Entering Into Conflict Facilitation & The Struggle
It's a long one.
People often meet with me 1:1 because they’re interested in (or are already) doing similar work to what I do—mediation, conflict facilitation, accountability processes—and they’re experiencing a lot of hurdles. There isn’t a lot of opportunity to build skill in this field with an anti-oppressive lens, there isn’t a lot of abolitionist content, there aren’t a lot of people who can mentor new facilitators.
I’ll start with a reading list (apologies, there isn’t a lot of audio or video content out there) for folks who want to learn more—then I’ll dive into some of the struggles that most come up when I talk about this work with other facilitators. If you’re looking to practice Transformative Justice, you’ll likely need to pursue training in Restorative Justice and mediation, and then apply a TJ lens to the processes you learn.
My recommendation if you’re just starting out: take one mediation training (such as this one), take one or two restorative justice trainings (such as these), if you have access to a conflict analysis course (one course, not a degree - like this or Conflict Skills 1) then I’d do that, learn about trauma-informed practices, and then study the Creative Interventions Toolkit. Transformative Justice is an experimental field, we are making this up as we go. You have to be rooted in your principles and just try. Learn by doing. If you want to talk more, don’t hesitate to e-mail me: info@lunanh.com
Transformative Justice
AUDIO VISUAL: Mixtape for Transformative Justice
Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
Creative Interventions Toolkit by Mimi Kim
Fumbling Toward Repair by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan
We do this Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba (to practice TJ, you have to have a strong abolitionist praxis first)
Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication by Meenadchi
Toward Transformative Justice by Generation Five
Restorative Justice
The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice by Fania Davis
The Little Book of Cool Tools for Hot Topics by Ron Kraybill
The Little Book of Conflict Transformation by John P. Lederach
The Little Book of Circle Processes by Kay Pranis
General Conflict Content (read with discernment)
Conflict: Human Needs Theory by John W. Burton
Mediating Dangerously by Kenneth Cloke
Struggles in this Field
Great Expectations
People come to a conflict facilitator with a lot of preconceived ideas of what a facilitated conflict experience is going to be. Most of these are fears—fears of confrontation, of exposure, of vulnerability, of loss—which is completely understandable in a society where conflict is treated as inherently harmful. These are the expectations that tend to be dashed in a good way: it’s never as scary, destructive, or harmful as people think it will be. Even when things don’t go well, the person is safe, feels more empowered, and has even a small piece of closure or clarity.
But, there are other expectations that can feel like we (as facilitators) are set up for disappointment in a lot of ways: there’s an expectation that we can control everything, that we can make things happen, that there is one outcome we should be steering people toward, that we can upset entire structures of power. Aside from some two-person mediations, I’ve never left a group facilitation with 100% satisfaction. Typically 80% of people feel the process made things better, while 20% feel unsatisfied. Usually a significant number of that 20% came into the process with a specific outcome they felt was correct and/or they wanted to see a certain person or group take all of the responsibility. What we as facilitators can’t do is control what people will share when we’re together or what they’ll do about what is shared when they leave. We can (and in my opinion should) highlight actions that will address harm and suffering, but we can’t make people take our advice.
Rather than bringing their concerns into the facilitated space and naming how their needs aren’t met (which is what we want!), sometimes unsatisfied parties will take those concerns outside the space into a clique or outside group. Those resentful few can convince everyone else that the process is an inevitable failure and when that happens, people start to stop showing up or stop listening or stop sharing their concerns in the facilitation.
I can understand the underlying frustration of that 20%. I have been a part of meetings where there’s an enormous tide moving in a direction that I cannot abide—the majority is moving toward complacency, reform, or superficial solutions and inside I am screaming against the status quo. I have been a part of a conflict session where I have been very concerned with the choices of the facilitator, where it feels obvious issues are being brushed over or de-centered. It can be really isolating. And, if we (participants) take our concerns outside of the process, we sabotage it. A facilitator or meeting leader may be making some really big mistakes—could be a bias, could be something that hasn’t been brought to their attention so they can’t see it. If participants don’t let us (facilitators) know what’s going on, we can’t address concerns and try to turn things around or bring all needs into the process.
Lessons I’ve Learned, for Facilitators: Notice the outliers—who in the group sees themself as unrepresented or ignored? Talk to these participants early and often. Open lines of communication and hear their expectations. Understand they probably don’t trust you or the process. Let them know what you can and can’t do. Explore the kinds of changes that are more likely to be fulfilled outside of a process, in the work that follows vs. those changes that can happen within the process and between sessions. Bring their goals and priorities into the sessions, make sure there is space for them to advocate for reaching those benchmarks.
Tips for Participants/clients: Let go of the very specific solution or outcome you came to the process with but embrace the principle of what those solutions represent. Bring your priorities and concerns into the process, bring them up repeatedly—a lot of priorities are being balanced, sometimes things fall off to the side. Reach out directly to the facilitator with your concerns. If the facilitator isn’t responsive, bring your concerns about the facilitator to the group within the process.
Limits in Time & Capacity
Conflict can be really exhausting. A lot of the time people already have their hands full before a conflict arises or the fact that everyone has their hands full is why a conflict gets to a point where it needs to be facilitated, because stress has aggravated underlying issues. Unfortunately, this means people tend to come to a conflict facilitator with really limiting time constraints: they only have three hours on one particular day to address really big issues, everyone is too tired, or availability isn’t aligning. When people show up, they show up tired, stressed, wishing they were somewhere else. If there’s more than one session, attendance dwindles and people lose steam.
Part of oppression, capitalism in particular, is keeping us all in a state of hustle to survive. Unfortunately, conflict under those same conditions means that it is often very deep, complex, and time-consuming to address: there are issues of identity, culture, power, and survival underneath folks’ concerns. As a facilitator, I am always recommending 4-hour gatherings at a time, with a series of several of these gatherings happening (weekly or taking a whole weekend). People respond to this with comments like “That’s impossible!” and when they say “We have two hours to give to this,” I’m thinking That’s impossible.
When people have these constraints, I empathize. But, we can’t work miracles either. People often choose to start with just one session, the first step: a circle for understanding where everyone has an opportunity to share their experience and needs. But here’s the trouble: understanding is a first step in addressing a conflict and usually doesn’t make clear what to do next. After the first session is over, the group goes back to all of their old ways (because that’s what happens when you have limited capacity and haven’t made a plan), they don’t hire me for another session, but leadership point to the process to say they tried.
Lessons I’ve learned, for facilitators: Try to be really flexible with the schedule but don’t spread out sessions too far—people will lose steam and their priorities will change. Try to have one big session with everyone and then have smaller groups work on strategizing problems that have the biggest impact on them, then bring their ideas back to the group as proposals. When you feel leaders are trying to focus on “dialogue” over a deeper process, refuse to create a process that doesn’t address harm. Advocate for addressing the concerns folks have raised.
Tips for participants: Consider the amount of energy and resources going into managing and reacting to the conflict as it is—making time for a process is an investment that will lead to better, less exhausting conditions if enough energy is put into it earlier on. Consider other areas where work can be paused, slowed down, or more help can be brought in temporarily. Get creative to make the time.
Limits in Funds (& Corporatization)
When I think about this topic without grace or an anti-oppressive lens, I tend to say and think things like “People just want us to work for free,” or “People just don’t value this work.” I believe there is a kernel of truth to these statements, but also a little saltiness on my part. Often people reach out to me to facilitate a process over deep, complex issues and include: “We don’t have any budget for this.” I can’t tell you how frustrating that is to hear when you’re in debt and financially struggling.
The reality is that capitalism creates significant constraints on resources for the groups of people I most want to work with: people doing liberatory organizing. When all of our needs are met by paying ever-increasing prices on stagnant wages, it makes absolute sense that people haven’t budgeted for lengthy conflict processes. Often a conflict comes with other expenses as well: hiring new people to adjust the workload, budgeting for other changes, resources for addressing harms, losses, or making amends. I never want to take money if it means that someone who has been harmed can’t pay for the other forms of care they need or an organization doesn’t provide a service to someone in need. At the same time, money does something more than pay my bills: money is also a symbol of the organization’s commitment and often gives people an incentive to stay connected. When a process doesn’t cost anything, it can feel more optional or like “charity,” and people can ignore responsibility to show up and make the most of it. There are a lot of ways to create investment without money—but when time is limited and the work is voluntary, that means more work and more process to develop that social investment before addressing the core problems. To work with the people and communities who most need to address their conflicts in order to be able to stay together and do really difficult work, means making little or no money as a facilitator. Which means doing other forms of labor. Which means having less time and energy to offer the low-cost or free services. Which means there’s not enough to go around.
What happens then is that people who want to do this as a career end up working with large institutions, governments, and corporations who can afford to pay. This is why I have a strong distaste for “career” facilitation that claims to be transformative or justice-centered. A lot of people are charging a lot of money to work as consultants or coaches. There are people who do what I do and charge $1,200 for a 90-minute conflict session (which includes all their prep time, but sometimes doesn’t include interviews/one-on-ones).
People who have a lot of money to hire a facilitator have a vested interest in maintaining the position that gives them that money and often have control over what kind of process and service they pay for. That often means the people with the least power and resources in an organization are not at the center of decisions about the conflict process, facilitator, or goals. That sets up a facilitator to maintain power imbalances. A skilled, principled, self-aware, and discerning facilitator could navigate a capitalist environment to reach real transformation that improves conditions for the most impacted parties—if that’s you, you are an amazing, miraculous unicorn and I applaud you. If that isn’t you, then as a facilitator you’ll likely make money by creating dialogue spaces that expose the vulnerabilities of people of color and otherwise marginalized workers and communities (where they can share incidents of poor treatment, discrimination, abuse, or poor wages), but ultimately have no power to transform the systems causing harm and therefore re-entrench those systems.
Lessons I’ve Learned, for facilitators: Always have a sliding scale. If you’re going to work for rich organizations, use some of their payment to pay for work with poor organizations. Make contracts contingent on involving the least-powered, least-paid participants in designing the process and defining the goals—if this is a deal-breaker for leadership, their engagement is disingenuous (see more below). Require top leadership with structural power to give decision-making power to the group, as a condition of hiring you.
Tips for participants: Let facilitators know about your financial constraints but don’t ask for free labor—let a facilitator offer that if they have the resources to do unpaid work. Be creative with the money and resources you have—know that an unaddressed conflict can lead to even bigger costs down the line just like a cracking foundation.
Unwilling, Incompetent, or Superior Leadership
In an organization doing collective work (a company, a non-profit, a volunteer or mutual aid group, a community group), there is a particular and common scenario that often comes up: An organization has significant hierarchy or imbalanced power. People with the least power have raised concerns about the way that power or resources are distributed, or specific harms have happened (such as discrimination). Almost always, before a facilitator is called in, the people without power have named specific demands, goals, or needs. But, the people with the power and resources to make those changes have not yet done so in a way that is satisfying to the people with less power. In this case, it is essential that a facilitator think about what has stopped leaders from addressing this already?
In a situation with willing and competent leadership a few things might be going on:
Leaders face constraints like legal liability, funding limitations, or board approval requirements that are slowing down or obstructing the process but they have a sincere desire to overcome those obstacles
Leaders don’t have the knowledge, skill, or understanding to really hear what folks are saying but they have a sincere desire to get there
Leaders have made mistakes in trying to address things in the past and because of lost trust, their renewed efforts feel disingenuous or misguided
The demands or requests being made are numerous or transformative and leadership are struggling to prioritize and organize the steps forward, for those being harmed this feels like a delay tactic.
In all of these situations, progress can absolutely be made with the help of a facilitator who understands anti-oppression work. Transformation can be made if those leaders are willing to give up some wealth and control and take risks.
In other cases, leadership are willfully obstructionist: they’ve heard the demands or requests and don’t have an interest or willingness to make real change to meet others’ needs. That could be because real change will cost them money or power, that could be because they are ignorant (and unwilling to learn) of the realities of oppression, or because they don’t value or prioritize the dignity and wellbeing of the people below them over their own interests, and/or because they have a superiority complex and don’t believe the issues being named.
In these cases, leadership tend to hold the power to decide which facilitator they hire and therefore what proposal for a process they will take. They come into the process with an incentive to hire someone who will help them to manage the complaints of the lower-powered participants with limited transformation, with a façade of meaningful change. They’ll choose a facilitator who focuses on dialogue, writing reports, and individual change. Facilitators who confront oppression won’t be hired unless we’re very sneaky. If we’re sneaky, we risk being seen as a shill by the very people we want to advocate with—that becomes an uphill battle to build trust. Paired with the limited funds for this work, there are real barriers to doing transformative work as a facilitator.
Lessons learned, for facilitators: Look at an organization’s values and use those values to confront leadership early if there are significant harms being named. Are they willing to give up power, wealth, and change the organization if it means aligning with their claimed values? If not, consider your own principles and skills. Would it be ethical for you to approach the less powerful parties and offer support for them, rather than go through the organization?
Tips for Participants: If you are the less powerful party and your leadership have proven they aren’t going to engage, this may be a situation better suited for organizing than for a facilitated conflict process. Organizing is a form of conflict engagement by definition and there are experienced organizers and facilitators who may be willing to guide you in strategy for free or with collective funds.
Paradox: Hubris & Fear
As facilitators, the choices we make have an enormous impact on our clients. The type of process we design, what we choose to focus on when, when and how we end a session, when we schedule a session—all of these choices send signals about meaning, priority, value. Perhaps the greatest choices we make are whether to take a job and when to end a job. A lot of facilitators, including myself, struggle with twin faults: the hubris that tells us we can make a meaningful difference because of our training and the fear that we are not equipped to deal with the extent of the issues or harms we face. This is a recipe for accepting a role before really understanding what is at the core, and then when we discover how deep or complicated things are—pulling away.
Too often facilitators agree to take on a job and then upon realizing there is trauma, harm, or a “problem personality” involved, abandon the process. I have taken several jobs where the people in relationship or the group have had several previous facilitators who gave up. The reasons the facilitator gave for abandoning the process are usually “benign”—my availability has changed, I don’t think I’m the right fit, participants are non-compliant. But, the impact is that the participants transfer those feelings of abandonment and mistrust forward into the conflict and all future processes.
Conflict is messy and people are messier. When we take a role as a facilitator, we have to assume that our patience, our values, our boundaries, our anxieties will all be tested. When we enter a process expecting that clients will act perfectly, or we are ready to abandon them when they don’t, then we are engaging in real harm. That isn’t to say we should accept poor treatment or abuse from participants—but that we should be prepared to face those conditions and be clear with ourselves and our clients early on what our limits and limitations are.
Lessons Learned, for facilitators: Be clear about boundaries and expectations early with clients—under what conditions do you end the relationship/process? If the process has to be ended by you as a facilitator, what will you do to make sure the participants aren’t in a worse place than they were before? Have these practices clearly laid out, be transparent, build your own resiliency—when you feel like quitting, ask yourself: am I really unable to continue or is this an opportunity to grow and assert my boundaries, but stay in?
Tips for Participants: A facilitator is like a therapist in that not everyone is a good fit for every situation—ask questions about their working hours, what guides them, their values, how they work. Be transparent about patterns in your conflict: is there abuse, anger, procrastination—all of these can help the facilitator make a plan, rather than taking them by surprise. If their answers/responses don’t resonate, you’ll end up doubting or questioning them all along the way and it won’t work. Find the right fit.
Opportunities to Learn + Act
Movement building groups are invited to Interrupting Criminalization’s training for their In It Together Toolkit: A Framework for Conflict Transformation in Movement-Building Groups. To attend the training you must apply with at least one other person from your organization.
Listen to Reveal Podcast’s new episode Who Has Power and How Do They Wield it about three investigations into law enforcement and legal disenfranchisement.
Next week, March 1 at 7pm EST: Abolition on the Ground: Reporting from the Movement to #Defundthe Police. Register here.
Watch an amazing event hosted by my badass friends at Coalition for Re-envisioning Our Safety, with a panel of phenomenal organizers talking about alternatives to police and a non-police crisis response system that they envision for Ann Arbor, MI: https://fb.watch/bnnSFXzwQy/
Thank you for this incredible resource list and information! Also super stoked to see a fellow Reveal podcast listener. That recent episode really stuck with me as well.
So much value! Thank you for all the resources x