Tough Conversations

Solutions Through Compassionate Communication.

Finding the Future in a Circle (Part II)

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[My last post reflected on my training in Reintegration Support Circles. This post continues to track my experience, especially in role-plays where we practiced how to conduct a Reintegration Support Circle with a returning citizen, his or her family members, and perhaps a clergy person or a community member.]

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After reaching consensus on Guidelines, a Keeper asked us to write on 3 x 5 cards a Value that we wanted to bring to the Circle and explain why the value is important to us. According to author Kay Pranis*, values “help people remember who they want to be in their best selves before they want to work together.”* I wrote “generosity.” Others wrote honesty, compassion, commitment, and authenticity. And so on.

The process deepened my engagement. I knew I was on to something very special and different from my experience mediating.

Next came Story Telling: Beginning with the Keeper, participants shared stories about a life experience. Examples ranged from what it was like to return home after a long absence to a how we felt when someone gave us unexpected but needed support.

Imagine how this process was intensifying: From identifying ourselves and sharing our feelings about taking part in the circle, to our relationship with the RC, to suggesting guidelines and sharing values, to telling a personal story, I felt an ever deeper connection with those in my circle. (And this was only a role-play!)

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Finding the Future in a Circle (Part I)

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iStock.com/AlexMax

Since my January 4th blog “Surmounting Tough Conversations After Incarceration,” I took a 30-hour training in Reintegration Support Circles. Support Circles are a means to resolve issues without shame or blame or winners or losers. Reintegration Support Circles seek, among other things, to re-unite Returning Citizens (RCs)* with family members, friends, clergy, social workers, and maybe other supportive members of the RC’s community (usually 6 or 7 persons) in a structured and circular setting. The aim is to generate a shared, positive vision for a Returning Citizen.

Circles are one of many processes associated with Restorative Justice, a conflict resolution process, philosophy, and set of practices, that is fast finding its way into schools, juvenile justice systems, and even adult criminal proceedings. Circles have their source among the ways of Indigenous peoples in North America, New Zealand, South Pacific, Africa, Alaska, and elsewhere.

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What Makes a Conversation “Tough”?

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It takes guts to start – and sometimes to stick with – a tough conversation. We’re afraid of triggering anger or hurt. Or being misunderstood. But some conversations are necessary.

Let’s say I’m wondering whether Mom and Dad have a will. And who’s the Executor? And who is getting what? Here’s the parade of horribles that might be going through my head:

My parents might think I want them to hurry up and die.

They might think I’m greedy.

They might think I’m trying to curry favor over my sister to get more than she does.

They might think I’m trying to trying to control what they do with their own money, as if it’s already mine.

They might think it’s none of my business. And say so!

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Surmounting Tough Conversations After Incarceration

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For several years, our Tough Conversations blogs have mainly focused on families and aging. Sig’s current blog explores a different but equally challenging area of family interaction: namely, how families and returning citizens can prepare to reunite after the latter’s release from incarceration.

One of the toughest conversations I can think of is that of a returning citizen (ex-offender) with his or her family members prior to or after release from prison. After years of incarceration, how does an individual re-unite with his or her family?

Maintaining family contact while incarcerated is challenging. It’s said that when a person enters prison, the entire family (figuratively) accompanies him or her. Imagine a Dad not seeing his kids grow up for 15 years. Or a Mom, sentenced to 10 years behind bars and separated from her baby before its first birthday. This happens constantly.

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Lessons Learned – Part One: Get Issue Oriented

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As Carolyn and I consider our next steps with Tough Conversations we’d like to share some of the lessons learned mediating adult family issues. Among the most salient is that mediation is ‘issue focused.’

How many times have we been asked to mediate toxic relationships among family members who over the years have become increasingly embittered? That, we reply, is for therapists or family counselors who can help families traverse the divides that have overtaken their relationships. Often toxicity deepens when families confront an older adult member who may need care or medical help.

In these cases it’s our charge to tease out of our discussions with family members the issues or disputes that impelled them to reach out to us. In some cases no dispute exists, only decades-old enmity that needs professional counseling. [Read more…]

Right and Righteous? Give It Up!

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Picture this:

Right and Righteous? Give It Up!An extended family is gathered for a Thanksgiving feast. A granddaughter announces she’s moving in with her boyfriend. A son has brought his same-sex partner to meet the family. You learn your favorite cousin had an abortion. The family vegetarian ostentatiously declines the turkey and anything it touched. Your Mom’s friend who helped make dinner is a guy 10 years younger than she and you suspect he’s more than a “friend.” A Marine in uniform and a peace activist complete the scene.

(I’m only partially making this up. I’ve seen each of these situations – but, I confess, never all at once!) [Read more…]

Lost in the Silence

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As mediators we know there are two kinds of silence:
Lost in Silence

The first is tactical.  During a mediation, we may remain silent while one party to a dispute wrestles with how to respond to a proposal, or maybe comes up with an alternative offer.  This tactic can lead to a settlement.  I don’t use it often, but when employed at the right time, it can move the process forward and eventually yield agreement.

The second can be tragic.  This is the silence of unsaid words.  The silence that comes when someone cannot bring him or herself to say, “I’m sorry” or “I’m to blame.” Or express a long submerged emotion that could shatter the silence and steer relations on a more positive course.
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Separating the Music from the Noise

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Imagine sitting in a noisy restaurant, barely able to discern beautiful music filtering through the din. Or imagine a Separating the Music from the Noise by Sig Cohenstrainer with a large mesh basket filled with stuff blocking it so that only the tiniest bit of liquid is allowed to drain out.

That’s what it’s like in some mediations I conduct. A lot of noise – noise that’s important to the persons explaining their interests and what they’d like to see come out of the process. But it’s noise just the same. Accompanying their words are the drama, the pitch of the contending voices, the marshaling of facts and assumptions — all aimed at influencing a favorable outcome.

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What Do Mediation and Palliative Care Have in Common?

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What Do Mediation and Palliative Care Have in Common? by Sig CohenThe more I learn about palliative care, the more I’m persuaded it’s a lot like mediation.

  • Palliative care allows terminally ill patients to spend their last months (or less) without intensive and often intrusive medical interventions.
  • Mediation enables parties to settle their dispute without interminable and costly trials.

Neither the mediator nor the palliative care physician is a “fixer.”

  • Decision-making is left to the individual – be she a terminally or seriously ill patient (or family members) or parties to a case. A terminally ill patient who opts for palliative care implicitly agrees to take responsibility for how they wish to spend their remaining days.
  • When parties mediate, they become the decision-makers in the case and take some responsibility for moving toward resolution.

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Transparency

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“What you see is what you get,” your daughter warned. You liked the transparency. Her boyfriend’s Transparency by Carolyn Parrtattoos and nose ring? Not so much. At least you knew what you were getting – sort of.

What’s really tough is when you think you’re getting Harvard Law and you get a secret drug addiction.

Some secrets start with the best intentions. Mom puts on a happy face until her hair falls out from the chemo – and the kids learn about the cancer for the first time. The youngest has to move back in to nurse Mom.

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