3 Powerful Conflict-Resolution Strategies From an Anti-terrorism Leader

Aldo Civico & Bill Carmody
Inc magazine
March 2016

conflict resolution

No matter how intense the conflict is in your life and business, chances are it's relatively small in comparison to what Aldo Civico has been through. He began his career fighting the mafia in Italy (his own country), then facilitated ceasefire talks between the guerrillas and the government of Columbia, which led him to work in several countries from Mexico to Haiti to the Middle East and Syria.

Mr. Civico has been in the middle of some serious antiterrorist action over his career and now teaches at Rutgers University and Columbia University. I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Civico and asked him to share the most critical lessons he's learned that would be applicable to entrepreneurs and these are the top three insights he shared.

1) Deploy the Power of Listening. The biggest mistake most people make when facing conflict is that they are so focused on what they want to say that they fail to hear the needs of the person they are in conflict with. In Mr. Civico's own words, "When you listen you connect with the other person. Listening elicits the model of the world by which the other operates. It facilitates understanding the needs, fears, desires of the other. It also helps you to get a different perspective about your own perception. It gets you out of your head and it opens up a space of possibilities. It's the easiest concession we can make in a negotiation. Many people ask me how it's possible for me to sit down with individuals who have perpetrated violence at massive scale. The response is simple: I sit down and I listen to their stories. When I listen I'm like a treasure hunter, searching for that part of humanity to connect with and to understand the positive intention that is behind behaviors that can be also destructive. So, listening is an essential quality of leaders."

2) Take a Deep Breath and Don't React. Inevitably, there will come a point in the negotiation when you want to explode. That's the moment when you need to take a deep breath and avoid letting your emotions take over. "Instead, as William Ury says, go to the balcony," explains Mr. Civico. "Mastering your emotions is what helps you to own a situation. Step back and get the bigger picture. When you are in a reactive mode, you give up your power, you become an hostage of the other person or of the situation. Rather than reacting to a situation you have to respond. Take a walk, go running, or just look at the tip of your shoes and that will get your mind of the intense negative emotions. Negotiation is about influence, but we need to influence ourselves first."

This insight is so much easier to say and so much harder to do. When you are in the heat of the moment, your natural tendency is to allow your emotions to get the better of you. This is when you need to slow down and breathe the most. By taking the time to think though an intelligent response, you avoid making the most common mistake of reacting to the moment, an off-color comment, or the situation in general.

3) Ask Powerful Questions. Powerful questions can never be answered with a "yes" or "no" response but rather open up the art of the possible. Powerful questions demonstrate that you have accomplished #1 and #2 above. Specifically, you can only ask powerful questions if you have listened and taken the time NOT to react.

"Asking powerful questions," explains Mr. Civico, "allows you to explore possibilities, to unlock potential, to unstick a situation. The map is not the territory and by asking powerful questions we have the possibility to explore the map of the others, and also to get closer to the territory."

I asked Mr. Civico for some advise on asking powerful questions, to which he responded, "I do my best to avoid asking why questions because it puts people on the defense and to want to justify themselves. I prefer to ask how and what because it invites to share a narrative, and to tell facts. If someone doesn't perform as agreed or expected, asking why can sound accusatory. If I ask, "What made you drop the ball?," I'm not attacking or being judgmental, but rather am interested in really understanding what's going on. It opens the space for a conversation."

And ultimately, that's how you defuse conflict--be it in business or in life. You need to create the space for a conversation and come to a mutual understanding. By listening, not reacting and asking powerful questions, you demonstrate that you're focused and dedicated to the outcome of the conflict resolution. This requires emotional intelligence to be sure, but there's no question if you go into a conflict with these three insights, you're less likely to make the most common mistakes that exacerbate, rather than resolve conflicts.

If you want to go even deeper with the principles, tools and strategies that Aldo Civico has used to work in violent conflicts and dealing with terrorists, you can upgrade your capacity to influence as leaders of innovation by going deeper with the content available via his website (especially his eBook "How to Deal with Difficult People"). He's also invited you to email him directly.

Biography

Aldo Civico is a mediator and anthropologist and the founder of the International Institute for Peace at Rutgers University. Previously, he was the director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University. Sen. George Mitchell has called Aldo, “one of the most innovative leaders in the field of conflict resolution.” He helps organizations and high-potential individuals to achieve desired results and to maximize performance by developing the skills that top mediators use to turn around complex situations and to resolve tough problems.

Aldo has been on the front line of conflict resolution and training. For the past almost 15 years, he has conducted challenging fieldwork in Colombia among members of paramilitary death quads, guerrillas, and youth gangs. From 2005 to 2007, he was one of the facilitators of the cease fire talks between the government of Colombia and the guerrilla of the National Liberation Army. In the 1990s, he was a strategic communication adviser to the anti-mafia Mayor of Palermo, Leoluca Orlando. Before coming to the United States in 2000, he worked as a freelance journalist and author of numerous TV documentaries for media in Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

Bill Carmody is the founder and CEO of Trepoint and a 22-year digital marketing veteran. His purpose in life is to be an inspirational leader who enjoys solving problems and creating breakthroughs for those brave enough.

http://www.inc.com/bill-carmody/3-powerful-conflict-resolution-strategies-from-an-anti-terrorism-leader.html

Brazilian judge trains clergy to mediate domestic disputes

Janet Tappin Coelho
RNS
April 4, 2016

RIO DE JANEIRO (RNS) A pioneering mediation program in Brazil is banking on religious leaders using their conciliatory skills to resolve conflicts between families and neighbors, while helping the judicial system reduce a massive backlog of cases overloading the country’s courts.

The “Mediar e Divino” (“To Mediate is Divine”) pilot project in the state of Goias, has started training evangelical pastors, Catholic priests and Protestant ministers on the legalities of reconciling bickering parties and settling social squabbles.

“The idea of forming a partnership between the courts and the church is unprecedented in Brazil,” said Paulo Cesar das Neves, the senior Goias judge responsible for setting up the program. 

Das Neves said the aim is to develop alternative methods of conflict resolution.

“Brazil is a highly religious society and it dawned on me that along with a mission to evangelize religious leaders also have a mission to reconcile and pacify citizens,” he said.

Every year, hundreds of community disputes end up in the courtroom. According to the Department of Justice, there are between 105 million to 200 million civil cases caught up in the national judiciary with hundreds of thousands taking anywhere between two to 10 years to reach a court hearing. In 2015 Goias state alone registered over 800,000 legal cases.

The new clergy-led mediation program, which started its second training session in late March with 21 clerical representatives, offers a simpler and cheaper arbitration route, with participants learning how to hold “conversations” in the congenial surroundings of a church hall. The goal is to eliminate the need for lawyers and draw on a culture of peaceful conciliation. 

Participants on the course have been recruited through word of mouth and on recommendation from others who believe they possess the right disposition, patience, impartiality and analytical ability.

The course, approved by the National Justice Council and run by law experts based at the Courts of Justice in the State of Goias, involves about 40 hours of legal theory and 60 hours of supervised practice including simulating conflicts. So far the pilot program is being paid for by the justice courts in Goias, but it is unclear how much it will cost the government once fully implemented or what kind of savings it might accrue.

Many of the cases being brought before clergy and lay preachers include marital issues, child custody, failure to pay child support and disputes between neighbors. These cases are typical of the disagreements progressing through Brazil’s notoriously slow judicial system, hampered by bureaucracy and red tape, and hindered by limited time and scarce resources.

Approximately 130 mediation sessions have already been held since the free, voluntary, sessions began a month ago, with 90 agreements resulting in a 70 percent conciliation success rate.

According to Pew Research Center, Brazil is among the most religious countries in the world with an estimated 123 million Roman Catholics and a growing Protestant community of 42 million people in a nation of some 200 million. It is also a country of diverse religions such as Candomble and Umbanda, syncretic polytheistic beliefs that draw on African spiritual traditions mixed with elements of Roman Catholicism.

All are represented in the training sessions said Marielza da Costa, one of the instructors on the course.

“When we started I expected to meet some resistance from those attending the training because of religious differences,” said da Costa. “The first session brought together 14 leaders from different denominations and to my surprise I came across people speaking one language and promoting one message.

“On all occasions they have performed with a united approach using their religious knowledge and legal teachings to reach a common point and social peace.”

Evangelical pastor Miguel Bernardino Viveiros, from the Senador Canedo Baptist Church in Goias, joined the second course last month and said his ministry will benefit.

“This training brings justice closer to home and will help us reach out, not just to our congregation, but to the wider community about living peaceably,” he said.

The prospect of taking the plan nationwide is already in the works. Das Neves will present the project at a national meeting of conciliators and mediators in Cuiaba, in the southern state of Mato Grosso, this month.

“We want to replicate this project and spread it throughout the whole country,” he said, “because in Brazil every town and every neighborhood has a church.”

Cintia Lopes, who lives in Aparecida de Goiania, the second largest city in Goias, said she was “thrilled” to find this type of service.

Divorced from her hairdresser husband seven years ago, she hasn’t received a penny of child support for their 8-year-old daughter.

“After he refused to make any payment, I felt forced to take him to court three years ago,” said Lopes. “The lawyer was expensive and the case dragged on for over two years before it was heard. In the meantime I had to borrow money to put food on our table.”

Her ex-husband was ordered by a judge last year to back pay a negotiated sum of thousands of dollars under Brazilian alimony law, and to contribute 33 percent of his earnings towards his child’s upkeep or face prison.

Despite the ruling, he still hasn’t paid. Reluctant to put her ex-husband behind bars, Lopes was relieved to discover a nun and a priest at the Catholic church she attends, Santa Terezinha do Menino Jesus, had just started scheduling “To Mediate is Divine” hearings.

“They set up an appointment for us to meet within a few days last month. It was so quick and no costly lawyers were involved,” said Lopes. “After an hour and a half of discussion and reasoning, my ex-husband promised to pay what was owed.”

The agreement made by the clergy is legally binding and forwarded to a judge for approval. In the case of noncompliance, the mediators can either recall the defendant or the judge can intervene.

“I really felt encouraged by the professional way it was handled,” Lopes said. “I’m now hoping he will finally start paying and prove this way of mediation really does work.”

(Janet Tappin Coelho is a correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro)


http://www.religionnews.com/2016/04/04/brazilian-judge-trains-clergy-mediate-domestic-disputes/

Religious Conflict Resolution - Slideshow

Religious Conflict Resolution: A Model for Families

Patrick L. Ryan and Michael D. Langone, Ph.D.

Research suggests that in the West hundreds of thousands of individuals join and leave cultic groups each year. Research studies also suggest that at least a sizeable minority of those who join cultic groups are adversely affected. The families of these group members, and probably many other families, tend to become concerned about their loved one's group involvement.Roughly 80% of the groups that cause concern are religious. The psychological, political, and occasionally commercial groups that aren't overtly religious often influence members' lives as though they were religions because they typically bring about a major shift in members' views of self, world, and other, i.e., a conversion experience.

During the past 25 years, most professionals who work with these families have emphasized helping them persuade their loved ones to leave cultic groups. Exit counseling, a process aimed at helping families create conditions under which their loved one will reevaluate a group involvement, has been very valuable to thousands of grateful families and group members. (Exit counseling is also often referred to as "thought reform consultation.")

Nevertheless, only a very small percentage of families are able to proceed to an exit counseling intervention. In many cases an intervention is not possible or even appropriate because the loved one's relationship to a group does not fit the typical pattern of exploitative manipulation associated with the subjects of exit counseling interventions, even though the family may have valid concerns. In other cases, the loved one may be so attached to the group (e.g., because of family ties within the group, decades of commitment, fear of adjusting to the mainstream world) that his or her departure is unlikely, even with an intervention.

Very little attention has been paid to this large majority of families for whom an exit counseling is not feasible or appropriate. Livia Bardin's book, Coping with Cult Involvement: A Handbook for Families and Friends, offers some guidance. Ms. Bardin says that a cult involvement is often "a situation to manage, not a problem to solve."

This talk will explore ways in which families can more effectively "manage" a loved one's involvement in a group that causes concern, at least in part because of the nature of the conversion that it tends to bring about. The talk will approach the situation as a family conflict over what at least overtly are religious issues. Through lecture and discussion the speakers, a counseling psychologist and an exit counselor (thought reform consultant), will examine:

• How families and group members can come to better understand and appreciate each other's perspectives on the conflict that divides them.
• How they can improve communication so as to reduce the level of conflict.
• How they can negotiate mutual behavioral changes that will reduce the level of conflict.
• How they can come to terms with the need to compromise so as to protect the love between them while respecting differences that divide them.