July 19, 2023 • 51 mins
In this podcast we explore the ins and outs of interruptions to understand more fully what interruption is and how it may be useful or even necessary for enhancing creativity, connection, reducing power imbalances, and building inclusive communities. In this episode, we explore interruption in the context of conflict transformation with Lorraine Segal, founder of Conflict Remedy (https://conflictremedy.com/). Disagreement is a natural part of human relationship, but as we discuss, you don’t have to stay stuck in conflict! We explore interpersonal conflict, what we bring to our workplaces and what our workplaces bring to us, and we tell stories, share mishaps, and dream about what can be if each of us could learn and implement conflict transformation in our own lives.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
For conflict to be resolved successfully,
the worn out tracks,
the neural superhighways in our brains, need to be interrupted.
Hi,
welcome to We Interrupt.
I'm Laure Haak,
your host.
In this podcast,
we explore the ins and outs of interruptions to understand more fully what interruption is and how it may be useful or even necessary for enhancing creativity,
(00:34):
connection,
reducing power imbalances and building inclusive communities.
In this episode,
we explore interruption in the context of conflict transformation with Lorraine Segal,
founder of conflict remedy.
We spend a huge part of our lives at work.
We want a harmonious,
supportive and safe workplace where we can contribute and connect.
(00:54):
We want to feel good about ourselves and everyone we work with but conflicts, grudges,
misunderstandings and miscommunication can get in the way. Disagreement is a natural part of human relationship,
but as we discuss today,
you don't have to stay stuck in conflict.
We explore interpersonal conflict,
what we bring to our workplaces and what our workplaces bring to us.
(01:14):
We tell stories,
share mishaps, and dream about what can be if each of us could learn and implement conflict transformation in our own ways.
It is possible to feel good at work.
Lorraine.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
(01:35):
So,
to everyone out there,
this is Lorraine Segal.
I came to you because you posted a really interesting blog post about your experience with interruptions in conversation and working relationships.
So that's how I found you.
Why don't you tell us a little bit more about you and we'll go from there.
Ok.
Well,
first,
(01:55):
thank you so much for inviting me to be on your podcast.
I think it's awesome and I'm glad to be here.
And so as you know,
my name is Lorraine Segal and I have my own consulting
coaching training business called Conflict Remedy.
And I focus on workplace conflict,
particularly leaders at work and how they can learn to not be afraid of conflict,
(02:22):
navigate conflict,
have better conversations and create more harmony and productivity.
And I write a blog, as you know.
At this point,
I've got about 160 blog posts cause I've been doing it for a while. I love doing this work because we have so little training in how to navigate conflict. When I can help people and they have lots of light bulbs go off,
(02:48):
miracles are created and I have so much fun,
so much enjoyment.
I came to this work --
I was a tenured professor at a community college,
loved my students,
but it was a very toxic environment.
And I learned a whole lot about what not to do in conflict,
around bullying and around holding resentments.
(03:08):
After I established my business,
I was called to write a memoir about my life and my experiences including how I got to my profession.
My memoir is called Angels and Earthworms (03:18):
An Unexpected Journey to Joy, Love and Miracles.
Also featured in my memoir is my beloved wife.
She and I have been together 33 years,
which is its own miracle.
I have so much to be grateful for.
Yeah.
It's wonderful.
Being able to navigate both workplace conflict,
(03:41):
as well as being in a relationship --
a one-on-one relationship for 33 years is,
is pretty magnificent.
So,
congratulations on both of them.
So you've told us about how you came to focus on workplace conflict.
One of the things I'd love to have you talk about,
one of the quotes in your blogs is from Muriel Rukeyser,
(04:04):
that says, "The universe is made of stories not of atoms."
I just love that,
that's just wonderful.
And you talk about,
how we remember our stories,
not the actual events behind those stories.
And part of the way our brain works is by,
bringing these constellations of things together. I am wondering if you can talk about how you use storytelling as a way to explore and transform conflict.
(04:33):
It's such a central concept to how I approach conflict and navigating conflict and transforming conflict.
When I teach this stuff,
I have a slide that shows people sitting around a bonfire, because ever since we discovered fire and maybe before the way humans make meaning of the universe is by telling stories about our own lives,
(05:00):
about our families, about our ancestors to make meaning of the universe.
So it is a quintessentially human activity to tell stories and listen to stories.
When I was first trained as a mediator,
they talk about my story,
your story, the third story.
But there's actually a lot more than three.
(05:22):
How I've incorporated it in my work is helping people become conscious of the story they're telling. Because the first thing is, most of the time,
we don't even realize we're telling a story.
We think we're just sharing the truth.
They did this to me, and this happened, and blah,
blah,
blah.
And we don't realize that that's our perspective, and another person is going to have a different perspective.
(05:49):
So partly how I work with people around conflict.
I mean,
I teach this stuff,
you know,
in general.
And then when I'm coaching people,
I invite them to tell their story and listen with great attention and great compassion because it's very real,
even if it isn't the truth and there's a lot of feeling attached to it.
(06:10):
And then,
we talk about why this story, and sometimes it has to do with their past and emotional triggers that what they said reminded them of what their mother said, or they had said this to them 10 times before and they didn't say anything and then they explode.
So
there's that whole bigger meaning of what someone says or does.
(06:33):
And then ever so gently I start asking them to think about how the other person would tell the story,
what they might say differently.
And
I use curious questions,
but I'll also give them examples.
Maybe they were in a hurry to get out the door and they weren't trying to be rude to you.
That's a really simple.
It is amazing how little people know to do this.
(06:58):
And when they're taught to do this and I invite to do it,
it can absolutely transform problematic relationships.
I will give you one of my favorite examples.
I got hired by the owner of a small business who wanted to sell the business to two of his top employees. They had all the paperwork,
(07:21):
they were ready to go.
They had said they wanted to do this and then,
the two employees had a huge fight.
They weren't talking to each other at all.
And in desperation,
the owner hired me. And I said, look
I can't sit down with both of them together and expect anything good to come of it because they're so mad.
(07:44):
But I could work with them separately and see if
then it makes sense to bring them together.
So I did that and they were both lovely sensitive men,
very different from each other. They were telling very toxic stories about the other person.
What it meant that that person thought about them,
et cetera.
So I did exactly what I just described to you (08:04):
a lot of compassionate listening.
You know how scary and hard that would have felt,
how hurtful.
And then,
but what about the other person?
And then there were different elements for both of them.
With one of them,
I did inner child work, because some of them had to do with
(08:24):
abandonment issues when he was little. I'm not a therapist but I could
look at that with him.
So then we did a series bringing them together and they realized how they were missing each other with the communication,
and that they weren't hostile and nasty people. They absolutely worked it out.
They bought the business.
(08:46):
I actually have only just stopped working with them because we did periodic tuneups.
And now they ask themselves, what would Lorraine do?
And they don't need me anymore.
But they really found
bro love and they're supporting each other so well in this business and recognizing each other's strengths. It's changed the environment for the 12 people that work there.
(09:09):
And how much fun is that?
I'm gonna ask a question about gaslighting.
I get into these conversations with my kids.
I'm the person with no boundaries.
So I'm always looking at what is this other person thinking and trying to figure out what I'm doing that's affecting them.
(09:31):
And my kids are like,
why do you always need to find this perspective of the other person?
Why can't your perspective just be ok?
Mom,
maybe this other person is gaslighting you or maybe you're gaslighting yourself.
So how do you deal with somebody else telling you that your perspective isn't correct?
And I know
(09:51):
there's layers of understanding that together builds up the truth.
But how do you do that balancing act in this storytelling to validate a person's experience and perspective and also deal with elements of gaslighting?
Yeah.
Well,
there's a couple things here,
one is recognizing another person's story doesn't make your story wrong.
(10:14):
It just helps you understand where they're coming from.
So perhaps you can find a way forward together that honors both your stories and looks at the pieces that both of you are missing.
So I don't see it as either or around the stories.
I mean,
I can completely listen and understand someone's stories and it doesn't mean I can't have boundaries,
(10:36):
or tell them, no,
that's not how it's gonna be.
So that's one thing.
And then I always say that most people in conflict, or even bullies,
they're not malicious,
they don't realize the impact that their words and actions have on other people.
And then there's a whole other category of people who are malicious,
who are hot and sometimes I can find distant compassion for them because of their experiences that led them there.
(11:04):
But gaslighting,
the essence of it from my perspective is telling someone they're nuts and that their story is wrong. Hoonoring two stories is never doing that.
Mhm Got it.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
You have written really beautifully about culture in the workplace.
(11:25):
So in your work,
how have you found that cultural differences affect how we perceive and work with each other?
You've talked a bit about inner child, and your past with relationships with people.
But there's also those layers of how you were taught to understand and,
and how you were taught to understand what truth is.
(11:45):
Yes,
the interest of mine that even predates my involvement with the conflict transformation field was diversity,
equity and inclusion.
It wasn't called that when I started!
It was unlearning racism, and then just diversity, and then it's expanded, rightly so.
(12:06):
When I taught a 12 week program for professional development around conflict transformation,
one of the weeks was about culture, conflict, and bias.
And the reason I do it is because conflict, in my opinion, is mostly caused by misunderstandings, by assumptions, by the battle of the stories,
(12:29):
all those kinds of things.
And when you look at implicit bias, racism, cultural differences,
cultural communication,
there's so many opportunities to misunderstand, to make assumptions.
There's these basic elements of culture about time and space and the degree of formality,
(12:50):
all these kinds of things.
So I teach that to people. Or if I'm coaching with them,
we look at it,
there is some misunderstandings happening because of culture.
And one of the examples I'd like to use of this,
it's from when I was a teacher.
I taught English as a second language.
My students were from all over the world, from so many cultures.
(13:11):
And they taught me a lot.
One time I was starting a class,
I was already in full teaching mode and a student -- late -- knocked on the door,
came in and said,
good morning.
And I thought, how rude! Because in American culture,
if you come in late,
you're supposed to come in really quietly,
(13:33):
just kind of look to see what page they're on.
And
I thought it was rude. And then I had another student do it.
And I thought,
wait a minute,
I know enough about this to know there's something going on culturally.
So I asked my students and many of them came from places where you could not come into the classroom late unless you checked in with the teacher and got permission.
(13:57):
And so they were being exquisitely polite.
They weren't rude at all!
But it was a completely different rule about what courteous behavior was.
And there's a million examples of that.
So when people understand and they know that,
they think to themselves,
is this a difference or is this,
(14:17):
is this rudeness, or is this a cultural difference?
One more really important one is about social distance.
We don't know,
usually unless you've studied this stuff, that different cultures have different optimal social distances.
So probably the closest is Arabic where you're inhaling each other's breath, and the most distant is maybe Japanese or northern cold Europe.
(14:43):
So I ran into this myself because I'm Jewish American and Jews tend to be more on the closer end than most of the people whose ancestors were from Northern Europe that I was around.
And so I would be called pushy because I was getting too close.
And then in other cultures,
for example,
Arabic culture thinks that some of the Europeans are very cold because they stand so far away.
(15:08):
And we don't realize that we're making these assumptions about people that they're rude,
that they're cold, because we don't understand that we learn without even realizing it what the right distance to stand from someone is.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Or whether you should do a handshake or all these other things.
Right.
Is it ok for a woman to shake a man's hand and vice versa?
(15:31):
Right.
Yeah.
So there's all these cultural differences.
Now,
then when you get to prejudice and racism,
again, a lot of it is unconscious stories.
You cannot live in the United States of America,
and not absorb sexism and racism,
et cetera.
I mean,
I'm a woman and a Jew and a lesbian and I have prejudices against
(15:53):
people of color,
but I also have prejudices against women and lesbians because you can't help absorbing it.
But if you don't know it's there,
then you're treating people differently based on assumptions you're making about who they are based on stereotypes.
For example,
(16:14):
Jews and Italians and sometimes Black people are more expressive and louder than some of the white people from Northern Europe. People make all these assumptions.
So,
understanding about these differences,
understanding about our own biases that we all have, gives us more room to interact with people as people, and change the story.
(16:38):
You're telling another way in your writing that's come up.
I'm just gonna read this.
What you wrote is, "In my Jewish American family the entire time I was growing up,
(17:00):
probably none of us ever finished a sentence before someone else slid in a comment or exclamation.
It was just our way of communicating, of showing we were engaged in the conversation."
This is interesting to me because I'm the same way. I will interject frequently, and
I have to actually almost sit on my hands to prevent myself from interrupting you as you're talking.
(17:23):
Oh,
this, really?
What about this other thing?
I really have to withhold and suppress my urge to do that.
And so I'm so envious of your upbringing because you did this and it was ok.
I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about this experience and how that essentially cultural experience of yours has played out in your working relationships,
(17:50):
both for good and bad or indifferent.
Yeah.
It was wonderful for me to come across the term layered communication.
That's one of the things it's called because I was told,
I interrupted all the time,
after I left home,
outside of the family, and that I was being rude.
There's such differences. I've seen families
(18:13):
on TV,
or whatever,
where everybody's talking about this.
What did I see recently,
that was so funny?
It was about the end of the world
[the 2021 movie, How It Ends]
And so these two friends,
they're talking at the same time saying things, not letting each other finish, and everything.
And at the end they say, such a great conversation.
(18:33):
I feel like we cleared everything up and I understand it all.
And I laughed so hard because it was sort of an extreme example of that.
[movie clip starts] It's not,
it's sorry,
sorry.
Ok.
Is it just that sorry you go?
I feel like you weren't really listening to me when I was trying to explain to you what you are worth,
(18:56):
but you wanted something different for yourself.
I was like a lesser version of myself at the word.
And so when I saw you just letting yourself be to this for a second,
I want that you also sort of abandoned that abandonment was part of it like a dude and then she was the friend and you're so it isn't fair.
(19:21):
And that is why I feel like I need you to recognize how I was developing psychically,
which you didn't really pay attention to that that I was trying to use for your benefit.
And today I see it and that makes a lot of sense.
I like,
I actually feel so heard.
(19:42):
I thank you for hearing me.
Wow. [Movie clip ends]
So I had to train myself to not do what some cultures think of as interrupting and I still do sometimes.
I have a great story about this.
I was working on a project presentation to try to get funding for a diversity project at the college i was at,
(20:07):
with a colleague of mine who was a Nuyorican, a Puerto Rican from New York.
And her assistant, from a Northern European background,
was there to take notes.
My colleague and I,
neither one of us got to finish a sentence.
We're going,
oh yeah,
we could that, we could do this,
we could do that!
(20:27):
And her assistant looked at us like
she was at a tennis match.
She was so confused, because to her,
it seemed like we were having an argument.
It was the only context she had for that level of interruption.
And yet at the end we said, wonderful!
Ok,
we got it!
(20:48):
It's just a funny example of these cultural differences.
She didn't have a clue of what we were doing.
To take that experience, as well as your work in diversity, equity,
inclusion and belonging spaces...
I'm gonna say something that's probably not gonna come across very well.
I'll say it anyway,
As a white woman,
(21:09):
I'll fully own this,
I'm a white woman from a privileged background;
I am really frustrated with DEI initiatives, because I feel that the way many of them are implemented is (21:13):
you women,
you Blacks, you Hispanics,
you guys need to carry the water on this, and we white men are just gonna kind of sit by and watch. And I get really frustrated by this, and frustrated by who's doing the work to implement these new ways of essentially conflict management in the workplace.
(21:41):
But it's like our problem as the "non people in power" to solve this and the people in power,
I feel like they're letting it happen but they aren't participating, is the feeling I get.
From the role that you have,
when you're working on conflict transformation,
how do you get people to own that everyone needs to do the work? That it shouldn't always be those less privileged or those that aren't,
(22:13):
you know,
the major power holders
that have to train everybody else
in how to deal with conflict in the workplace.
How do you,
how do you do that?
Well,
I absolutely agree with you that it can't be the target people doing the work because
they, we get exhausted and it doesn't really change anything in the long run, or not enough,
(22:36):
I guess I would say.
I think there's two aspects to this. One is that if the people in power really don't wanna change,
they're just gonna give lip service to it and nothing happens, and it's very frustrating because they don't really wanna see this change.
But for it to work,
it has to involve everyone,
everyone calling ourselves and each other on our bleep.
(22:59):
One way is to talk about what it costs.
If you don't deal with conflict,
if you don't deal with diversity,
equity,
inclusion and belonging issues,
it does affect the bottom line.
You get a nice representative group and then you don't treat them well.
So they leave.
So then you have to hire more, and then you get sued and then,
(23:20):
you know.
So, I think that people
who don't have a burning desire in their hearts for justice.
If you explain to them how it's,
it's negatively impacting their bottom line,
they're more likely to be willing to change, because
then it becomes enlightened self-interest.
(23:42):
I don't claim to represent all the perspectives on this and how change happens at all.
I do think that people are so afraid of making mistake and being wrong that they don't want to take any risks.
They just wanna hide under a table.
And so part of the work is saying,
hey,
we're all in this together.
(24:03):
We're all gonna mess up.
We,
none of us understand everything about this.
We all have hidden or overt biases.
So we have to be patient and kind with each other, and get mad, and then be patient and kind again.
And it,
it makes a huge difference.
I wrote a blog post called
Feedback, Hot Buttons, and White Fragility.
(24:26):
White fragility is from a book by Robin DiAngelo.
It's about how white people can,
we can be so
"Oh my God!"
"You're accusing me!"
A lot of it is about,
no,
I'm not calling you racist.
I'm saying what you did had the impact of being racist.
Let's look at it.
You can change this.
It's behavior.
(24:46):
It's not like you're an evil person.
And you know,
it's funny. As a Jewish lesbian,
I've definitely experienced discrimination and as a white middle class person,
I've had a lot of privilege, and so I can see both sides of it.
I've been in that place where I felt like,
oh, my God
I blew it.
(25:07):
I can't stand,
you know,
that kind of feeling.
And I've been in the place of, "What did they just say?"
I think part of it is,
it sounds funny, but there's some gentleness to being humans together.
Knowing we're gonna mess up. Knowing that we're gonna make lots of mistakes. And being willing to do the work because it's gonna be better for all of us.
(25:43):
Yeah.
And then we get into those conversations of, again, from people in power, is this really going to be better for us?
Because now the place I have a job, is threatened by somebody else who doesn't have access to the privilege I do.
The college that I worked at,
I was hired to strengthen and expand the English as a second language program to help the immigrants who were going there.
(26:08):
And the truth was, they didn't even wanna give me classroom space after hiring me because they did not want anything to change.
They knew on some level they had unearned privilege and they did not want to lose it and they didn't care about anything else.
It's one of those really tough issues when you're dealing with conflict. You run into this all the time (26:25):
how do you deal with conflict and power imbalance at the same time?
Because in many ways,
conflict can arise because of perceived and actual power imbalance.
(26:48):
I set the rules here.
You need to follow my rules.
Or,
that person set the rules and they don't fit me, and I don't feel like following them anymore. Or, I don't understand what the rules are in this situation, so I'm not gonna speak up.
I feel uncomfortable here and I'm going to leave.
One of the things that I'm thinking about with,
(27:08):
with conflict transformation is exposing these invisible rules in the workplace,
and making them visible. Having people not only articulate the rules, but also think about are these really the rules we should be using in the workplace.
(27:29):
And, from that diversity,
equity, inclusion and belonging perspective,
can we work together to figure out what that rule set should be in our workplace?
One of the things I work on right now is,
is really thinking through with start up companies,
what are our values and principles?
What are those explicit rules that we're going to create together and then embed in how we do our work,
(27:57):
everything from how we have conversations to what tools we use and how we do strategic planning,
everything has to reflect and the product itself has to reflect those principles and values.
So I'm wondering how you,
from your perspective in conflict transformation,
how do you explore invisible rules?
(28:20):
And what does that look like?
First,
I wanna say that one of the things to do is to look at it.
It's exactly,
I think what I said about story and assumptions is looking at the unspoken rules.
It's not usually the spoken rules so much as
it's the unspoken rules.
What are they?
And are they,
are they serving us?
(28:41):
Are these the rules we really want to have?
I do think that what makes a good manager is shifting.
There's still a lot of managers around who follow old style rules,
Good managers have to set some rules,
(29:02):
but they also listen to people,
listen to what they need and how they can best work.
I think it takes some resiliency and openness to look at,
"How's that working for you?"
"Is this role really helpful?"
When you were saying that I was thinking about looking professional,
(29:24):
the whole thing about hair,
which is,
oh my God,
it's just such an conversation with my kids too.
What does looking professional mean, Mom?
So, for example,
any woman who was Black who,
who didn't use horrible toxic chemicals on her hair to straighten it,
who wore some kind of more natural hairdo, was considered unprofessional.
(29:48):
And now a lot of people,
Black women and others are challenging that:
Let's make it more inclusive, what it means to look professional.
I also have done some work around transgender issues
and the kinds of biases transgender people experience.
And I saw this clip about transgender people in the workplace and there was this one person
(30:13):
with hair, about my length and a little beard and a necklace and women's clothes.
I'm just looking at them and I felt uncomfortable. And of course, they were perfectly professional.
It was just outside the gender norms that I'm used to.
And so there's the,
there's the idea of, can I set aside these biases and prejudices?
(30:37):
One of the things that I say to people all the time is, there's a creative aspect to conflict.
There's this bad interpersonal conflict,
but then there's this creative tension where there's a shared goal.
But people have very different ideas about how to get there.
And if you have a lot more diversity in the smart people you're including,
(30:59):
you're gonna get much more robust and creative problem solving than you would otherwise.
And companies need all the edge they can get.
I'm 100% with you.
And, one of the challenges when you have diversity and you're really striving for including multiple perspectives in your workforce
(31:20):
is that it takes more time. So much of what we hear over and over and over again in the United States is we gotta be fast we gotta be fast.
We gotta do this fast,
grow,
grow,
grow,
grow,
grow.
And you can't do stuff quickly,
if you're trying to incorporate multiple perspectives into where you're heading.
And,
and I think that's part of the conflict.
(31:42):
I understand what you're saying about that,
but I think that's a false story.
When you think about,
OK,
we're gonna do things quickly.
We're not going to pay attention to any of these things.
And then what happens?
People leave you?
They're in conflict with each other.
They're not contributing because they're keeping their heads down.
They're looking for an exit strategy,
(32:03):
all those things.
I think it's where you put in the time.
Are you willing to put it in now or are you gonna put it in later when you're trying to clean up the mess that you made by that point?
Excellent.
Thank you for making that point.
That's excellent.
So, kind of going sideways a little bit.
We've talked about invisible rules.
(32:23):
We've talked about articulating those invisible or unspoken rules.
You've also talked about transgender people.
One of the things that we like to do as humans is put stuff into bins,
right?
We like to categorize stuff.
And so, just using this lens of gender,
(32:45):
many people like to categorize gender on a binary,
male or female. Pick one and stick with it, right?
And people are reluctant to explore or accept that there is a,
a continuum of gender,
there's a continuum of race,
ethnicity,
there's a continuum of all kinds of stuff in this world.
(33:07):
But people like to have stuff in categories,
not every culture,
but I'm gonna say the dominant culture in the US prefers to have stuff in categories.
And so in conflict transformation,
how do you deal with continuum and fluidity,
let's say from the point of view of gender.
Somebody who is gender fluid,
(33:29):
who may one day come in and present as female,
another day may come in and present as male, and may actually use different pronouns depending on the day. When you're thinking about conflict transformation...
I mean,
I'm imagining, just like the story you told at the very beginning,
there isn't a single answer,
(33:50):
right?
You really have to work on this and embed conflict transformation into how you do your work.
And so part of your job is to train people in doing that and realizing that you never fully solve a problem. That you are continuously kind of asymptotically coming to a resolution.
(34:10):
And then there will be something else that comes up.
I have a very simple goal for the class,
which is to change their hearts, minds, and behavior.
Simple but not easy.
Because as far as I'm concerned,
90% of conflict is internal.
It's all about what's being triggered in us,
what we're feeling,
(34:31):
what we're thinking,
the story we're telling,
et cetera.
So a lot of the work I do, whether I'm teaching or I'm coaching, is internal.
Many people want things in simple categories.
Why?
It makes them feel safe, because then they don't have to think.
It's just,
that's the way it is.
(34:51):
And I don't think, would I like to wear a ribbon in my hair one day?
It's fear is at the heart of it,
To me it's at the heart of hate.
It's at the heart of bias, a lot of it anyway.
Not all of it.
So it's fear. Part of my goal in my classes and with my clients is to help people feel safe first.
(35:14):
You're gonna be ok.
It's gonna be ok.
You're gonna be ok.
It's all right to open the door just a little bit and look at this stuff.
It's not so scary.
That kind of gentleness goes a long way.
People need to be able to express their fears,
express their feelings.
(35:35):
But the more you can go deeper with it and realize, "they can't look like that!"
You know,
it's asking,
why can't they look like that?
What does that mean for you?
What's so scary about it?
What's it harming?
It's like the people who didn't want same sex partners to get married, and claimed it was harming their marriage.
(35:59):
How is me marrying the woman I love harming someone else's marriage?
It's not. It's just scaring them.
724,00:36:04,540 --> 00:36:32,580 Leaders have to make a true commitment to educating themselves, to sticking up for people, to explaining to everyone why we need to do this, if we're gonna grow and flourish.
(36:32):
I tried to change that college from my small position.
I did a lot of things to try to point things out, to bring in trainers, to do all of that.
And it made me a target for wrath.
Eventually, I had to leave.
There's one other thing I wanted to say about this, that I do specifically in my training around bullying and mobbing,
(37:00):
which is,
some people are the bully,
some people are the targets.
Most people are bystanders,
they witness this and feel uncomfortable but they don't know what to do.
So part of it is training people -- and this works for bias and racism issues and all kinds of prejudices as well --
to train them to be upstanders.
(37:24):
When you feel uncomfortable.
this is wrong,
but you don't have a clue what to do.
So there's practical things you can do.
Sometimes it's as simple as going and standing next to the person. So they're not getting the wrath.
Or someone interrupts them in a meeting.
You say I don't think so and so finished, and hand them back the microphone.
When people learn that there's,
(37:44):
there's actual simple actions they can take to be allies, to look at their own stuff,
but also stand up and feel supported for standing up for others,
it can really change the environment.
It doesn't make it perfect,
but it does make it a place where people feel more included,
(38:04):
where they feel like they belong better as a person who has been marginalized for any number of different reasons.
How do you find the sustenance to do your work?
You just talked about,
how you've had to leave sometimes.
So what keeps bringing you back to this?
(38:25):
Yeah.
I've written so many blogs.
I wrote a blog post called Healing Old Hatreds.
And it was about an experience of anti-semitism I had at a business networking meeting.
Someone stood up in that meeting, and was describing how he got started in his field,
which was construction.
(38:45):
And he used a pejorative term about Jews in his introduction.
It was about trying to get things cheaper.
And I had actually never heard someone use that before.
I read it.
I felt like I've been stabbed through the heart. It was so uncomfortable! And I thought, I've got to talk to him.
(39:09):
But what the hell do I say?
How do I do it?
So I went up to him afterwards.
I said,
you know what you said,
really felt awful to me.
It really hurt.
And he said,
I know,
I'm so sorry.
It just slipped out and I,
I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
And I said,
well,
you probably hear that kind of language on the construction sites all the time.
(39:30):
He said,
yeah,
all the time.
I don't really know what to do about it.
Well, I know what you could do.
The next time you hear someone say something like that,
tell them to stop,
tell them that it's wrong.
And he said,
yeah,
and I could tell them what happened to me.
And I said,
right?
I felt so proud of myself afterward because instead of just calling him a bigot,
(39:55):
I actually turned it into a teaching moment and I really felt it,
I felt that it was ignorance.
It wasn't malice on his part.
And so that changed him, and it gave me strength too. And then I got to write a blog post about it.
There you go.
(40:16):
Listening to what you're saying and thinking about again,
the topic of this series of podcasts is interruption.
And part of what you're doing, really, is interrupting the way people interact with each other,
right?
Your story just then is saying,
hey,
(40:36):
here's how you can stop,
you can be part of stopping or interrupting this kind of interaction.
And the same thing I think in,
in conflict transformation more generally, is this idea of,
how do we tell stories,
but also interrupt our own internal story,
right?
By stopping,
(40:57):
taking that breath and listening to some other stories.
I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about your perspective on interruption,
how you think about or define it, and how you think it's valuable in conflict transformation.
It's so funny because interruption,
there's a thing of us interrupting each other and what people think of that and everything, and then absolutely wanting to interrupt the inner thinking as you said,
(41:25):
interrupt the status quo for conflict to be resolved successfully.
The worn out tracks, the neural superhighways in our brains, need to be interrupted when you start to realize there's different ways of doing things.
It's like a little tiny animal track in the world.
(41:46):
But then if you practice, it becomes more of a path and you don't have to follow that worn out way of doing things,
interrupting your thinking,
interrupting the story you're telling,
interrupting,
beating yourself up about something or,
or vilifying someone else.
(42:06):
I hadn't thought of it in that way before,
but really a lot of it is about interrupting what is and,
and aiming for what could be.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I love how you put that, aiming for what could be.
You've talked about diversity,
equity,
inclusion and belonging.
You've talked about your experience in your career,
(42:26):
moving from different ways of working in that space and what that space has been called.
Could you reflect on how culture and diversity and inclusion play together in conflict transformation space?
Well,
the culture itself has so many different levels.
You know,
they talk about company culture,
which has to do with the unspoken rules and the way things are done.
(42:49):
And culture, it's so rich.
Different people from different countries have different cultures.
But there's also culture that relates to class, culture that relates to gender, culture that relates to living in small towns versus cities,
culture that relates to the part of the country.
And really,
(43:11):
when we assume everybody's just like us,
we're missing about 90% of what's going on.
Becoming curious instead of assuming is a a big part of how to listen better,
deal with conflict differently.
(43:32):
It's so interesting.
There's this concept I learned in linguistics,
which is idiolect.
We each have our own language.
We all use words differently.
You know,
what's our preferred way to express something?
The more we're aware of this richness and difference, and the more curious we could be about it,
(43:57):
then the less likely we are to make assumptions about what something means from that person's perspective.
And I think then, that also paves the way to being more inclusive because you are asking those questions.
You aren't assuming somebody is just like you,
you're saying,
well,
here's another human.
(44:18):
What are the ways I can interact with this person today and realize that that might change tomorrow?
Because as you know,
the famous line from The Christmas Carol is, it depends on what you had for breakfast.
How can we take what you've done in conflict transformation away from this conversation and start applying it in our own lives?
(44:39):
I think breathing is a good start rather than reacting.
I have one more little story.
I was working with these two men.
One was an employee of the other and they were having serious communication problems.
One of them felt like the other one would run roughshod over him.
And so I was sitting there with both of them.
(45:01):
The one man who was the employee said something,
and the other man was like, I don't understand.
Can you explain it to me?
I put my hand up in the stop gesture and I said,
let's take a breath.
And so they paused and then,
the employee said,
this is what I'm talking about.
That's hard for me.
And the other guy got it in that moment.
(45:22):
It's the most beautiful example of interruption I can think of.
You know,
slowing it down,
being curious,
loving yourself and loving them.
When I redid my website, it took me a long time because I was afraid to talk about love.
(45:43):
I was reaching out to corporations,
but it's really about love and compassion.
If we don't assume that they're our enemy,
if we assume that we're not understanding them,
then we can act differently,
gather information, understand more.
So many times beautiful healing happens from that. We have to go through our feelings of being heard or mad or whatever.
(46:08):
I would never tell people not to have those feelings,
but then say, OK,
what else,
what else could be going on?
And as Byron Katie says,
(I use some of her questions)
You tell yourself a story and you say,
is it true?
How do you know? What's your evidence?
(46:29):
That's another good way
of slowing down and then being clear,
you can have boundaries too.
It really makes a difference.
Yeah,
I've been working a lot in certain spaces where a lot of the response to fixing problems is,
well,
we need to provide more training to the people who are having problems.
(46:49):
And this comes back to my comment from earlier about embedded power structures.
The training is great. But if that person goes back into the embedded power structure that doesn't respond, reflect,
or incorporate the training into itself,
training doesn't do any good.
And so people are like,
oh,
we've got all these mentoring programs.
It's that, and the next thing, why aren't we able to recruit and retain the talent pool here?
(47:10):
And it's because that,
that kind of inherent infrastructure is still there.
One of the challenges I'm sure that you run into is how do you get actual change in those power structures?
And if you can find, to your point,
leaders who are willing to engage and open cracks in an infrastructure,
(47:32):
call out bias and conflict when they see it, and work to create that culture is the way we can do it.
I guess I get,
I get so frustrated and sometimes I'm just like,
errgggh,
get out the TNT with Wiley Coyote,
let's move on.
That is an answer, but probably not the most effective answer, to trying to get to a place where we actually do conflict transformation.
(48:00):
We talked about people who to keep things simple in categories. And one aspect of that, is it's easier to scapegoat someone.
And so say they're the problem, rather than look at all the complex ways that people are interacting, that's dysfunctional, really.
And it can feel impossible to change it.
(48:23):
But
it is possible.
It's always possible.
There's a lot of companies who have not made that commitment,
but there's more that have than in the past.
And so I think it's a matter of ... for people like us doing this work with expectations.
(48:43):
I've known this since I was a teacher, that what I'm really doing is planting seeds. I'm not gonna see all the plants grow,
I'm not gonna see it all.
I've been able to transform people's relationship with their work,
which is amazing and miraculous.
And there are leaders who have changed and
(49:04):
started doing things differently because of what they've learned about conflict transformation.
It's like you're having to live in hope and plant seeds and do what we can and take the small victories.
Arundhati Roy said,
"What a better world is possible when I'm still,
(49:27):
I can feel her breathing."
Mmm. Nice.
Nice.
Lorraine,
thank you so much for a fun and insightful conversation.
Your work, it's transformational and
it's exhausting and it's exciting.
There's so many different feelings that I'm sure you've experienced going through the work that you do and I just want to thank you for doing it.
(49:52):
Oh,
thank you so much.
And if people would like to read my blog or sign up for my newsletter or get more information about me and my services,
you can find me at ConflictRemedy.com.
Awesome.
Thanks,
Lorraine.
Thank you.
Bye bye.
Thank you for joining us! For more about We Interrupt,
(50:15):
please see our website at www.weinterruptthis.com for show notes, links and other episodes.
You can contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
(50:35):
I pay my respects to Elders, past and present, and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you to Emma Levinson for her artwork featured on our website.
We include a short clip from “How it Ends” a movie released in 2021 directed by Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein. Segue music is Miró by MagnusMoone, licensed from Tribe of Noise BV
(51:01):
and intro/extro music is Bartok’s "Melody with Interruptions", played by Alan Huckleberry for The University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Video Recording Project.
For conflict to be resolved successfully,
the worn out tracks,
the neural superhighways in our brains, need to be interrupted.
Hi,
welcome to We Interrupt.
I'm Laure Haak,
your host.
In this podcast,
we explore the ins and outs of interruptions to understand more fully what interruption is and how it may be useful or even necessary for enhancing creativity,
(00:34):
connection,
reducing power imbalances and building inclusive communities.
In this episode,
we explore interruption in the context of conflict transformation with Lorraine Segal,
founder of conflict remedy.
We spend a huge part of our lives at work.
We want a harmonious,
supportive and safe workplace where we can contribute and connect.
(00:54):
We want to feel good about ourselves and everyone we work with but conflicts, grudges,
misunderstandings and miscommunication can get in the way. Disagreement is a natural part of human relationship,
but as we discuss today,
you don't have to stay stuck in conflict.
We explore interpersonal conflict,
what we bring to our workplaces and what our workplaces bring to us.
(01:14):
We tell stories,
share mishaps, and dream about what can be if each of us could learn and implement conflict transformation in our own ways.
It is possible to feel good at work.
Lorraine.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
(01:35):
So,
to everyone out there,
this is Lorraine Segal.
I came to you because you posted a really interesting blog post about your experience with interruptions in conversation and working relationships.
So that's how I found you.
Why don't you tell us a little bit more about you and we'll go from there.
Ok.
Well,
first,
(01:55):
thank you so much for inviting me to be on your podcast.
I think it's awesome and I'm glad to be here.
And so as you know,
my name is Lorraine Segal and I have my own consulting
coaching training business called Conflict Remedy.
And I focus on workplace conflict,
particularly leaders at work and how they can learn to not be afraid of conflict,
(02:22):
navigate conflict,
have better conversations and create more harmony and productivity.
And I write a blog, as you know.
At this point,
I've got about 160 blog posts cause I've been doing it for a while. I love doing this work because we have so little training in how to navigate conflict. When I can help people and they have lots of light bulbs go off,
(02:48):
miracles are created and I have so much fun,
so much enjoyment.
I came to this work --
I was a tenured professor at a community college,
loved my students,
but it was a very toxic environment.
And I learned a whole lot about what not to do in conflict,
around bullying and around holding resentments.
(03:08):
After I established my business,
I was called to write a memoir about my life and my experiences including how I got to my profession.
My memoir is called Angels and Earthworms (03:18):
An Unexpected Journey to Joy, Love and Miracles.
Also featured in my memoir is my beloved wife.
She and I have been together 33 years,
which is its own miracle.
I have so much to be grateful for.
Yeah.
It's wonderful.
Being able to navigate both workplace conflict,
(03:41):
as well as being in a relationship --
a one-on-one relationship for 33 years is,
is pretty magnificent.
So,
congratulations on both of them.
So you've told us about how you came to focus on workplace conflict.
One of the things I'd love to have you talk about,
one of the quotes in your blogs is from Muriel Rukeyser,
(04:04):
that says, "The universe is made of stories not of atoms."
I just love that,
that's just wonderful.
And you talk about,
how we remember our stories,
not the actual events behind those stories.
And part of the way our brain works is by,
bringing these constellations of things together. I am wondering if you can talk about how you use storytelling as a way to explore and transform conflict.
(04:33):
It's such a central concept to how I approach conflict and navigating conflict and transforming conflict.
When I teach this stuff,
I have a slide that shows people sitting around a bonfire, because ever since we discovered fire and maybe before the way humans make meaning of the universe is by telling stories about our own lives,
(05:00):
about our families, about our ancestors to make meaning of the universe.
So it is a quintessentially human activity to tell stories and listen to stories.
When I was first trained as a mediator,
they talk about my story,
your story, the third story.
But there's actually a lot more than three.
(05:22):
How I've incorporated it in my work is helping people become conscious of the story they're telling. Because the first thing is, most of the time,
we don't even realize we're telling a story.
We think we're just sharing the truth.
They did this to me, and this happened, and blah,
blah,
blah.
And we don't realize that that's our perspective, and another person is going to have a different perspective.
(05:49):
So partly how I work with people around conflict.
I mean,
I teach this stuff,
you know,
in general.
And then when I'm coaching people,
I invite them to tell their story and listen with great attention and great compassion because it's very real,
even if it isn't the truth and there's a lot of feeling attached to it.
(06:10):
And then,
we talk about why this story, and sometimes it has to do with their past and emotional triggers that what they said reminded them of what their mother said, or they had said this to them 10 times before and they didn't say anything and then they explode.
So
there's that whole bigger meaning of what someone says or does.
(06:33):
And then ever so gently I start asking them to think about how the other person would tell the story,
what they might say differently.
And
I use curious questions,
but I'll also give them examples.
Maybe they were in a hurry to get out the door and they weren't trying to be rude to you.
That's a really simple.
It is amazing how little people know to do this.
(06:58):
And when they're taught to do this and I invite to do it,
it can absolutely transform problematic relationships.
I will give you one of my favorite examples.
I got hired by the owner of a small business who wanted to sell the business to two of his top employees. They had all the paperwork,
(07:21):
they were ready to go.
They had said they wanted to do this and then,
the two employees had a huge fight.
They weren't talking to each other at all.
And in desperation,
the owner hired me. And I said, look
I can't sit down with both of them together and expect anything good to come of it because they're so mad.
(07:44):
But I could work with them separately and see if
then it makes sense to bring them together.
So I did that and they were both lovely sensitive men,
very different from each other. They were telling very toxic stories about the other person.
What it meant that that person thought about them,
et cetera.
So I did exactly what I just described to you (08:04):
a lot of compassionate listening.
You know how scary and hard that would have felt,
how hurtful.
And then,
but what about the other person?
And then there were different elements for both of them.
With one of them,
I did inner child work, because some of them had to do with
(08:24):
abandonment issues when he was little. I'm not a therapist but I could
look at that with him.
So then we did a series bringing them together and they realized how they were missing each other with the communication,
and that they weren't hostile and nasty people. They absolutely worked it out.
They bought the business.
(08:46):
I actually have only just stopped working with them because we did periodic tuneups.
And now they ask themselves, what would Lorraine do?
And they don't need me anymore.
But they really found
bro love and they're supporting each other so well in this business and recognizing each other's strengths. It's changed the environment for the 12 people that work there.
(09:09):
And how much fun is that?
I'm gonna ask a question about gaslighting.
I get into these conversations with my kids.
I'm the person with no boundaries.
So I'm always looking at what is this other person thinking and trying to figure out what I'm doing that's affecting them.
(09:31):
And my kids are like,
why do you always need to find this perspective of the other person?
Why can't your perspective just be ok?
Mom,
maybe this other person is gaslighting you or maybe you're gaslighting yourself.
So how do you deal with somebody else telling you that your perspective isn't correct?
And I know
(09:51):
there's layers of understanding that together builds up the truth.
But how do you do that balancing act in this storytelling to validate a person's experience and perspective and also deal with elements of gaslighting?
Yeah.
Well,
there's a couple things here,
one is recognizing another person's story doesn't make your story wrong.
(10:14):
It just helps you understand where they're coming from.
So perhaps you can find a way forward together that honors both your stories and looks at the pieces that both of you are missing.
So I don't see it as either or around the stories.
I mean,
I can completely listen and understand someone's stories and it doesn't mean I can't have boundaries,
(10:36):
or tell them, no,
that's not how it's gonna be.
So that's one thing.
And then I always say that most people in conflict, or even bullies,
they're not malicious,
they don't realize the impact that their words and actions have on other people.
And then there's a whole other category of people who are malicious,
who are hot and sometimes I can find distant compassion for them because of their experiences that led them there.
(11:04):
But gaslighting,
the essence of it from my perspective is telling someone they're nuts and that their story is wrong. Hoonoring two stories is never doing that.
Mhm Got it.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
You have written really beautifully about culture in the workplace.
(11:25):
So in your work,
how have you found that cultural differences affect how we perceive and work with each other?
You've talked a bit about inner child, and your past with relationships with people.
But there's also those layers of how you were taught to understand and,
and how you were taught to understand what truth is.
(11:45):
Yes,
the interest of mine that even predates my involvement with the conflict transformation field was diversity,
equity and inclusion.
It wasn't called that when I started!
It was unlearning racism, and then just diversity, and then it's expanded, rightly so.
(12:06):
When I taught a 12 week program for professional development around conflict transformation,
one of the weeks was about culture, conflict, and bias.
And the reason I do it is because conflict, in my opinion, is mostly caused by misunderstandings, by assumptions, by the battle of the stories,
(12:29):
all those kinds of things.
And when you look at implicit bias, racism, cultural differences,
cultural communication,
there's so many opportunities to misunderstand, to make assumptions.
There's these basic elements of culture about time and space and the degree of formality,
(12:50):
all these kinds of things.
So I teach that to people. Or if I'm coaching with them,
we look at it,
there is some misunderstandings happening because of culture.
And one of the examples I'd like to use of this,
it's from when I was a teacher.
I taught English as a second language.
My students were from all over the world, from so many cultures.
(13:11):
And they taught me a lot.
One time I was starting a class,
I was already in full teaching mode and a student -- late -- knocked on the door,
came in and said,
good morning.
And I thought, how rude! Because in American culture,
if you come in late,
you're supposed to come in really quietly,
(13:33):
just kind of look to see what page they're on.
And
I thought it was rude. And then I had another student do it.
And I thought,
wait a minute,
I know enough about this to know there's something going on culturally.
So I asked my students and many of them came from places where you could not come into the classroom late unless you checked in with the teacher and got permission.
(13:57):
And so they were being exquisitely polite.
They weren't rude at all!
But it was a completely different rule about what courteous behavior was.
And there's a million examples of that.
So when people understand and they know that,
they think to themselves,
is this a difference or is this,
(14:17):
is this rudeness, or is this a cultural difference?
One more really important one is about social distance.
We don't know,
usually unless you've studied this stuff, that different cultures have different optimal social distances.
So probably the closest is Arabic where you're inhaling each other's breath, and the most distant is maybe Japanese or northern cold Europe.
(14:43):
So I ran into this myself because I'm Jewish American and Jews tend to be more on the closer end than most of the people whose ancestors were from Northern Europe that I was around.
And so I would be called pushy because I was getting too close.
And then in other cultures,
for example,
Arabic culture thinks that some of the Europeans are very cold because they stand so far away.
(15:08):
And we don't realize that we're making these assumptions about people that they're rude,
that they're cold, because we don't understand that we learn without even realizing it what the right distance to stand from someone is.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Or whether you should do a handshake or all these other things.
Right.
Is it ok for a woman to shake a man's hand and vice versa?
(15:31):
Right.
Yeah.
So there's all these cultural differences.
Now,
then when you get to prejudice and racism,
again, a lot of it is unconscious stories.
You cannot live in the United States of America,
and not absorb sexism and racism,
et cetera.
I mean,
I'm a woman and a Jew and a lesbian and I have prejudices against
(15:53):
people of color,
but I also have prejudices against women and lesbians because you can't help absorbing it.
But if you don't know it's there,
then you're treating people differently based on assumptions you're making about who they are based on stereotypes.
For example,
(16:14):
Jews and Italians and sometimes Black people are more expressive and louder than some of the white people from Northern Europe. People make all these assumptions.
So,
understanding about these differences,
understanding about our own biases that we all have, gives us more room to interact with people as people, and change the story.
(16:38):
You're telling another way in your writing that's come up.
I'm just gonna read this.
What you wrote is, "In my Jewish American family the entire time I was growing up,
(17:00):
probably none of us ever finished a sentence before someone else slid in a comment or exclamation.
It was just our way of communicating, of showing we were engaged in the conversation."
This is interesting to me because I'm the same way. I will interject frequently, and
I have to actually almost sit on my hands to prevent myself from interrupting you as you're talking.
(17:23):
Oh,
this, really?
What about this other thing?
I really have to withhold and suppress my urge to do that.
And so I'm so envious of your upbringing because you did this and it was ok.
I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about this experience and how that essentially cultural experience of yours has played out in your working relationships,
(17:50):
both for good and bad or indifferent.
Yeah.
It was wonderful for me to come across the term layered communication.
That's one of the things it's called because I was told,
I interrupted all the time,
after I left home,
outside of the family, and that I was being rude.
There's such differences. I've seen families
(18:13):
on TV,
or whatever,
where everybody's talking about this.
What did I see recently,
that was so funny?
It was about the end of the world
[the 2021 movie, How It Ends]
And so these two friends,
they're talking at the same time saying things, not letting each other finish, and everything.
And at the end they say, such a great conversation.
(18:33):
I feel like we cleared everything up and I understand it all.
And I laughed so hard because it was sort of an extreme example of that.
[movie clip starts] It's not,
it's sorry,
sorry.
Ok.
Is it just that sorry you go?
I feel like you weren't really listening to me when I was trying to explain to you what you are worth,
(18:56):
but you wanted something different for yourself.
I was like a lesser version of myself at the word.
And so when I saw you just letting yourself be to this for a second,
I want that you also sort of abandoned that abandonment was part of it like a dude and then she was the friend and you're so it isn't fair.
(19:21):
And that is why I feel like I need you to recognize how I was developing psychically,
which you didn't really pay attention to that that I was trying to use for your benefit.
And today I see it and that makes a lot of sense.
I like,
I actually feel so heard.
(19:42):
I thank you for hearing me.
Wow. [Movie clip ends]
So I had to train myself to not do what some cultures think of as interrupting and I still do sometimes.
I have a great story about this.
I was working on a project presentation to try to get funding for a diversity project at the college i was at,
(20:07):
with a colleague of mine who was a Nuyorican, a Puerto Rican from New York.
And her assistant, from a Northern European background,
was there to take notes.
My colleague and I,
neither one of us got to finish a sentence.
We're going,
oh yeah,
we could that, we could do this,
we could do that!
(20:27):
And her assistant looked at us like
she was at a tennis match.
She was so confused, because to her,
it seemed like we were having an argument.
It was the only context she had for that level of interruption.
And yet at the end we said, wonderful!
Ok,
we got it!
(20:48):
It's just a funny example of these cultural differences.
She didn't have a clue of what we were doing.
To take that experience, as well as your work in diversity, equity,
inclusion and belonging spaces...
I'm gonna say something that's probably not gonna come across very well.
I'll say it anyway,
As a white woman,
(21:09):
I'll fully own this,
I'm a white woman from a privileged background;
I am really frustrated with DEI initiatives, because I feel that the way many of them are implemented is (21:13):
you women,
you Blacks, you Hispanics,
you guys need to carry the water on this, and we white men are just gonna kind of sit by and watch. And I get really frustrated by this, and frustrated by who's doing the work to implement these new ways of essentially conflict management in the workplace.
(21:41):
But it's like our problem as the "non people in power" to solve this and the people in power,
I feel like they're letting it happen but they aren't participating, is the feeling I get.
From the role that you have,
when you're working on conflict transformation,
how do you get people to own that everyone needs to do the work? That it shouldn't always be those less privileged or those that aren't,
(22:13):
you know,
the major power holders
that have to train everybody else
in how to deal with conflict in the workplace.
How do you,
how do you do that?
Well,
I absolutely agree with you that it can't be the target people doing the work because
they, we get exhausted and it doesn't really change anything in the long run, or not enough,
(22:36):
I guess I would say.
I think there's two aspects to this. One is that if the people in power really don't wanna change,
they're just gonna give lip service to it and nothing happens, and it's very frustrating because they don't really wanna see this change.
But for it to work,
it has to involve everyone,
everyone calling ourselves and each other on our bleep.
(22:59):
One way is to talk about what it costs.
If you don't deal with conflict,
if you don't deal with diversity,
equity,
inclusion and belonging issues,
it does affect the bottom line.
You get a nice representative group and then you don't treat them well.
So they leave.
So then you have to hire more, and then you get sued and then,
(23:20):
you know.
So, I think that people
who don't have a burning desire in their hearts for justice.
If you explain to them how it's,
it's negatively impacting their bottom line,
they're more likely to be willing to change, because
then it becomes enlightened self-interest.
(23:42):
I don't claim to represent all the perspectives on this and how change happens at all.
I do think that people are so afraid of making mistake and being wrong that they don't want to take any risks.
They just wanna hide under a table.
And so part of the work is saying,
hey,
we're all in this together.
(24:03):
We're all gonna mess up.
We,
none of us understand everything about this.
We all have hidden or overt biases.
So we have to be patient and kind with each other, and get mad, and then be patient and kind again.
And it,
it makes a huge difference.
I wrote a blog post called
Feedback, Hot Buttons, and White Fragility.
(24:26):
White fragility is from a book by Robin DiAngelo.
It's about how white people can,
we can be so
"Oh my God!"
"You're accusing me!"
A lot of it is about,
no,
I'm not calling you racist.
I'm saying what you did had the impact of being racist.
Let's look at it.
You can change this.
It's behavior.
(24:46):
It's not like you're an evil person.
And you know,
it's funny. As a Jewish lesbian,
I've definitely experienced discrimination and as a white middle class person,
I've had a lot of privilege, and so I can see both sides of it.
I've been in that place where I felt like,
oh, my God
I blew it.
(25:07):
I can't stand,
you know,
that kind of feeling.
And I've been in the place of, "What did they just say?"
I think part of it is,
it sounds funny, but there's some gentleness to being humans together.
Knowing we're gonna mess up. Knowing that we're gonna make lots of mistakes. And being willing to do the work because it's gonna be better for all of us.
(25:43):
Yeah.
And then we get into those conversations of, again, from people in power, is this really going to be better for us?
Because now the place I have a job, is threatened by somebody else who doesn't have access to the privilege I do.
The college that I worked at,
I was hired to strengthen and expand the English as a second language program to help the immigrants who were going there.
(26:08):
And the truth was, they didn't even wanna give me classroom space after hiring me because they did not want anything to change.
They knew on some level they had unearned privilege and they did not want to lose it and they didn't care about anything else.
It's one of those really tough issues when you're dealing with conflict. You run into this all the time (26:25):
how do you deal with conflict and power imbalance at the same time?
Because in many ways,
conflict can arise because of perceived and actual power imbalance.
(26:48):
I set the rules here.
You need to follow my rules.
Or,
that person set the rules and they don't fit me, and I don't feel like following them anymore. Or, I don't understand what the rules are in this situation, so I'm not gonna speak up.
I feel uncomfortable here and I'm going to leave.
One of the things that I'm thinking about with,
(27:08):
with conflict transformation is exposing these invisible rules in the workplace,
and making them visible. Having people not only articulate the rules, but also think about are these really the rules we should be using in the workplace.
(27:29):
And, from that diversity,
equity, inclusion and belonging perspective,
can we work together to figure out what that rule set should be in our workplace?
One of the things I work on right now is,
is really thinking through with start up companies,
what are our values and principles?
What are those explicit rules that we're going to create together and then embed in how we do our work,
(27:57):
everything from how we have conversations to what tools we use and how we do strategic planning,
everything has to reflect and the product itself has to reflect those principles and values.
So I'm wondering how you,
from your perspective in conflict transformation,
how do you explore invisible rules?
(28:20):
And what does that look like?
First,
I wanna say that one of the things to do is to look at it.
It's exactly,
I think what I said about story and assumptions is looking at the unspoken rules.
It's not usually the spoken rules so much as
it's the unspoken rules.
What are they?
And are they,
are they serving us?
(28:41):
Are these the rules we really want to have?
I do think that what makes a good manager is shifting.
There's still a lot of managers around who follow old style rules,
Good managers have to set some rules,
(29:02):
but they also listen to people,
listen to what they need and how they can best work.
I think it takes some resiliency and openness to look at,
"How's that working for you?"
"Is this role really helpful?"
When you were saying that I was thinking about looking professional,
(29:24):
the whole thing about hair,
which is,
oh my God,
it's just such an conversation with my kids too.
What does looking professional mean, Mom?
So, for example,
any woman who was Black who,
who didn't use horrible toxic chemicals on her hair to straighten it,
who wore some kind of more natural hairdo, was considered unprofessional.
(29:48):
And now a lot of people,
Black women and others are challenging that:
Let's make it more inclusive, what it means to look professional.
I also have done some work around transgender issues
and the kinds of biases transgender people experience.
And I saw this clip about transgender people in the workplace and there was this one person
(30:13):
with hair, about my length and a little beard and a necklace and women's clothes.
I'm just looking at them and I felt uncomfortable. And of course, they were perfectly professional.
It was just outside the gender norms that I'm used to.
And so there's the,
there's the idea of, can I set aside these biases and prejudices?
(30:37):
One of the things that I say to people all the time is, there's a creative aspect to conflict.
There's this bad interpersonal conflict,
but then there's this creative tension where there's a shared goal.
But people have very different ideas about how to get there.
And if you have a lot more diversity in the smart people you're including,
(30:59):
you're gonna get much more robust and creative problem solving than you would otherwise.
And companies need all the edge they can get.
I'm 100% with you.
And, one of the challenges when you have diversity and you're really striving for including multiple perspectives in your workforce
(31:20):
is that it takes more time. So much of what we hear over and over and over again in the United States is we gotta be fast we gotta be fast.
We gotta do this fast,
grow,
grow,
grow,
grow,
grow.
And you can't do stuff quickly,
if you're trying to incorporate multiple perspectives into where you're heading.
And,
and I think that's part of the conflict.
(31:42):
I understand what you're saying about that,
but I think that's a false story.
When you think about,
OK,
we're gonna do things quickly.
We're not going to pay attention to any of these things.
And then what happens?
People leave you?
They're in conflict with each other.
They're not contributing because they're keeping their heads down.
They're looking for an exit strategy,
(32:03):
all those things.
I think it's where you put in the time.
Are you willing to put it in now or are you gonna put it in later when you're trying to clean up the mess that you made by that point?
Excellent.
Thank you for making that point.
That's excellent.
So, kind of going sideways a little bit.
We've talked about invisible rules.
(32:23):
We've talked about articulating those invisible or unspoken rules.
You've also talked about transgender people.
One of the things that we like to do as humans is put stuff into bins,
right?
We like to categorize stuff.
And so, just using this lens of gender,
(32:45):
many people like to categorize gender on a binary,
male or female. Pick one and stick with it, right?
And people are reluctant to explore or accept that there is a,
a continuum of gender,
there's a continuum of race,
ethnicity,
there's a continuum of all kinds of stuff in this world.
(33:07):
But people like to have stuff in categories,
not every culture,
but I'm gonna say the dominant culture in the US prefers to have stuff in categories.
And so in conflict transformation,
how do you deal with continuum and fluidity,
let's say from the point of view of gender.
Somebody who is gender fluid,
(33:29):
who may one day come in and present as female,
another day may come in and present as male, and may actually use different pronouns depending on the day. When you're thinking about conflict transformation...
I mean,
I'm imagining, just like the story you told at the very beginning,
there isn't a single answer,
(33:50):
right?
You really have to work on this and embed conflict transformation into how you do your work.
And so part of your job is to train people in doing that and realizing that you never fully solve a problem. That you are continuously kind of asymptotically coming to a resolution.
(34:10):
And then there will be something else that comes up.
I have a very simple goal for the class,
which is to change their hearts, minds, and behavior.
Simple but not easy.
Because as far as I'm concerned,
90% of conflict is internal.
It's all about what's being triggered in us,
what we're feeling,
(34:31):
what we're thinking,
the story we're telling,
et cetera.
So a lot of the work I do, whether I'm teaching or I'm coaching, is internal.
Many people want things in simple categories.
Why?
It makes them feel safe, because then they don't have to think.
It's just,
that's the way it is.
(34:51):
And I don't think, would I like to wear a ribbon in my hair one day?
It's fear is at the heart of it,
To me it's at the heart of hate.
It's at the heart of bias, a lot of it anyway.
Not all of it.
So it's fear. Part of my goal in my classes and with my clients is to help people feel safe first.
(35:14):
You're gonna be ok.
It's gonna be ok.
You're gonna be ok.
It's all right to open the door just a little bit and look at this stuff.
It's not so scary.
That kind of gentleness goes a long way.
People need to be able to express their fears,
express their feelings.
(35:35):
But the more you can go deeper with it and realize, "they can't look like that!"
You know,
it's asking,
why can't they look like that?
What does that mean for you?
What's so scary about it?
What's it harming?
It's like the people who didn't want same sex partners to get married, and claimed it was harming their marriage.
(35:59):
How is me marrying the woman I love harming someone else's marriage?
It's not. It's just scaring them.
724,00:36:04,540 --> 00:36:32,580 Leaders have to make a true commitment to educating themselves, to sticking up for people, to explaining to everyone why we need to do this, if we're gonna grow and flourish.
(36:32):
I tried to change that college from my small position.
I did a lot of things to try to point things out, to bring in trainers, to do all of that.
And it made me a target for wrath.
Eventually, I had to leave.
There's one other thing I wanted to say about this, that I do specifically in my training around bullying and mobbing,
(37:00):
which is,
some people are the bully,
some people are the targets.
Most people are bystanders,
they witness this and feel uncomfortable but they don't know what to do.
So part of it is training people -- and this works for bias and racism issues and all kinds of prejudices as well --
to train them to be upstanders.
(37:24):
When you feel uncomfortable.
this is wrong,
but you don't have a clue what to do.
So there's practical things you can do.
Sometimes it's as simple as going and standing next to the person. So they're not getting the wrath.
Or someone interrupts them in a meeting.
You say I don't think so and so finished, and hand them back the microphone.
When people learn that there's,
(37:44):
there's actual simple actions they can take to be allies, to look at their own stuff,
but also stand up and feel supported for standing up for others,
it can really change the environment.
It doesn't make it perfect,
but it does make it a place where people feel more included,
(38:04):
where they feel like they belong better as a person who has been marginalized for any number of different reasons.
How do you find the sustenance to do your work?
You just talked about,
how you've had to leave sometimes.
So what keeps bringing you back to this?
(38:25):
Yeah.
I've written so many blogs.
I wrote a blog post called Healing Old Hatreds.
And it was about an experience of anti-semitism I had at a business networking meeting.
Someone stood up in that meeting, and was describing how he got started in his field,
which was construction.
(38:45):
And he used a pejorative term about Jews in his introduction.
It was about trying to get things cheaper.
And I had actually never heard someone use that before.
I read it.
I felt like I've been stabbed through the heart. It was so uncomfortable! And I thought, I've got to talk to him.
(39:09):
But what the hell do I say?
How do I do it?
So I went up to him afterwards.
I said,
you know what you said,
really felt awful to me.
It really hurt.
And he said,
I know,
I'm so sorry.
It just slipped out and I,
I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
And I said,
well,
you probably hear that kind of language on the construction sites all the time.
(39:30):
He said,
yeah,
all the time.
I don't really know what to do about it.
Well, I know what you could do.
The next time you hear someone say something like that,
tell them to stop,
tell them that it's wrong.
And he said,
yeah,
and I could tell them what happened to me.
And I said,
right?
I felt so proud of myself afterward because instead of just calling him a bigot,
(39:55):
I actually turned it into a teaching moment and I really felt it,
I felt that it was ignorance.
It wasn't malice on his part.
And so that changed him, and it gave me strength too. And then I got to write a blog post about it.
There you go.
(40:16):
Listening to what you're saying and thinking about again,
the topic of this series of podcasts is interruption.
And part of what you're doing, really, is interrupting the way people interact with each other,
right?
Your story just then is saying,
hey,
(40:36):
here's how you can stop,
you can be part of stopping or interrupting this kind of interaction.
And the same thing I think in,
in conflict transformation more generally, is this idea of,
how do we tell stories,
but also interrupt our own internal story,
right?
By stopping,
(40:57):
taking that breath and listening to some other stories.
I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about your perspective on interruption,
how you think about or define it, and how you think it's valuable in conflict transformation.
It's so funny because interruption,
there's a thing of us interrupting each other and what people think of that and everything, and then absolutely wanting to interrupt the inner thinking as you said,
(41:25):
interrupt the status quo for conflict to be resolved successfully.
The worn out tracks, the neural superhighways in our brains, need to be interrupted when you start to realize there's different ways of doing things.
It's like a little tiny animal track in the world.
(41:46):
But then if you practice, it becomes more of a path and you don't have to follow that worn out way of doing things,
interrupting your thinking,
interrupting the story you're telling,
interrupting,
beating yourself up about something or,
or vilifying someone else.
(42:06):
I hadn't thought of it in that way before,
but really a lot of it is about interrupting what is and,
and aiming for what could be.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I love how you put that, aiming for what could be.
You've talked about diversity,
equity,
inclusion and belonging.
You've talked about your experience in your career,
(42:26):
moving from different ways of working in that space and what that space has been called.
Could you reflect on how culture and diversity and inclusion play together in conflict transformation space?
Well,
the culture itself has so many different levels.
You know,
they talk about company culture,
which has to do with the unspoken rules and the way things are done.
(42:49):
And culture, it's so rich.
Different people from different countries have different cultures.
But there's also culture that relates to class, culture that relates to gender, culture that relates to living in small towns versus cities,
culture that relates to the part of the country.
And really,
(43:11):
when we assume everybody's just like us,
we're missing about 90% of what's going on.
Becoming curious instead of assuming is a a big part of how to listen better,
deal with conflict differently.
(43:32):
It's so interesting.
There's this concept I learned in linguistics,
which is idiolect.
We each have our own language.
We all use words differently.
You know,
what's our preferred way to express something?
The more we're aware of this richness and difference, and the more curious we could be about it,
(43:57):
then the less likely we are to make assumptions about what something means from that person's perspective.
And I think then, that also paves the way to being more inclusive because you are asking those questions.
You aren't assuming somebody is just like you,
you're saying,
well,
here's another human.
(44:18):
What are the ways I can interact with this person today and realize that that might change tomorrow?
Because as you know,
the famous line from The Christmas Carol is, it depends on what you had for breakfast.
How can we take what you've done in conflict transformation away from this conversation and start applying it in our own lives?
(44:39):
I think breathing is a good start rather than reacting.
I have one more little story.
I was working with these two men.
One was an employee of the other and they were having serious communication problems.
One of them felt like the other one would run roughshod over him.
And so I was sitting there with both of them.
(45:01):
The one man who was the employee said something,
and the other man was like, I don't understand.
Can you explain it to me?
I put my hand up in the stop gesture and I said,
let's take a breath.
And so they paused and then,
the employee said,
this is what I'm talking about.
That's hard for me.
And the other guy got it in that moment.
(45:22):
It's the most beautiful example of interruption I can think of.
You know,
slowing it down,
being curious,
loving yourself and loving them.
When I redid my website, it took me a long time because I was afraid to talk about love.
(45:43):
I was reaching out to corporations,
but it's really about love and compassion.
If we don't assume that they're our enemy,
if we assume that we're not understanding them,
then we can act differently,
gather information, understand more.
So many times beautiful healing happens from that. We have to go through our feelings of being heard or mad or whatever.
(46:08):
I would never tell people not to have those feelings,
but then say, OK,
what else,
what else could be going on?
And as Byron Katie says,
(I use some of her questions)
You tell yourself a story and you say,
is it true?
How do you know? What's your evidence?
(46:29):
That's another good way
of slowing down and then being clear,
you can have boundaries too.
It really makes a difference.
Yeah,
I've been working a lot in certain spaces where a lot of the response to fixing problems is,
well,
we need to provide more training to the people who are having problems.
(46:49):
And this comes back to my comment from earlier about embedded power structures.
The training is great. But if that person goes back into the embedded power structure that doesn't respond, reflect,
or incorporate the training into itself,
training doesn't do any good.
And so people are like,
oh,
we've got all these mentoring programs.
It's that, and the next thing, why aren't we able to recruit and retain the talent pool here?
(47:10):
And it's because that,
that kind of inherent infrastructure is still there.
One of the challenges I'm sure that you run into is how do you get actual change in those power structures?
And if you can find, to your point,
leaders who are willing to engage and open cracks in an infrastructure,
(47:32):
call out bias and conflict when they see it, and work to create that culture is the way we can do it.
I guess I get,
I get so frustrated and sometimes I'm just like,
errgggh,
get out the TNT with Wiley Coyote,
let's move on.
That is an answer, but probably not the most effective answer, to trying to get to a place where we actually do conflict transformation.
(48:00):
We talked about people who to keep things simple in categories. And one aspect of that, is it's easier to scapegoat someone.
And so say they're the problem, rather than look at all the complex ways that people are interacting, that's dysfunctional, really.
And it can feel impossible to change it.
(48:23):
But
it is possible.
It's always possible.
There's a lot of companies who have not made that commitment,
but there's more that have than in the past.
And so I think it's a matter of ... for people like us doing this work with expectations.
(48:43):
I've known this since I was a teacher, that what I'm really doing is planting seeds. I'm not gonna see all the plants grow,
I'm not gonna see it all.
I've been able to transform people's relationship with their work,
which is amazing and miraculous.
And there are leaders who have changed and
(49:04):
started doing things differently because of what they've learned about conflict transformation.
It's like you're having to live in hope and plant seeds and do what we can and take the small victories.
Arundhati Roy said,
"What a better world is possible when I'm still,
(49:27):
I can feel her breathing."
Mmm. Nice.
Nice.
Lorraine,
thank you so much for a fun and insightful conversation.
Your work, it's transformational and
it's exhausting and it's exciting.
There's so many different feelings that I'm sure you've experienced going through the work that you do and I just want to thank you for doing it.
(49:52):
Oh,
thank you so much.
And if people would like to read my blog or sign up for my newsletter or get more information about me and my services,
you can find me at ConflictRemedy.com.
Awesome.
Thanks,
Lorraine.
Thank you.
Bye bye.
Thank you for joining us! For more about We Interrupt,
(50:15):
please see our website at www.weinterruptthis.com for show notes, links and other episodes.
You can contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
(50:35):
I pay my respects to Elders, past and present, and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you to Emma Levinson for her artwork featured on our website.
We include a short clip from “How it Ends” a movie released in 2021 directed by Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein. Segue music is Miró by MagnusMoone, licensed from Tribe of Noise BV
(51:01):
and intro/extro music is Bartok’s "Melody with Interruptions", played by Alan Huckleberry for The University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Video Recording Project.
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The Bobby Bones Show
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