Conflict Engagement
What would be possible if we saw conflicts and disagreements as opportunities for a deeper relationship? Most of us have not experienced that way of being in a conflict or disagreement. Many of us have inherited an experience where conflict meant one of us was right and the other was wrong. We felt stuck or we felt numb. Some of us find ourselves in conflict and fight our way out of it. Some of us are in a conflict and immediately want to bolt from the relationship.
I feel you. Practicing a different way of being in a conflict, disagreement, or a different way to address harm has been a life-long journey of my own. It is a learning journey I am still on. However, I have learned from many teachers and I might be helpful to you as you seek to “unstuck” yourself and find that, even from this place – this hard place, stuck place, or uncertain place – there is life.
I am grateful for those who have mentored me as a conflict engagement coach and restorative practitioner…
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My Family
My ancestors and my living relatives, who have navigated life relationships with me and with each other, even when it was hard. Thank you for being my life-long teachers.
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Dr. June and Mr. Dean
Two mentors, both who challenged me to imagine and practice conflict engagement in my high school and college, through local and international community organizing and solidarity work.
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Pacifica Graduate Institute
My faculty mentors who invited me to embrace a psychological approach that knows the whole world to be fully alive and for each of us to be intimately connected.
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The Ahimsa Collective
A collective of restorative practitioners inside and outside of California prisons. They are a network of visionaries embodying a way to harm less and heal more on the hardest stuff.
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Trust for Youth and Child Leadership (India)
My first non-profit partner in India. They were willing to stay at the table with me through many conflicts: the conflicts we created and the ones we inherited as global citizens in a colonized world.
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White People for Black Lives (WP4BL)
A collective of anti-racist white organizers and activists who invited me to imagine cultural alternatives to disposability culture. My special gratitude to WP4BL co-collaborator Stacey Martino Rivera for her mentorship and introduction to the work of Miki Kashtan.
Conflict Engagement Coaching
One-to-One Coaching and Support
I love to work one-to-one with people navigating a specific conflict or building their skills across multiple conflicts in a congregational or organizational context. Conflict coaching can be one session or multiple sessions to support you in
First, identifying your needs
Second, imagining the needs present in your conflict situation
And Third, imagining intervening behaviors that can help you change the patterns you feel stuck in.
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• Religious professionals seeking peer support and professional development to engage conflict in their congregations or with staff.
• Non-profit or lay leaders seeking coaching to navigate conflict dynamics on a team, group project, coalition, or Board
• Anyone seeking a dialogue partner or coach to navigate and imagine new ways to approach what feels stuck in a family, friendship, or organizational setting
Dyads, Triads, and Small Group Engagement Processes
2-12 People
Sometimes our small groups, teams, or staff reach a point where we are ready for facilitated support. Sometimes, you are not yet in a conflict, but you are longing for some ways to navigate what feels like a relationship that is always a little “off.” Small groups can be as small as two people seeking support in navigating a conflict together or a dozen people on a team strategizing on how to address a conflict pattern. This can involve short-term interventions (such as a training or a listening circle) as well as longer-term accompaniment.
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• You and your non-profit or church Board find yourselves in the same conflict pattern over and over again, and you are seeking facilitation to help name and interrupt the pattern and find a different way to be together.
• A specific conflict between two staff members impacted the larger staff team, and there is a need for 1-1 dialogues as well as group listening circles to help process, debrief, rebuild trust, and learn from the conflict.
• You and a team member repeatedly feel disconnected from one another and can’t seem to figure out why it is hard for you two to communicate. You care about your shared work and want to improve how you work together.
• Your organization is addressing significant harm and you are seeking facilitator support in holding the people involved and impacted through a healing and accountability process.
Organizational Conflict and Restorative Culture Change
You and your organization or congregation want to do conflict differently. You are looking for a way to engage leadership as well as organizational membership in learning new skills and approaches, or you might want to build a team that helps address conflict at the peer level. This might look like a Healthy Congregation Team or a Covenantal Relationship Team in Unitarian Universalist congregations. In justice organizations, you might call this a Restorative Culture Team or Conflict Engagement Team. This offering involves designing a process tailored to your organization’s needs and goals. For larger and longer-term projects such as this, I will often bring in additional facilitators with specific skills that would support us in engaging your unique situation.
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• You want to introduce your organization and leadership to new approaches to conflict, helping them catch the vision of what is possible when all of our needs matter and inviting them to imagine how this could change the way they do organizational life.
• You and your leadership team want to look at your own conflicts and imagine a more restorative approach to conflict among you, preparing you to assess your larger organization and then roll out a new conflict engagement process with the rest of your staff.
• You are designing a conflict engagement process between you and other organizations you are in coalition with, imagining ways of addressing conflict between members of your organizations while honoring the different needs and approaches between you.
• You are recognizing the ways that cultural dynamics in your organization, through issues such as racism, sexism, ableism, etc. result in patterns of conflict, disconnection, and harm. You are seeking to weave your training and interventions related to these harms with a restorative approach.
Next Steps: How to Work With Me
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Interested in taking the next step? Fill out this form to contact me and share more about what offerings you are interested in. This is a free, 30-minute consultation to assess your needs and if I’m the right person to support you. This may also lead me to suggesting other names you can contact to find the right fit.
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After our initial conversation, we will create an agreement that guides our next steps together– whether more research is needed to draft a longer-term proposal, or whether your next step is a clear request for a specific intervention. I will create an agreement for our work, a possible outline for the journey, and a fee structure for you to decide on.
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My fees are based on a collaborative contribution model that involves you and I sharing our needs and ability to support and contribute to each other. I am grateful to my collaborator, Stacey Martino Rivera, for introducing me to this model.
Pricing
For hourly 1-1 or dyad coaching support
I charge a sliding scale of $100-$175. This is based on what you can pay.
(If you are unable to pay at this scale, I still invite you to reach out to me to explore possible alternative ways to contribute to each other that are non-monetary.)
For Small Group and Organizational Projects
I will craft a proposal with fees specific to your needs and requests. This will also include a sliding scale that varies based on your organization’s ability to pay. I am also open to arrangements of trade and non-monetary support to one another to make this doable for you and your organization.