything in drunken idiotic episodes.

I tried to channel Kwame Christian, who is a fine presenter with a range of skills, views, and insights. His term, compassionate curiosity, is one we use on the Portland Peace Team when we deal with escalated people whose behavior is otherwise inexplicable. Asking why, getting an answer, paraphrasing to check that you heard correctly, and then asking a new question to prompt answers to your compassionate curiosity is not only good in the moment to take down the tension, but good in the effort to negotiate on the merits. 

In my conflict with that fellow, it failed repeatedly and I accepted that, possibly due to my lack of skills or perspective, he effectively was the problem. One deëscalation tactic I didn't try is one advocated by the lead deëscalation trainer for the Royal College of Nursing in London, who advises to simply sit, allowing the other person to tower over you (Dean, 2024). She says it tends to create an atmosphere of calm as normative, and frequently works after a minute or two, once the person seems to have decided that, on a physical and demonstrative level, they are dominant but that their dominance isn't producing fear or surrender, making it not particularly useful. 

References

Christian, Kwame (2018). Finding confidence in conflict. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Zg65eK9XU&t=325s

Dean, Erin (2024). De-escalation: 7 tips for handling conflict situations. Nursing Standard 39(1), 57-59. 

Dialog across difference #31: Kill them with kindness

There is an official traditional international definition of protection of civilians in armed conflict and it always and inappropriately focuses on who does the protecting rather than focusing on the actual goal, the actual desired outcome (Julian, 2024). That is, it is always viewed as a valiant armed force, such as the UN peacekeepers, keeping the civilians safe from the violent ones on any side of armed conflict. 

A focus for the definition and understanding of the proper concept of civilian protection reveals a far more complex picture, often including unarmed civilians protecting other civilians more effectively than even the UN "Blue Helmets," the so-called "lightly armed" international forces. Presumably, their bullets only make others lightly dead. Indeed, UN peacekeepers rarely shoot, and, in one 2020 incident in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the irony was profound when hundreds attacked the UN building there out of stated anger that the UN peacekeepers were doing little or nothing to protect local civilians from guerrilla forces. The UN peacekeepers shot two of the protesters dead.

While formal organizations explicitly eschewing violent defense of civilians is a relatively modern concept dating to Peace Brigades International and other unarmed civilian protection (UCP) organizations from the 1980s onward, the phenomenon is ancient. From hiding Moses from the infanticide edict of the Pharaoh to hiding Jews in the attic from Nazi predations, civilians have always rallied to protect other civilians. Now, however, this is becoming a sustained and generalized phenomenon, not limited to a particular conflict. 

From Peace Brigades International to Witness for Peace to Christian Peacemaker Teams (now Community Peacemaker Teams) to Muslim Peacemaker Teams to the International Solidarity Movement to Nonviolent Peaceforce to Friends Peacemaker Teams, this concept is being modeled in many ways with generally excellent results. 

References

Julian, R. (2024). Civilians Creating Safe Space: The Role of Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping in Protection of Civilians. Civil Wars, 26(1), 187–212. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/13698249.2024.2324563

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfoHNI1Nh2Y

https://friendspeaceteams.org/about/

https://nonviolentpeaceforce.org/?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADukmR5Q_qm18LyXsE8EcAbJA-vfk&gclid=CjwKCAjwy8i0BhAkEiwAdFaeGMyc8E8KMAkzj7fWebnIvNXTMDCLBS-9ewH-7nv3QFrt7z5lkOw0BxoCOmUQAvD_BwE

Dialog across difference #30: Doveryai, no proveryai

As the peace movement against nuclear weapons in general and the Euromissiles in particular grew from 1979-1987, leaders were eventually forced to negotiate. They feared each other, to be sure, but they feared their own growing domestic opposition even more. 

In a cross-cultural coup in 1987, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated the historic Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces disarmament treaty (which Trump unbelievably destroyed 30 years later). They framed it to their own people wisely as a treaty made not to indicate trust of the enemy, not to show that either caved to the other, but rather that it was in the clear best interests of their own people, on both sides. Literally win-win.

Reagan famously and adroitly credited a Russian maxim for this: doveryai, no proveryai--Trust but verify. 

Getting to Yes authors Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton of the Harvard Negotiation Project note, "Unless you have a good reason to trust somebody, don't" (p. 134).

Reagan made a cross-cultural bow to his enemy by using a phrase from the enemy's own culture, and showed enough humility when using it to note that his pronunciation might be sketchy. In addition, when Gorbachev laughed and said, "You repeat that every time," Reagan made another nod to Russian culture by saying simply, "I like it." 

(Reagan also liked it because it was short, simple, and rhymed.)

Trusting your opponent is not necessary; constructing a verification system is the workaround to the problem of trust. This can not only be done to facilitate good outcomes across cultures, it can be done with enough cross-cultural sensitivity to make it more successful more quickly. 

References

Fisher, Roger; Ury, William; Patton, Bruce (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Penguin.