The byline is 'How to resolve the heart of conflict'. Arbinger Institute that helps resolve issues between people has also authored a bestselling book 'Leadership and Self-Deception'.
The book is about resolving the heart of conflict in organisations, individuals. It is told like a story - a bunch of parents come together to drop off their children who are addicts. The facilitators are an interesting duo - an Arab, Yousuf, and a Jew, Avi. The duo first deal with the parents who they feel need to be on the same page once the retreat for the youngsters is completed. In a two day workshop for the parents, they unveil the way to heal the space.
Change happens when one begins to try to hep things go right than simply correct things that are going wrong.
The next concept is that of having a heart of peace and not a heart at war. They give the example of King Saladin who would see even his enemies as people unlike the barbaric invaders who would only look at their enemies as objects. Similarly parents, spouses, often deal their spaces not with a heart at peace, but with a heart at war. It is very easy to find out how we resent our own spouses or children when they tell us stuff to do. That's a heart at war.
Key then is - treat people like people and not like objects.
Most failures are not a failure of strategy but a failure of being.
Yousuf and Avi say that we actually collude - collusion happens when the pattern is that we actually invite the very things we are fighting against. How we see war and peace is the key. When we collude we get allies and make enemies of our own.
To make peace we must put an end to the violence within us first.
From Peace to War
We start with compassion - spouse or whoever - and then we lose trust and we commit a act of self-betrayal. When things go crooked within us thanks to our own self-betrayal we need to justify things (make them straight). When we justify ourselves we are saying that we are not responsible for how we are seeing and feeling.
Self-betrayal i when we choose to act contrary to our own sense of what was appropriate.
We horriblise the others -i.e.e we exaggerate the faults of others.
The four styles of justification are 1) better-than 2) I-deserve 3) must-be-seen-as and 4) worse-than
From War to Peace
Become aware and apologise. We come upon the powerful story of one of the kids running away - without shoes in the hot sun for a long distance, her feet bleeding. She is pursued by two young volunteers, Mike and Mei Li, who run after her, then offer to get her shoes, then offer their shoes and finally run with her without their shoes. Their act of joining her in her world helped her get out of her box. Mei Li also says that when she took of her shoes she wanted to do everything in her power to make the environment an invitation for peace.
Surrender.
We separate from each other at our own peril. Boxes are bout differences. When we want to heal we must look for out-of-the-box places ((incidents, memories, activities) which are not twisted by blame.
After accessing the out-f-box place ponder over the challenges.
As questions -find out how you may have contributed to the situation.
After you have recovered your sensibilities towards the other, act on them.
Spreading Peace
The Peace Making Pyramid is split into a small tip on top which is - dealing with things going wrong (akin to the urgent things in Covey's box) and a large space below which has five things to do.At the bottom is to get put of the box - obtain a heart at peace. Then we teach and communicate. Then we listen and learn. Then we build the relation and then we build relationships with others who have influence on them. When we do these five things we are helping things go right which is akin to doing the 'important' things in Covey's matrix)
The three maxims we draw from this are
1.most time and effort should be spent at the lower parts of the pyramid
2. the solution to a problem at one level of the pyramid is always below that level of the pyramid
3) everything depends upon our way of being
...
I loved it. It is truly transformational - choosing a heart at peace, treating people like humans and not objects, stepping out of the box and breaking the energy, committing to find peace, finding out how we have contributed to the space, acting on the new sensibility by restoring humanity to the space.
Fabulous. Thanks Vinod bhai.
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