ILLUSTRATING THE USE OF REFLECTION BEFORE A NEW CONFLICT
The consultant can help Sue to create and role-play alternative ways of addressing the situation. Sue will need to practice these alternatives to gain the skills she needs to produce a different way of addressing conflict.
Sue will probably find it difficult to act in new ways, given that her current behavior has been shaped by past successes and given the reality of the politics in her company. Getting all the information on the table may mean that Sue has to give up some of her beliefs. For example, other people in the group might have information about the use of ThinkRight that suggests that focus groups are not the right way to test these market assumptions. Or, even though Sue might have the capability to take charge of this situation, the resistance she is experiencing might make it difficult for her to get the same results as would a male executive.By redesigning and practicing new responses, Sue can learn how to work with conflict more constructively in the future. Redesigns take the format of what Action
Table 22.4. Action Science Map Around Sexual Harassment in the Workplace.
| Contextual Cues | Action Strategies | Consequences | System Consequences |
| Individual Level | |||
| When sexually harrassing behavior occurs | I make a joke of it, pretend it didn’t happen, and say nothing | which guarantees that the behavior will escalate | and neither I nor the others affected by the behavior [i.e., perpetrators, managers, and learners] learn how to define limits of acceptable behavior in the workplace |
| System Level | |||
| When sexually harrassing behavior occurs | Managers and others ask victims to “just handle it,” tease and make light of it, and expect victims to confront it alone without upsetting the system | which guarantees that the behavior will escalate | and a sexually harrassing culture will be tolerated/ encouraged and victims are doubly victimized |
| The Learning Alternative | |||
| When sexually harrassing behavior occurs | Recognize that I and others are affected and ask that all concerned become involved in remedying the situation | which guarantees that the behavior that is acceptable will be publicly discussed and consensus may emerge about what is and is not acceptable | and the system will either publicly admit that it tolerates this behavior or begin to engage in explicit conversations to help both victims and perpetrators make meaning of “sexually harrassing behavior” |
Source: V.
J. Marsick and K. E. Watkins, Making learning count: Facilitating the learning organization, London: Gower, 1999.Scientists label as productive reasoning skills. Sue would be helped to lay out her position clearly, whatever that position might ultimately be and to then talk to the team about her reasoning and the actual data that support it. Sue would then ask the team what they thought of her position and if they had any information that she was missing that ought to be considered. Redesigns usually do not include saying all that is in one’s left-hand column. However, the consultant would encourage Sue to acknowledge and work through the feelings she has about the situation so that she can re-assess and re-integrate them into her view about the action she should take. This will require Sue to practice heightened selfawareness of how she is responding both in thinking ahead to the coming exchange and how she is responding in the moment when engaged in the discussion itself.
An Action Science consultant often helps people to identify signals that cause people to act defensively in a way that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that may also be self-defeating. Identifying and responding to these signals is both a rational and affective process. How one is “being” in the interaction and awareness of how emotions may be hindering reflection-in-action (Schon, 1983) during a conflict are important implications of Heron’s distinction between feeling and emotion.
Oscar Mink (in Marsick and Watkins, 1990) developed a formula to help people new to Action Science to identify their theory-in-use patterns (Exhibit 22.1). One begins by identifying the undesired consequences that one seems to produce. Patterns begin to emerge that show a person when and how he engages in behavior that produces these consequences. We would add that one needs to be attentive to what these patterns would “feel” like in interaction.
For example, it might be that he acts in a certain way only with authority figures, or when he feels he is not given choices, or when he feels judged.
By paying attention to these circumstances, a person can anticipate a likely response and change his behavior accordingly. A theory-in-use proposition for Sue, for example, might look like the following:When I am confronted with a man who makes light of my contribution, I am afraid that I will not be taken seriously as a professional; so I dig in and hold on to my position even if I was not initially wedded to it, which guarantees that I will not be taken seriously as a professional.
Exhibit 22.1. Oscar Mink's Formula for Constructing Theory-in-Use Propositions.
When___________________________ happens, I am afraid that triggering situation
__________________________ will happen, so I what I don’t want to happen which guarantees that what I do what I don’t want to happen will happen.
Source: O. Mink, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, quoted in Marsick, V. and Watkins, K. (1990) Informal and Incidental Learning in the Workplace. London: Routledge.
Theory-in-use propositions often speak to values and beliefs that are particularly significant to a person. This also means that, in conflict situations, people will find it more difficult to set these aside in their negotiations and responses.