Conflict Engagement System - Miki Kashtan

Acknowledge & address social tendency to avoid conflict by:

• Offer a point person to track known conflicts
• Have group learning sessions about our own conflicts
• Circulate examples of how conflicts strengthen a group

Purpose of a conflict system:

• To restore trust within the field.
• To integrate any wisdom seeking emergence within the system.

System Assumptions:

Increasing collective capacity - “capacity response” = trusting that when there is capacity, humans will relax their survival strategies and organically find their way to wholeness together.

• internal harmony is reached through support and capacity being increased within the community rather than absorbing each other's judgements as a way to resolve the conflict. 
• maximise group capacity through discharging distress away from the parties
• maternal gifting: orienting to supporting everyone’s needs and collective capacity and well-being. 
• individually and collectively move us towards liberation, rather than an automatic quest for mutual understanding through hearing one another while leaning heavily on the capacity of a facilitator

System Agreements Overview

1. Identifying conflict in the field:

Anyone at any time sensing and announcing a “loss of trust in the field”

2. Announcing conflict in the field:

1. Send email: “conflict system activated, please go to CE flow-chart”
2. Fill in Conflict Engagement Tracker Sheet
3. When people go to the flow chart they:
1. Go through the questions to assess their capacity 
2. Pick from functions that have been assessed as within their capacity
4. We enact the Conflict Engagement system by:
1. Carrying out the given function 
2. Returning to the flowchart to be reassessed if we lose capacity and/or willingness to act within our current function, or if the function has been completed
5. "Gaps assessment” flow chart: we're either able or needing support
6. Closed when person thinks no more loss of trust

Open loops, voids, and specific challenges

1. People don't like to decoupling "arriving at internal harmony" from "offering feedback" 
1. Keep the field clean, avoid transferring trauma, stay within capacity: Don't force 2 people who cannot hear each other into dialogue.
2. ??? maximise group capacity through releasing distress away from the parties in conflict
2. What is precisely the connection to decision making?
3. What are exit agreements and when and how are they implemented?
4. How do we increase the possibility that message sent is message received when advocating / communicating on behalf of someone else or when expressing things that may easily be misinterpreted?

Functions

Principle: When there are clear functions that people can fill, we are collectively more able to co-hold conflict, even if we are habitually conflict avoidant. 

A. Facilitating

Purpose: Offer conscious structure to the field, supporting alignment with purpose and values 

Orientation: Holding tightly to the assumptions of the system while holding with care the liberation arc of those receiving support

Functions:

Attend meetings, add & systematise practices (increasing dependence on collective capacity and more redundancy of the facilitator function)

Working with a capacity supporter for coaching and other support as needed

*A space for processed judgements (transformed into needs) only. If parties cannot fully transform judgment to needs, they facilitator request them to get support before coming together with the other party for information sharing & decision making.

FACILITATING PRACTICES

1. Creating thresholds according to trust.
2. Seeding the field with appreciation.
3. Seeding the field with acknowledgements.
4. ‘Yes/No’ questions (Menu of common Yes/No questions)
5. Carrying a little version of people inside of you (builds trust that people are being held)
6. Bridge building?
7. Interruption
8. Translating people to each other
9. Requesting communication using OFNR
10. Creating agreements that are fully within capacity, no stretching: Discharging
1. Each person speaks for 30 seconds only, in circle format. No one responds to the person who spoke before them; ideally not to anyone. This continues until the charge diminishes and something else becomes possible. 
11. Finding capacity within the VM
12. I/You statements (Sarah Peyton process 1,5hr video)

B. Vision Mobilisation Structure Tracking

Purpose: Aligning the community with the Vision Mobilisation structure by searching for systemic openings where togetherness can be found and woven.

Orientation: High-level systemic tracking, listening, and responses

Functions:

Tracking individual and group energy from the perspective of the Vision Mobilisation Structure and searching for the systemic source of the conflict by inquiring in relation to the conflict: 

• What systems are weak?
• What agreements are too aspirational?
• Where are there voids? 

Tell others about agreements that may increase capacity if they are buffered, following the principle that the lower the capacity the lower we likely need to go on the VM structure to find within-capacity agreements. 

Reframe & make visible what's happening in the field in terms of vision & purpose to boost capacity.

Assess where collective capacity reached a limit & implement exit agreement.

HOLDING PRACTICES

1. Conflict Narrative
2. Tracking and holding relational loops
3. Establishing holding agreements
4. Modulating the field

C. Advocating

Purpose:  Supporting restoration of internal harmony through gently uncovering the liberation arc

Orientation: Connection to the essence of the person and what is needed for liberation

Functions:

• Going to the “needs an advocate” sheet in the spreadsheet and contacting one of the people towards whom you feel open, tender, able to orient towards them, and where you don't see a reason why they would not be open to sharing their needs with you
• Familiarising yourself with the “advocee’s” instruction manual if available / harvesting information for their instruction manual if not.
• Supporting the “advocee”: 
• to connect with their needs, including holding their needs with them.
• to transform any judgements (see also capacity supporter function for practices)
• creating or contributing to a conflict VM to understand together their vision and liberative arc and hold them to this as they are supported:
• Give acknowledgement, appreciations, feedback
• Lower the threshold for requests
• Collecting acknowledgement requests of others and stewarding these
• Communicating any needs, acknowledgement requests, acknowledgments, and appreciations to others

ADVOCATING PRACTICES

1. Reflective Writing: After listening, write recap and ask them to edit to reach common understanding.
2. Healing roleplay
3. Proxy roleplay
4. Self Integration process

D. Capacity Supporting

Purpose: Supporting the spread of capacity throughout the system and offering clarity of pathways for de-escalation

Orientation: Where are there gaps and what are possible pathways to fill them? 

Functions:

• Systemic - Following the principle “minimising the extent to which people receive judgements cares for collective capacity”
• offering coaching and support as needed to those facilitating and avocating,  
• boosting NVC practice as much as possible by translating and requesting OFNR,
• supporting de-escalation with any available methods
• checking in with people engaging in the various functions, are they still serving within their capacity (ask them to go through the flow chart again)
• Relational - Following the principle “vulnerable expression de-escalates and re-establishes trust” 
• available for emotional support, body contact (if possible)
• support metabolising judgements, forming requests (agreement, acknowledgement), framing acknowledgment to others if possible, needs choreography
• Material capacity - Following the principle “tending to the established flow (the agreements we already have) boosts collective capacity”
• increasing support of practical maintenance (food, cleanliness), stroking, concrete care acts
• asking if there are any small tasks you can take off someone’s hands, responding to emails, engaging with advice processes, looking at community and team agreements and suggesting if there is something they are not doing that you think could support them
• increasing your attendance on team calls and sharing celebrations and appreciations

CAPACITY SUPPORTING PRACTICES

1. Transforming Enemy Images Role Play
2. Healing Hurt Role Play
3. Conscious relationship triangle Authenticity Freedom Compassion model - Arnina
4. Transforming judgements into needs process
5. Needs choreography agreements around certain patterns.
6. Forming acknowledgement requests.
7. Space for reflection and receiving feedback discernment support.

E. Capacity tracking

Purpose: Maintaining an overview of overall capacity within the community 

Orientation: What gifts can I bring in support of the whole?

Functions:

• Assessing and mapping out relational and material capacity needs in Tracker
• Being available for requests from the person in the VM Tracking Function
• Lulls in energy or places of stuckness and possibilities for de-escalation, then inviting, and/or holding space for whichever of the following seem to fit: 
• Connecting to vision together by reading out the VM and connecting about it through story, celebration, reflective listening, and so on,
• Mourning circles
• Support, possibly connecting to those in capacity supporting function
• Giving acknowledgements about what people are doing
• Celebration, with individuals or in the whole community
• Being available for requests
• Offering appreciations to those who are being advocated for and those holding functions, especially those holding functions A, B, C,

Supporting Appendices: Skills and Capacities

• Acknowledgement Requests: 
• Engaging with dissent. Akin to Convergent Facilitation, a request for an acknowledgement may be met by resistance to the request. By searching for what is important within the dissent, you can tease out what the blocks may be to the restoration of trust. 
• Shared conflict narrative:  Acknowledgement requests can be a significant pathway for building a shared conflict narrative. Clarify "spheres of responsibility". Create shared understanding of conflict.
• Perspective taking. Vital in authentic acknowledgement. Normalising a culture of ‘can you illustrate this further’ or potentially taking space to consciously reflect on and consider the impact given. Decoupling hearing impact from giving an acknowledgement when trust is low. Allowing time for the impact to be considered and for an authentic acknowledgement to come forward.
• Orienting towards a liberation based trajectory: 
• Anchoring into each person’s liberation trajectory rather than than doing something for the other person (being able to re-frame requests and acknowledgements within their liberation path - maternal gift economy approach to conflict - when we connect to what we are giving within the conflict, it can dissolve without actually changing anything.
• Identifying the liberation arc early in the conflict, this will be the bedrock on which the conflict process is based. If they come together and things aren’t fully metabolised, this can be leaned on. 
• Maternal gift economy - threshold questions/questions that are reflections in terms of your status in relation to that liberation piece. This could be anchored in practices, goals and agreements
• Supporting internal harmony. Contacting liberation arc - holding the experience with complete self-responsibility. Seeing the interplay between what happened and my own patterns is congruent with internal harmony and a sense of empowerment. Mourning as a gateway to internal harmony and vision >> sharing impact as the gift of information for the other person’s liberation arc. >> re-do’s as a practice to bridge the gap between where we are within our limitations and the vision of a moment-by-moment integrative dance

• Reaching Internal Harmony: 
• Each party receives all the support needed to be able to name needs, and then to come together to co-own the needs and to come up with strategies. 
• Creating agreements that are fully within capacity, no stretching.

Draft Pilot - Responding to The Call of our Times 2022 

1. Where to go when a conflict arises? - not just ignore, gossip, give up, toughen up, sue, etc.
2. What are the pathways to attending to loss of trust? - not just find who's at fault
3. What are the pathways to engaging with the feedback within the conflict? - gain valuable information

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Update 07 Feb 2024

Here's a basic Conflict Evolution Policy document, publicly shared by Jori & Jim Manske (CNVC Certified Trainers), which leans heavily on person capacity: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wT0zxa64qWawxQsheq90BT32xgjxWsNAN7mpftwbHlg/edit . 

If your community intends to grow lots of collective capacity (having many people skilled in NVC to support role-plays, transforming judgment, etc., skilled in facilitating dialogues, skilled in holding the entire system), you can check out Nonviolent Global Liberation one-page intro to their conflict engagement system: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vn7KLpmFiD3JTHEmXe8kib2Wuc782HjOG00TW6D1ok0/edit . 

For a more in-depth dive, you can also check out the super detailed, publicly available LATU Guide to Transformative Justice-Based Conflict Engagement and Harm Intervention (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QN5ooTJA6KicaZ0B4nu1JtLCTLZbEQsy/view), or Miki Kashtan's Conflict Engagement System packet (https://thefearlessheart.org/item/conflict-engagement-systems-from-consequences-to-capacity-packet/).