the nine rules of generative conflict: a manifesto
If you’re a changemaker, a social scientist, a systems strategist, a public health or philanthropic program officer, a political organizer, a nonprofit executive director – you deal in conflict all the time.
How do we stay nimble and responsive to the moment, while also protecting our programs to outlive this administration? Whose voices matter most in this decision, and how do we prioritize them against the pressures of grant reporting? Do we protect people’s jobs and livelihoods, or do we have to make a hard staffing decision for organizational longevity?
Underneath those daily questions, there’s a more pressing drumbeat:
How do we focus on the vision – the work and the dream, the worldbuilding, the promise of moral justice – when we’ve been in firefighter mode?
Here’s a manifesto for you in those moments – a nine-step guide to creating the kind of conflict that illuminates, not the kind that despairs.
the people
build the container
Start with the people in the room, and establish your norms.
What are the considerations we offer to each other and ourselves? What are the guidelines we choose to follow in this hour or day or month together? What do we need to feel safe in order to say what needs to be said?
Establish what we ARE doing, as well as what we’re NOT doing.
What are we considering, and what are we not considering? What do we need to decide, and what must wait for a different time? What’s within the scope of our authority and responsibility, and what isn’t? What maybe should be?
nourish the body
Take care of yourself and each other.
Are there snacks and water? Are restrooms accessible and available? Is the space comfortable, well lit, inviting? Establish a clear cadence of breaks, rest, joy and celebration.
Go deeper – how are we recognizing our own somatic experiences when they happen? Are we able to be responsive and resilient to our own needs, as well as each other’s? What are our standards of inclusion and accessibility?
What happens when we get too excited or too angry to speak?
Consider breaking bread together after. All work requires celebration and togetherness.
tell the stories
Once the container is set and the bodies are tended, generative conflict demands storytelling. Consider circle practices; consider narrative explorations; consider the many different ways there are to tell individual and collective stories.
What is the shape of our conflict, our problem, our question we do not yet have the answers to? What are its colors, its textures, its beliefs? Who is at the center, and who is at the margins? What are the strange behaviors that happen for reasons as yet unknown to us?
the politic
bear witness
From the people, we move to the systems.
Bearing witness is an active practice, not a passive one. Trust that people speak truth in their stories, however that truth may present. Affirm the ways in which we hold complexity. Recognize that one story’s truth does not negate another’s; remember that they coexist in their multiplicity.
In this step, we do not solve the problem. We allow it to exist as is, without jumping in, without trying to fix, without saying, “but what I meant was…”. We take note of impact, of language, of shared and differing definitions and experiences. We offer curiosity, clarifications, and collective experience.
Bear witness to joys. Bear witness to sorrows.
interrogate the systems
Now, we begin to unravel the threads behind the stories.
What are the values and beliefs behind the stories? What experiences have shaped how we each show up in the world? What hides behind the face value?
What shapes our definition of safety? Do we feel unsafe, or are we actually unsafe?
What are the ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized experiences showing up within the container?
We must always ask: how is white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy operating here, too?
map the intersections
Most of us hold privilege and oppression simultaneously.
We operate at an intersection – what we know about power from the ways in which it has been wielded against us, and from the ways in which we have benefited from wielding it against others.
Where is power operating here? Where have we turned towards power over, rather than power with? Where have we falsely believed privilege would keep us safe? When have we caused harm in that choice, and who felt the consequences of our choice?
How are we holding both in tension, simultaneously? And how can we hold ourselves and each other gently in that inventory?
When we map the intersections, we design for complexity.
the praxis
integrate the practice
Remember: asking the right questions is 90% of the work. We spend most of our time on the people and the politic because when we jump straight to practice, we solve the wrong problem. We act ineffectually. We experience unintended consequences. Sometimes, we cause harm.
So we ask all of the right questions, we explore our question and our actions – and then we look at the mess of threads before us and we begin to weave them into place.
Integration requires action. Practice demands discipline.
At this step, we turn to behavior: amends, repair, design and redesign, exploration. We try new ways of moving together. We delight in what works, and we celebrate our mistakes.
What can we explore? What can we try differently? What is something we’ve never tried before? What is something we abandoned before we gave it a chance to work?
midwife the mundane
Remember that the work is built in the smallest of gestures, not just in the grand sweeping changes. Think contract language, not just state policy change. Think the everyday phone calls, not just getting arrested at the frontlines.
Generative conflict isn’t in the blow up explosions. It’s in the day-to-day practices, in the mundane moments of care, of showing up, of trying again.
What is the smallest possible practice we can try, and how can we do it every day?
commit to care work
We start with care labor, and we end with care labor.
How are we tending to ourselves and each other in this work? How are we recommitting to the kind of conflict that generates, not the kind of conflict that implodes? What would it take to thread that commitment of care through each policy or budget or staffing choice we make?
How do we offer each other care, and how do we accept it?
Ultimately, this is a cyclical, iterative process, not just a step by step guide.
Take one step and explore it – in your strategic plans and action plans and legislative plans. Try it out in your organizations, in your social change endeavors, in your next all hands meeting or executive offsite retreat.
This is how we move to a new way of doing things – away from the kind of conflict that implodes, causing harm, stress, and destruction – and towards work that is emergent, generative, and fruitful.
Ready to practice generative conflict in your own work? The next Conflict Clinic is where we take these principles from manifesto to lived experience. Join us this month.