AVOID THE CONSTRAINTS OF POLITENESS

If one is to be successful as a third party or facilitator of conflict (whether in a formal or informal capacity) one must not be “polite.”

That is most certainly not to suggest that a skilled third party should act in unkind ways.

In order to understand this (perhaps surprising) suggestion, we must first consider the social function of the rules of politeness to which we typically adhere.

Rules of politeness are essentially “lubricants” to our interactions. They ren­der our superficial interactions more predictable and thus more familiar and comfortable. To understand this idea intuitively, suppose that in response to hearing a colleague say “How are you doing?” I were to detail the parts of my anatomy that were currently aching from the work I did in my garden this past weekend. As is quickly apparent, the phrase “How are you doing?” is not actu­ally a question at all. Because it takes its meaning from the shared rules of politeness, it is a greeting, and, as such, it invites a response of a particular form. In order for an interaction thus initiated to flow smoothly, it is expected that I respond with something like “Fine, and how are you?”

These “lubricating” functions are important day to day, but it is these very functions that often cause problems in our attempts to be effective as facilita­tors of conflict or other forms of interaction.

Here are some examples.

For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that I am trying to assist two other people, Joe and Sue, who are experiencing a conflict.

One manifestation of politeness is that people tend to speak to those who speak to them. This may seem innocuous enough, but consider the pattern that might emerge as I work with Joe and Sue. Suppose, for example, I notice that Joe is responding to Sue exclusively from the perspective of his intellect. I might want to encourage him to convey more of his emotional perspective on the issues they are trying to explore.

If I say (some version of), “Joe, what are you feeling about the way you two are working on this issue?” The rules of politeness make it very likely that Joe will respond to me.

I then might ask a similar question of Sue, and she, again constrained by the rules of politeness, is likely to respond to me as well.

In moments of such dialog we have managed to exacerbate an aspect of the problem that we were hoping to resolve together: Joe and Sue were having some difficulty talking to each other productively, and because of my polite interventions, now they are not talking to each other at all. Instead, they are each talking to me, the third party.

What then might we do to support the ability of these two people to talk to one another?

One step forward is to frame my comment not as a question, but as a (gentle) suggestion or request. Instead of saying “Joe, what are you feeling about the way you two are working on this issue?” we are much more likely to ultimately contribute to a successful interaction by saying “Joe, please tell Sue how you are feeling about the way you two are working on this issue.” Again, by the familiar standards of day-to-day communication, this is impolite. We are not likely to talk to our friends at a dinner party in this way, but it can be of great potential benefit in this facilitated setting.

Though the approach I have just described represents a step in the right direc­tion, it is still likely to fail because it alters only the verbal dimension of the interaction. If my behavior remains constrained by my desire to be polite (and because of the expectations of Joe and Sue that I am so constrained), Joe will almost certainly speak to me even though I have asked that he speak to Sue.

The failure I am describing is generated not by the words I have spoken in my “suggestion” or “request” to Joe, but rather by certain behaviors that most of us display making it very likely that Joe will respond to me even though I have asked that he say something to Sue: another rule of politeness is that peo­ple tend to speak to those who look at them.

If my goal is to get Joe to speak to Sue, I have to do something that most would consider wildly impolite:

As I make the request of Joe, I must break eye contact with him and look directly at Sue. As I look at Sue, so will Joe (partly as a function of my influ­ence as a model, but also because, absent eye contact, it is most unlikely that he will continue to look at and speak to the back of my head). As he looks at her and hears my suggestion, he is vastly more likely to speak directly to her as I had hoped.

There is another aspect of the constraints imposed by expectations of polite­ness that is worthy of consideration here.

The constraints of politeness are often linked to control behaviors in any interaction. In our efforts to train facilitators, we describe control (informally) as “steering the bus.”

In most conflict situations, the third party or facilitator should be in control, that is, should productively manage the interaction.

That is simply because the pattern of communication that has been estab­lished by the parties to the conflict is likely to have become part of the problem. Because the pattern of communication must be changed, at least initially, it is likely to be more productive if someone new “takes the wheel.”

On more occasions than I care to remember, facilitators find it nearly impos­sible to “take the wheel” if they are constrained by politeness.

We often demonstrate this idea in a brief role-play. We simply designate one of our program participants to be the facilitator of a conversation while I play the role of (what very quickly reveals itself to be) a “difficult” participant in a conflict.

As the facilitator starts to frame the discussion, I might say (in a very gentle tone), “Pardon my interruption, but how long are we scheduled to meet in this session?”

Almost invariably, the facilitator answers.

Moments later and in the same cooperative tone, I might ask of the facilitator, “And, will you be providing some guidance if we get stuck?”

Again, the facilitator responds.

Polite people respond to questions (most particularly when they are framed in the gentle and cooperative tone that I mentioned) and thus can be led ever further from the task at hand if they are constrained by the familiar rules of politeness I have described.

When I have used this sort of role-play as a teaching device, the facilitator­in-training frequently pretends to wring my neck at some point. They often shout their frustration. Of course the process is frustrating, but most people with whom I work are simply unaware of ways to avoid the constraints we are exploring here. Their frustration mounts as they sense that I (as the difficult participant) am “driving the bus” ever further from our conflict resolution task, but they have little experience extricating themselves from what they experience as my firm hold on the interaction. That is, they have little experience being impolite.

When teaching about these techniques, I have found it helpful to frame this issue initially as a matter of focus of the efforts of the facilitator. Typically, after such a role-play, I ask whether they sense that (in my role) I am more fully invested than the other party in exploring the conflict productively. Of course, most people are aware that my attempts to control the interaction through my manipulative questions are forms of conflict avoidance.

With that, I ask about the effect that they are having on the other parties to the conflict each time they are drawn away from a productive interaction by my behavior.

In a matter of moments, people begin to notice that if, as facilitators, they are drawn to be focused on me, they are denying their attention to others. From that awareness, it is a short step to see that (in the structure I have described) being polite to me often implies being impolite to others.

I often remind my facilitators that when they think of those they hope to assist, they must remind themselves that “They are not dating.” Typically, they smile, but they understand that their behavior as conflict facilitators ought not be driven by familiar rules that can be more productively applied to other forms of interaction with which they have much more experience.