Section 8: Tools for Conflict Transformation

“I picture ‘calling in’ as a practice of pulling folks back in who have strayed from us. It means extending to ourselves the reality that we will and do fuck up, we stray, and there will always be a chance for us to return. Calling-in as a practice of loving each other enough to allow each other to make mistakes, a practice of loving ourselves enough to know that what we’re trying to do here is a radical unlearning of everything we have been configured to believe is normal.” — Ngọc Loan Trần

Conflict is a natural, healthy and necessary part of any group dynamic when people are able to practice accountability. Groups that wish to cultivate a culture of accountability should articulate a shared set of practices or norms and embed these in all aspects of the groups structure and function. Based on our experience, the following practices are critical to developing a culture of accountability and transformation to:

Acknowledge differences and embrace conflict
Define and respect boundaries
Have compassion for our struggles with learning and unlearning
Approach one another with a spirit of curiosity and inquiry
Act with integrity
Practice direct communication and feedback
Resist the impulse to fight and punish
Experiment, learn and adapt

Groups may, of course, have other shared practices unique to their groups. Those listed are described in detail to offer you a firm foundation for your efforts to build a culture of self and mutual accountability.

Acknowledge differences and embrace conflict.

While we may presume we are all here for the same purpose, our experience of the systems of oppression we are trying to change is very different depending on our political, social and cultural identities. In addition, we are bringing different skills, strategies, and tactics to this work. These differences in our perspectives may cause us to dig our heels into a particular position. We make inferences about other people’s motives (not good) and the roots of their positions (faulty).

Instead, we can come together with the understanding that these differences will likely cause conflict and tension in our group. We can call on one another to take time to learn about the different perspectives in the group. If we are able to work through these tensions, we may be able to emerge stronger.

In many movement groups, we seek to center the leadership of people who have been targeted by the system. We do this to disrupt the cycles of oppression. At times, we may need to break up into smaller groups based on our identities to help clarify the roots of the dynamics we are experiencing, and work with people who have a shared identity to build support and identify our interests and brainstorm ways to move through conflict within the larger group.

However, in some spaces, we may inadvertently invert the oppressive hierarchy we were attempting to disrupt. For example, we explain away the abusive behavior of a leader who has multiple marginalized identities. People don’t call them on it to show that they “understand” why a person who has been oppressed would lash out. This enables harmful behaviors that will never contribute to collective liberation. Instead, we must build a culture that sets high standards for accountability, and also provides a high level of support to people in the group when they struggle to meet these standards. We do not have to punish, avoid or enable. We can support our people to transform in ways that promote accountability.

Reflection Questions and Tools for Embracing Difference and Conflict

What is your personal relationship to difference and conflict? What role have you tended to play in the group in addressing conflict (eg avoiding, mediating, instigating)?

This resource can help you do the inner work to prepare for conflict:
Using Innerwork for Conflict Resolution

What is your group approach to conflict?

These two resources will help you answer this question:

Read this article by Yotam Marom on Moving Toward Conflict
Take time to assess your group’s approach to conflict, it’s “conflict culture” with this Conflict Culture Assessment from the The Wildfire Project

How confident are you in your capacity to de-escalate a situation?

This resource can help you build skills to de-escalate a situation.

Has your group defined accountability and determined how it can be healthy?

This resource from The Wildfire Project will help.

Have you addressed upfront how your group wants to approach calling in and calling out?

Some resources:

6 Signs Your Call Out Isn’t About Accountability
Sonya Renee Taylor offers another tool beyond “call-ins” and “call-outs”: Let’s Replace Cancel Culture with Accountability

14:40-17:46 “And this is why I am proposing a new way that we might be able to address harm when it happens. Yes, there will be times when it is appropriate to call someone out...there will be times when calling in is the best strategy...but I don’t think we have to be bound to the binary in this particular situation. I think there are other options we could do and I propose that we should all spend a little bit more time ‘calling on’...I can share with you how you harmed me and what you did and entrust you with the work needed to repair that harm and hopefully do a bit less harm in the future. I can call on you to learn better and do better.”

Define and respect boundaries and prioritize safety.

“No matter what your workplace is, if you want people to...accomplish what they need to accomplish in the workplace, you have to take account of their emotional well-being and their relational well-being. Otherwise, all that has happened to people may very well sabotage what you’re actually trying to accomplish.” — Dr. Sandra Bloom

“Safety is not the same as comfortable. To make positive change, because this is all so deeply embedded in the way our culture works, it is not comfortable to make changes in these automatic reactions, but that doesn’t mean it’s not safe. And that’s an important differentiation. People will often feel uncomfortable and say, ‘I don’t feel safe.’ Really? Do you really not feel safe? You really feel that your body and your mind are in danger? Or is this just really uncomfortable? I think that’s a good strategy to use with each other as well. That change is not comfortable. And these deep down changes are very uncomfortable.” -- Dr. Sandra Bloom

We can strive to build spaces where we do not sacrifice our own well-being to make other people happy. Instead we can focus on cultivating purposeful spaces that foster safety in multiple dimensions, including physical, psychological and emotional safety.

After doing the work to Create a Clear and Defined Group Purpose and Structure, at a group level it is important that group members and leaders uphold the clear boundaries of what the container is and isn’t so that people know which needs and purposes will be met through their participation in different spaces and which will not. For instance, if the group is currently meeting for 30 minutes about finances, and the group has recently had a falling out about an unrelated matter, it is important to be clear that the current container may not be fit to hold the other needs of the group and, wherever possible, to opt to schedule specific time and space to move towards understanding, acknowledgment, and towards a process of reconciliation or transformation.

On an individual level, since we are different from one another, we also know that we each have different boundaries that are important to our autonomy and safety. These boundaries may be about physical touch, personal space, modes of communication, cultural sovereignty, religious beliefs, or even other things we have not anticipated. Where possible, the group can take steps to actively state boundaries of both individual group members and of the group process, respect those boundaries, and to take steps to repair boundaries when they are, often unintentionally, crossed.

Defining these individual and group-level boundaries and the words we use to hold boundaries and set expectations for building a culture that allows people to access safety is an important part of building a culture of transformation. For example, if we agree to be transparent, what does transparency mean? What boundaries can we set for ourselves that supports us to be accountable to the group while also allowing us to meet our individual needs?

In the spirit of self-determination, personal autonomy, and collective care we come together with the hope that each person will take care of their own physical, mental and emotional needs, and that the group will create the container for this to happen.

Reflection Questions and Tools for defining and respecting boundaries

Emotional Regulation and Safety Planning

Individual Reflection:

What are the signals that you are getting emotionally activated during an interaction (e.g. body temperature increasing, speaking faster, etc.)?
What are some situations that can trigger those responses in you?
When you notice those signals or triggers, what are some actions that you can take to regulate yourself before choosing your next action? What are some things that can help you pause?

Resources:

Step-by-step guide to safety planning - Creating a personalized list of 3-5 things that you can do in the moment to get yourself back to a state of calm or presence.

“This is an individual strategy that then becomes a group approach. It means figuring out what emotions am I most likely to get triggered [by] and lose control so that I may do or say something that is a problem? And then developing some very simple physiologically-based strategies so when I feel my emotions rising, I do something that helps me maintain control and self-regulate. It’s an individual responsibility that goes into making the whole.” --Dr. Sandra Bloom on Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast

On an individual level, we can practice strengthening our emotional self-management
Body work and generative somatics can support body regulation and stress management.

Think of your next meeting. What are some feelings that might arise in group members as they gather around the meeting topic? How might you use this information as data to plan for your meeting and create a space that welcomes all emotions? While groups may not be able to meet all the needs of their members, they can be a space that acknowledges and validates the differing emotions that group members are bringing.

On a group level, we can begin with creating a space that welcomes our emotions and the need to collectively adopt trauma informed practices. "8 Practices For A More Emotionally Just Organization" provides a starting point

Groups can also adopt the norm of self keeping, which assumes that individuals in a group will take care of themselves and let the collective know when they need something from the group. To learn more about how to practice selfkeeping, read My Body, My Home, A RADICAL GUIDE TO RESILIENCE AND BELONGING by Victoria Emanuela and Caitlin Metz.

Have compassion for our struggles with learning and unlearning.

We are each working hard to unlearn our internalized inferiority or internalized superiority within systems of oppression. We are each struggling to resist our cultural imperative to punish and shame those we perceive as causing harm. We are trying to imagine our way into a different paradigm for addressing conflict and harm. We are each trying to learn what it means to build a transformed society in which we are all free.

We have compassion for ourselves and each other in this struggle. We regularly reflect on how white supremacy culture is showing up in our lives. We talk about our personal experiences with punishment.We endeavor to build a daily practice of inclusion and accountability. We turn away from actions designed to punish or shame people and turn towards those that affirm our shared humanity and accountability.

It isn’t easy to have compassion for one another in our learning. As Tema Okun has said in her work on white supremacy culture, “white supremacy wants us to attack each other as the problem”. In our movements, we sometimes weaponize learning tools and use them to scold, shame and beat each other up. We ask that you use the opportunities to reflect with the tools below with a spirit of openness, interest and investment in each other’s development and growth. From Tema Okun: “I hope we can use (this learning) to help us name the ways in which our conditioning might be getting in our own and each other's way rather than as an instrument of shame, blame, or accusation of not being good enough. The dominant culture already gives us plenty of messaging about how deficient and wrong we are; perhaps we can learn to show up to each other with more compassion (and give ourselves and each other a break when we can't)”. Some of the initial exploration may need to happen in separate groups for BIPOC and white people; it is important to then come back together in a spirit of learning and inquiry. We can be in this together.

Reflection Questions and tools for increasing compassion for our struggles with learning and unlearning

Has your group explored how white supremacy culture shows up in your lives and your work together?

Tema Okum, who first wrote about the characteristics of white supremacy culture in 1999, has created a new comprehensive white supremacy culture website with many resources including a revised version of the characteristics: White Supremacy Culture - Still Here. It’s long, and well worth the time.

If you have more limited time to reflect together, use this, from Dragonfly, which includes a group exercise: Inclusive cultural norms

On an individual level, you may also choose to do this White Supremacy Daily Check In
Has your group explored your own experiences with punishment? Have you explored together the work of abolitionist movements against punishment? Questions to explore include:

What is your first memory of being punished for doing something wrong?
What did you learn growing up about punishment?
What is your experience in your adult life with punishment?

Learn about the ongoing work of abolitionists Against Punishment

Approach one another with a spirit of curiosity and inquiry.

Knowing that we are different from one another and that we are unlearning and learning, we can build relationships with one another by asking curious questions, listening actively and taking the opportunities available to us to learn from one another. Though we may believe in our own point of view, we can remain both humble to the fact that we do not have all of the information and open to the possibility that multiple perspectives can help us deepen our work.

Reflection Questions and Tools for the practice of curiosity and inquiry

It is the responsibility of all members of a group to cultivate a climate of openness and curiosity. These Skills for Effective Group Process in Multiracial Groups will help you do that.

Has a conflict occurred?

If so, use inquiry skills to ask Questions about the conflict. This resource can be used for both individual collective reflection.
This checklist for powerful conversations will support you on an individual level.

Act with Integrity

At times, we may be afraid of making mistakes, because we are afraid of becoming a target for other people’s anger. In truth, we cannot control what others do or say about us. We can only control our own actions and speech. Criticism, when delivered with care, can be an opportunity for learning, growth and transformation. When criticism is delivered as a form of punishment, we are best equipped to weather the storm when we know we have acted with integrity. When we act with integrity we:

Are clear about our purpose and who we are accountable to.
Tell the truth.
Do what we say we will do.
Own up to our mistakes.
Learn from mistakes and make changes in response.
Don’t expect or require forgiveness or engagement to change.
Maintain the boundaries we need to keep ourselves safe and healthy.

At times, groups may receive negative feedback from people outside the group and the people the group is accountable to. Under these circumstances, it is natural to feel defensive, hurt or confused. Groups can get caught up in quickly responding to such criticisms, which may lead to unproductive and sometimes harmful exchanges. Acting with integrity becomes even more critical in these moments. When criticisms come to you from outside your circle of accountability we can:

Acknowledge the criticism and reassert the purpose of the group and who you are accountable to.
Share the criticism with our circle of accountability in order to be transparent.
Ask ourselves - Have we been acting with integrity?

If not, we can begin the process of moving back towards alignment with the support of our circle of accountability.
If so, we can consider moving on with our work, and resist the urge to react, defend, or counter critics.

Reflection Questions and Tools for acting with integrity

What are my values? What are our values as a group?

Resource: Set a regular time to do this quick personal values check in.

Developing Communities of Accountability

Individual Reflection: Who is in your community of accountability? Write down the names of the specific people you can call on to help you to stay in alignment with your values.
Group Reflection: What other groups are in your community of accountability? Write down the names of the specific people connected to groups you can call on to help you to stay in alignment with your values.
Resource: This Pod-Mapping worksheet from the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective walks us through the history of the term “pods” and includes an exercise for reflecting on and creating our own pods to support our accountability.

Practice direct communication and feedback.

Conflict and tension are normal occurrences in any healthy group, especially in groups where people come together across differences. By practicing direct communication when we are in conflict with the people around us, we can avoid misunderstandings, miscommunications, and mistakes that are grounded in false assumptions and misinformation. The goal of direct communication is not to make everyone happy or feel good about themselves. In fact, our desire to please others can often lead us to avoid being direct. Our goal is to be honest in the moment in ways that are compassionate. We do this by:

Communicating clearly and directly with group members, working to match intent and impact in interactions
Being proactive in resolving conflicts and misunderstandings, especially across difference. This includes being able to effectively identify and interrupt microaggressions or other behaviors that undermine equity and justice.
Offering feedback that is clear, balances honesty with care, and is delivered without blame or judgment.
Using direct communication platforms like in person, one to one, direct contact, not public forums or social media.

Some people have a naturally direct communication style, which can be perceived as helpful and also as pushy and aggressive, depending on the identity of the speaker, context and implicit group cultural norms. Dominant norms favor directness in class privileged, straight white men and indirectness for everyone else. Most of us have little personal and group-based experience of direct communication in the context of conflict or feedback that is clean and clear. The tools below are intended to support you in developing and practicing these skills individually and in your group.

Reflection Questions and Tools for direct communication and feedback

How would you describe your own communication style? What has been your experience of being direct in communication with others in your group?
How would you describe the communication norms of your group? Has the group made its preferred modes of communication explicit?

Group-level communication norms include mechanisms for communicating, but also expectations of how people in conflict can be direct and clear while also demonstrating care for one another. This resource will help:
Direct Communication in the Context of Conflict

Has your group agreed on guidelines for feedback and created space for practice?

These resources will help.

Feedback skills

Feedback Circles Tool
Strategies for dealing with challenges that arise within individual people, within yourself, or within the group as a whole. This is often described as problems with people everyone finds challenging. (Trauma informed approach) Interrupting/intervening

“Who, Me, Lead A Group?” book by Jean Illsley Clarke - Question 7 - “What Will I Do If Problems Arise?” chapter preview of pages 75-87 here - This chapter helps to determine where the actual problem lies and offers suggestions for how to approach the situation

Resist the impulse to fight and punish.

Advocates are trained to fight for what they need - when we fight, we demand that the other side give us what we want and we are not concerned with their wants or needs. We stick to our position. Fighting is a critical tool to use when there is a measurable power differential between two groups of people. Punishment can also be a great advocacy tool -- by enacting consequences that show the other side they have done something wrong, we maintain power in the situation.

However, in many groups, fighting is the default even when navigating conflict inside the group.If we assume we have a shared purpose and that we are all learning and unlearning, we do not need to approach each other with a firm position or advocacy stance. We don’t need to fight. Within a mixed group, we can start with the assumption that we have enough power to get our interests met through talking or negotiation. If we have at least as much power as the other people in our group or coalition, consensual joint problem solving can result in new solutions we may not have come up with on our own.

In some cases, a subset of the group may gather together to get clear on a shared set of interests to bring back to the larger group, or to the leadership. In a white supremacist society, leaders are primed to see these types of organizing activities as a threat to group integrity and may use punishment to discourage this type of organizing.

Instead we can view this as an opportunity for people with shared concerns to get clear on what those concerns are which, in turn, can increase the likelihood of a productive joint problem solving effort. If joint problem solving is not effective within the group, spend some time considering why that is happening.

Has everyone involved identified their interests or are we stuck in our position?

Are there sub-groups that can align around shared interests, and strategize on how to bring those shared interests to the wider group?
Are group members weighing the gaps between their own individual interests and organizational interests?”
Does it feel like there are still hidden interests, and are there enough interests on the table to be able to sufficiently start problem-solving?

Learn more about interests and positions here.
Learn more about when to talk and when to fight.
Against Punishment

Experiment, learn, and adapt

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

As we unlearn the behaviors, ideas and norms that have been perpetuated by systems of oppression, we must experiment with new ways of being and doing things that are grounded in our vision for liberation. As we experiment, we can be sure that we will learn important lessons about what does and does not work as we build a new society. We are open to adapt as we learn from both our mistakes and our successful experiments.

Reflection Questions for experiment, learn and adapt

Have you established the expectation that the group is a space for learning? How might you ...
Individual or Group Reflection: Brainstorm and explore expectations of the group as it grows and learns.

What may be some unfair or unreasonable expectations of group members and/or leaders as they commit to their learning journey?
What may be some fair or reasonable expectations of group members and/or leaders as they commit to their learning journey?

Sample Mechanisms for Conflict Transformation

Establish Community Agreements to Set Guidelines for Behavior

We will respect each other’s bodily autonomy.
We will honor each other’s time
We will communicate directly with each other when someone says or does something that makes us feel fear or pain.
We will attend at least 75% of all group meetings.
We will communicate when we are not able to meet the responsibilities we have agreed to take on in the group.
We will support each other’s need to take care of ourselves and our families.

Involve the Community Keeper

The role of the Community Keeper is to pay attention to the way people in the group are interacting with one another, create space to build community and trust, name conflicts when they arise, and intervene when group members are unable to navigate those conflicts on their own.

The steps outlined below are for the Community Keeper.

What is the situation?

Hear the story of the person/people who believe they have been harmed. Create space for feelings to be expressed. Acknowledge the impact on them. Listen with compassion and humility. Ask questions in a spirit of inquiry. Ask them to think about what their specific needs, wants, hopes and fears are related to this situation. Try to determine who is responsible beyond the individual who caused harm—ask how the community is implicated? Try to assess if others in the group may have been impacted as well. Review the community agreements and accountability process with them.

1. What is your understanding of the situation?

2. What is most important to you in this situation?

3. Why is that important?

4. What do you think a good outcome might look like?

5. What are the obstacles to reaching that outcome?

Why has this situation occurred?

The Community Keeper calls on the individual who has been named as causing harm to do the work of making repairs. Ask them to share their perspectives on why they engaged in the behavior—what was the intent? Create space for feelings to be expressed. Listen with compassion and humility. Ask questions in a spirit of inquiry. Ask them to think about what their specific needs, wants, hopes and fears are related to this situation. Explain the impact of the behavior on group members. Encourage them to try to determine who is responsible beyond the individual perpetrator—how is community implicated? Review the community agreements and accountability process with them.

What is your understanding of the situation?
What is most important to you in this situation?
Why is that important?
What do you think a good outcome might look like?
What are the obstacles to reaching that outcome?

Based on the conversation with the harmed person and the person who has been named as causing harm, try to assess if the harm occurred as a result of:

A mistake, miscommunication, or misunderstanding
A conflict of ideas, approaches, or priorities
An effort to exert power and control in the group
Confusion about roles, responsibilities, or decision-making processes.
Group norms that are grounded in systems of oppression

Take action to repair the situation.

If the harm is determined to be the result of behavior that lies within the stated boundaries of the group (see setting boundaries above), the Community Keeper should work with all parties and the community to repair the harm with the aim of strengthening relationships and deepening mutual accountability. If appropriate, the person named as the one who caused harm should:

Regulate their own physical and emotional response to causing harm so that they can focus on the needs of those they harmed.
Acknowledge the behaviors that caused the harm and the impact of those behaviors.
Apologize for the behavior and ask if the apology can be accepted.
If the apology can be accepted, ask what can be done to repair the harm.
Work with the Community Keeper to repair harm.

If these actions have taken place outside of the group meetings, the Community Keeper should work with both parties to determine how best to share the lessons from this process of mutual accountability with the full group. Ask group members to support both parties as they seek to transform the conflict. This is an important step in building a principled community of struggle.

If the harm is determined to be the result of behaviors that violate the boundaries set by the group or if the person who has caused harm continues to engage in harmful behaviors after multiple attempts to “call-in”:

Inform the person causing harm and the one who reported harm that if another harmful behavior occurs, the consequences outlined in the community agreements will be enacted.
If the person causing harm repeats the harmful behavior, be direct in reminding that person that they have agreed to hold themselves accountable.
Focus on the behavior and restate the community agreements.
Acknowledge the impact of the behavior on group members.
Enforce the consequences stated in the community agreements.
Encourage group members to support both those harmed and the person who caused harm in ways that lie within the stated community agreements.
Avoid calling out in ways that shame, blame or punish.

Reflect on the process

The Community Keeper or another leader in the group can lead the group through a process of reflection by asking these questions adapted from Kai Cheng Thom in the Loving Justice Framework:

Were we completely honest with ourselves and each other? What questions still remain?
Did we approach the process with humility? Have we taken time to address the way we may have contributed to harm?
Were we brave in our efforts to work through tensions and name harm? Did we confront our own biases and the possibility that we have replicated oppressive norms?
Were we kind and compassionate to all members of the group while honoring our boundaries? Did we respond in ways that reinforce positive behaviors and avoided shame and punishment?