Special Event 01 Sep 2008 12:13 am
How I became a Certified Conflict Partnership Catalyst
3Jewels is proud to bring world renowned, two times Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and famed author on seminal work in Conflict Resolution, Dr. Dudley Weeks to Tucson. Dr. Weeks will be conducting his Conflict Partnership Catalyst Training . The workshop will be conducted from 6th February through 13th February. With this certification you can practice as a professional mediator .
The following is my story on how I came to work with Dr. Weeks… I offer it as a way of explaining how Dr. Weeks trainings are ** radically different ** than common negotiations or mediation trainings (which BTW charge upwards of $1,200).
It was winter/spring of 2002. Melissa, The Rev, was running the School of Sacred Ministries in Doylestown, PA. And as part of their curriculum, they had invited Dr. Dudley Weeks to come and teach techniques on mediation and conflict resolution. And he was offering a certificate program on becoming conflict resolution facilitators. The Rev said, "Why don’t you do it? You’ll be good at it!". I had my doubts… I had no idea what a conflict resolution facilitator did and how it might be different than mediation. I thought that only lawyers did that kind of stuff or PhD’s… and so was not entirely interested in it. But the facilitator part was intriguing to me.
Over the previous 7 years or so, I’d been re-discovering myself, re-embracing my Indian heritage and otherwise "embracing all parts of me". I’d done a weekend intensive initiation led by New Warrior Philadelphia – an organization of men whose mission is to empower men to missions of service – and had developed a keen interest in facilitation – the process of structured, safe, gentle, inquiry into behavioral patterns of self or of another, mainly to identify the Shadow – that which I hide, repress and deny. Identifying the shadow and unconscious behavior empowered me with choice and thus transform myself. To me that is a powerful method of embracing all parts of me to realize an authentic self.
So, I was intrigued in becoming a Conflict Resolution Facilitator. Taking time off from work was easy as I’d closed my company in November 2001 and was "unemployed". Besides The Rev believed it’d suit me.
So I signed up for the Conflict Partnership Catalyst certification training – it was scheduled for 5 days and we were required to attend an open seminar on the day before 1st day of the workshop.
That’s when I met Dudley – Melissa had told me stories that he’d shared with them (the School of Sacred Ministries) and how he, as a peace activist was captured and tortured in some country (yes on this planet!). And how he applied his principles of non-violence and engaged his torturer in a brotherly manner; inquired about his family, his health and so on. This forced the torturer to see Dudley as a human and not as some source of conflict. It changed the torturer so much that the torturer risked his life to let Dudley escape, and later paid (for letting Dudley escape) with his life.
I was not sure what kind of person he’d be… he appeared to me as self assured, fun, full of stories; he also appeared "arrogant" – clearly a projection on my part. I recall being a little arrogant in those times – probably partly covering up being unemployed, partly being shy of Teachers.
Since, I’ve come to know Dudley as a kind, gentle person who is deeply committed to teaching people to heal themselves and lift others in the process.
The open seminar was very illuminative (illuminating?); he related the story of being invited to conduct a seminar or training at a prison in one South East Asian country. And while he was there (negotiating the terms of the training, I think), one of the inmates took over an hostage – clearly a conflict situation. Of course Dudley went down to scene of conflict and that prisoner.
He stopped narration at this point and asked us how we’d open a dialog in such a conflict. Coming from the psycho-drama, analytical facilitation bent, I said, ask him "Why are you doing it?", feeling proud. I don’t recall what others had to offer as openers for dialog with a prisoner who is holding an hostage… so he continues the story and he says that he opened with, "How are we going to work through this?" (or something similar). I distinctly recall thinking, "well, how is that any better than asking to know why the prisoner was doing it…" Then he explained – the key is in the word, "we" – by making it plural, he was not only diffusing the prisoner from being the main and only object of conflict (which is typical position taken by the opposing party – the guards and prison authorities), he was also acknowledging that the prisoner was a human being such as himself and the guards and others. To me this is such a subtle thing that has many dimensions… at that point I knew, that this man had something very, very important to teach me. And I began to surrender; well… I began to seek his approval… and thats a different story.
So, we continued through the day of the seminar and then onto the workshop. In the workshop, I learned the Partnership Life Skills process that Dudley invented and pioneered . Partnership Life Skills holds several tenets – act as a dialog enabler but not offer advice, discover and build bridges between parties that are not related to the conflict, encourage discovery of individual and joint needs, allow the parties to discover joint solutions (small, doable goals), in all ensure that both parties learn how to work through conflict, learn from the current conflict and look to building a sustainable relationship. All of these are not necessarily part of typical mediations – more on this later.
He taught us the skills, set us up in various conflict scenarios (taken from his years of working on the international scene), watched us, encouraged us, and coached us. It was clear that he had spent a lot of time in preparing for the week; he had customized the entire week. It was complex setup – no two scenarios were the same, each person got at least 2 opportunities to practice being the facilitators and at least 2 opportunities to be the dominant/non-dominant parties in conflict and at least 2 opportunities to simply observe and take notes. I later learned that this was typically how he trained. It is for this reason that his workshops tend to have a maximum of 12-15 .
After running my first facilitation, I was hooked! It was awesome to see how I could use the principles of Partnership Life Skills process to set aside my prejudices and act as an objective facilitator whose only responsibility is to create a safe environment and establish a framework so that the parties in conflict can dialog with each other.
Dudley’s teachings bring the process of creating a safe environment and establishing a framework for dialog to a near science – its a step by step approach, almost like running down a check list. Of course the effectiveness of the process still lies in the skills of the facilitator and this he teaches through the mock scenarios.