“Interpersonal and Fraternal Relationships and Conflict resolution

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We, as religious have interpersonal and fraternal relationship problems which are often given inadequate attention by communities. Each friar in a community has a particular and unique personality style that has been shaped by the lifetime of their experience. After you have been working together for awhile, you can find out that there are driver types and quiet folk, expressive, analytical, reserved, shy, reactive friars in our community. As the community gets into conflicts, the elements of group dynamics and personality style need to be taken into account by the superior of the community.

It is important to make, even at a surface level, some determination about yourself and how you are likely to affect the community. Ask yourself: Do I talk a lot, or very little? Am I confident about myself and my ideas? Do I listen to others well, or am I impatient having to listen to others? Am I empathetic to others or do I care mostly about getting the task done? When others speak, am I listening to what they say, or thinking about what I am going to say? Am I quick to anger? Am I defensive or accepting when someone talks about my behavior? Do I ramble or am I a bulleted list sort of person? What makes me annoyed? What makes me feel good?

One of the most common sources of conflict and angst in community is the friction between “the doers and the talkers". This dichotomy between task and process is very common and is often a source of conflict and frustration in community.  A healthy community has a balance between task and process. Think of task and process like the wings of a bird. If one wing is shorter than the other, the bird flies around in circles. If there is mostly task and little process, the frictions between people will erupt into communication problems and the resulting conflicts keep tasks from moving forward. However, when task and process are balanced, both wings are working at maximum efficiency to carry the community in the direction it wants to go. You need process to determine the direction to go and how to work together; you need task orientation to accomplish all the jobs needed.

There can be undercurrents of bad feelings in our community which don't get talked about. One technique that can bring this out is to do a feeling-circle, in which everyone in the community expresses how they are feeling. The way feeling-circles work is for members to simply state whatever is on their mind. For example, a member might say: " I'm feeling disappointed because no one else helped me work in the garden yesterday." This helps focus the group on feelings and also can define some larger issues for discussion.

Another important point that we need to keep in mind is that active listening is a skill which enhances communication. In active listening you listen carefully, then paraphrase back what you heard, with the goal of supporting and drawing out the feelings of the speaker. When this is done well it validates a persons feelings and encourages him or her to fully communicate. The goal of active listening is to help clarify the feelings and thinking behind the words. When active listening is applied it creates a supportive bond between the speaker and the listener. Because there is no threat of criticism or judgment, the speaker is encouraged to express feelings honestly.

When members get into conflicts with each other, one of the fine arts of conflict is to use triangulation to bring people to your side of the issue. The goal of triangulation is to degrade the person not present by talking negatively to third person. This kind of malicious gossip can occur very easily and spontaneously, you may not even realize what it has done. Malicious triangulation is very dysfunctional behavior and is one of the worse things that can happen in a community. Malicious gossip and character assassination undermine relationships in a huge way. They poison people’s perspectives of each other, fill voids of understanding with misinformation and deceit, and create an atmosphere of distrust, disrespect and paranoia.

Conflicts and miscommunications occur. They are part of life. Not everyone thinks, acts or responds in the same way and members come under stress at different times which causes differences in tolerance and patience. Not everyone has the same level of commitment, honesty, or even integrity. It is important to define a process that resolves problems and encourages members to talk about the issues under conflict in a controlled and reasonable way, even if those issues are intensely personal. Many people are conditioned to avoid conflict at any cost, that conflict is bad, a failure. Conflict is healthy and a normal part of any human relationship. Sometimes conflicts can't be resolved and must simply be respectfully accepted as differences. Vegetarian versus meat-eater can be such a conflict within a community.

If you ignore conflicts between individuals, it is common to find these conflicts coming into meetings as hidden agendas. Sometimes meetings become really intense, and negotiations and discussions become counterproductive. The whole meeting environment becomes too emotionally charged to reach a solution. Conflicts can be emotionally draining, and in meetings dealing with conflict can leave you feeling wrung out and exhausted.

Some conflict resolution strategies

• Learn to identify what is needed by another person and learn how to gracefully ask another person to define what they need.
• A very key question in working with conflicts is "why?” Why do you feel so strongly about this? Why are you shouting? Why do you have such angst over this issue? Why do you think that way? Learn to ask for clarification when an issue becomes a conflict.
• Having someone within the group who is trained in mediation skills, or hiring an outside trained mediator can be very useful. Having an outside opinion can do wonders for a stuck process.
• Determine whether the disagreement is over facts or the respective feelings about the facts. Ask questions to discover the underlying assumptions, values, and attitudes. Separate feelings from facts by using the phrases like: "To me", "in my opinion", "it appears to me".
• Create a special group meeting environment where members can argue, disagree, yell, cry, stomp around, get mad, hug, or whatever it takes. Part of the sense of community is feeling safe enough to let real feelings out; these kinds of expressions, as uncomfortable as they may be to some, will help the community to grow.