Alan Sharland: Why conflict resolution skills may not be teachable in schools

Alan Sharland is a mediator who shares his insights into communication and conflict issues on his website.  In January, his newsletter addressed the topic of teaching conflict resolution skills to children in schools.

Every day more and more concepts, ideas, morals, values, ethics, and the like are given to teachers as responsibilities to teach our children. This could be because the modern day world leaves parents “too busy” and someone has to teach them. Or do they? Alan explains in an interview why, in this case, it is not so easy to teach communication and conflict resolution skills to children using strategies and techniques.

Q: How long have you been helping folks with communication and conflict problems?

I’ve been working in mediation since 1994, but I think I always had an interest in why it was that people sometimes fall out, even with my parents when I was younger. I think I learned from them that you can fall out with someone but it didn’t mean it had to become a ‘grudge’ or an ongoing problem.

Q: Where did you learn how to do what you do?

I became a volunteer Mediator for Camden Mediation Service in London in 1994 after doing a course called Playing with Fire with an organisation called Leap. The last day of the course was about the use of mediation and I asked the trainer where I could learn more and she pointed me to CMS, which I’d actually already seen something about in a local paper. I did a 6 day Mediator Training Course at CMS and it all started from there. I became a paid Case Worker for CMS about a year after becoming a volunteer and I also started training mediators which I found easy to get into because I’d been a teacher before I started mediating. I left that job in 1996 and went to another mediation service in Hackney, London. I then became a Mediator for the National Health Service mediating complaints made by Patients about Health Practitioners and in 1999 I moved to work for Hillingdon Community Mediation where I work now as Director. So it has basically just been practise, review, learn, practise, review, learn.
Q: You said in your January newsletter that we should NOT be teaching conflict resolution skills to children in schools. Why do you feel that way?

I’m not sure I actually think we should NOT do so, just that there are lots of aspects to conflict resolution that we as adults have not sorted out yet, and it is, I believe, often an abdication of our own responsibility to develop these skills to say ‘It should be taught in schools’. Let’s all learn mindful, effective communication and conflict resolution skills before we add it to an already overburdened school curriculum. Many schools and many teachers, just like all adults, do not always manifest effective conflict resolution practises in the way they respond to conflict and so the idea that, actually it is children who need to be taught them is a bit of a ‘denial’ on the part of adults.

I don’t do a lot of work in schools and that is often because those I have connected with in them have missed the point that conflict resolution skills are about self-awareness, not ‘techniques’ or ‘strategies’ to use on others that can be simply spoon fed to young people. I think most kids are fine, it’s adults that need to look at themselves. There are many things that go on in the world outside of schools that it is often suggested ‘should be taught in schools’ – poor sexual health, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence etc. etc. but so often it is adults that practise these things far more widely than children. I think children see the hypocrisy in this, they just aren’t often allowed to express it. Some people say ‘Children are our future’ –to which I say ‘We are our present’. Let’s deal with this now rather than dump it on our children to sort out for the future. We place so much pressure on children to ‘make a better world’. Why don’t we get on and do it ourselves now? The next time there is a ‘social outcry’ about one of the above issues, listen out for the ‘It should be taught in schools’ response. And ask ‘Why?’. And what is ‘it’ anyway?

Q: What about those children who face conflict daily because of their communication difficulties, like those with autism?

I try not to separate out different ‘groups’ that might need conflict resolution skills more than others. We all struggle with conflict and yet much of the time we manage it fantastically. We only notice conflict when it becomes destructive and that is actually because the responses to it have become destructive. Conflict is inevitable in any walk of life, in any personal circumstance as we are all different and unique. I see the work I’m involved in as helping people to acknowledge that and that conflict can be an opportunity for learning, connection and insight, even though there may be difficult feelings and experiences that run alongside it. (see more on the website and one of the newsletters about those ‘3 Cheers for Conflict’ as I call them.)

The Principles and thinking and approach described on the website are applicable to all situations of communication and conflict resolution. I worry that if we separate out groups for particularly different approaches that we return to ‘strategies and techniques’ for working with those particular people, leading, in time to a strong risk of stereotyping them and seeing them as a ‘label’ rather than an individual. My concern is in promoting self- awareness of how I am in relating to someone rather than how they are to me. I have ownership and understanding of how I am, I have neither for another person, whoever they are, however they are different to me.

Q: Would you say that the best way to "teach" effective communication and conflict resolution would be to lead by example instead of teaching specific strategies? Why? How is that better than teaching "strategies" that could be effective in multiple situations?

Much of this I have begun to discuss in the previous questions but I’m glad for the opportunity to directly answer that. I think that the idea of teaching effective communication and conflict resolution implies there are ‘good techniques’ and ‘bad techniques’ etc. We see this a lot with some interpretations of schools of thought on ‘how we should communicate’ such as NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). I’m not knocking NLP directly, just how it can be interpreted by some students of it and even some teachers and Practitioners as if it is a ‘Bible’ rather than simply an interesting collection of observations on behaviour.

What I often see is someone saying words to the effect of ‘The other person didn’t communicate in the correct way…. and so they are ‘wrong’, they are not the kind of person I want to work with’ etc. when the other person didn’t apply the ‘how to communicate’ strategies and techniques the first person has been taught. For example, they didn’t ‘adopt the correct body language’, they didn’t ‘speak from the heart’, they weren’t ‘authentic between what they said and how they were acting.’ So many ‘rules’ that have to be followed by the other person, so hard for them ever to succeed in doing so and as a result so much disconnection because one person believes they have been taught the correct ‘strategies’ for communication and the other person is ‘not as good as’ them at communicating.

The Principles described on the site are 'awarenesses' not 'strategies'. There is no suggestion that we 'should' do them just that we can develop an awareness that if we don't there can be consequences - but they are not inevitable. As an analogy, if we have a vehicle and we like to drive 'off road' we can understand that doing so can lead to damage to our tyres and suspension etc. but that doesn't mean we choose not to do it, we are just 'aware' that there are potential consequences which may or may not occur. Driving off road can be fun, and in the same way, communicating without rigidly sticking to the Principles can be fun. They are not a set of ‘commandments’ for use by Political Correctness Police. They are for me to decide and understand how I communicate, not to tell others how they ‘should’ communicate.

Through understanding the Principles, our understanding of how we communicate is enhanced so that we are less surprised if a problem arises and we are more able to resolve a misunderstanding. So they are not really strategies, as strategies and techniques, in my understanding, are meant to be consistently applied and practised, implying they will always work. I don't think we can always know what will work in communication as we are not robots. What works with me, won't work with you and vice versa, so effective communication requires a 'presence', an openness to who this unique individual is in front of me who, though I will have stereotypes about them in my head, will not fit neatly into them when I apply strategies or techniques that I have 'learned' elsewhere are meant to apply.

The Principles are not about how someone else communicates they are about raising my awareness of how I communicate, and also, if I have a difficulty communicating with someone who isn’t, in my view practising the Principles, how can I then respond to try to improve my communication?

Q: On the C & C website you shared Principle 6, "That we speak-not too often or for too long." What are these principles and where do they come from?

The Principles have emerged from what used to be called ‘ground rules’ on mediation training courses I used to work on. It became clear that calling them ‘rules’ and trying to use them as such was not really the best way to use them. They are, as described above, awarenesses of what can lead to difficulties when we communicate, a sort of ‘benchmark’ for understanding why, when communication has broken down, that might have happened. This can be done instead of resorting to ‘Communication broke down because the other person was unreasonable/stupid/racist/sexist’ etc. which doesn’t really lead to any way forward, because again it is about diagnosing what is ‘wrong’ with the other person rather than looking at how I communicated in this situation, or how they communicated and why I responded as I did.

When the focus is on ‘the other’ in any dispute situation, we render ourselves powerless as we can’t control what someone else does. It also means we are not spending time and energy looking at what we can do to support ourselves and improve our own response, we are only focused on the other person. It’s like wishing it wasn’t raining when it is. We can stand there being miserable getting wet, complaining about it, or we can do something to lessen the impact of the rain upon us, like go inside, put up an umbrella etc. The Principles help us create those self-supporting options even while the thing we are upset about is still going on.

Q: You touched on it briefly in Principle 6, but what can parents do when they find themselves talking too often (repeating themselves) or too long?

My first response to that question was ‘Listen’. When parents feel they are repeating themselves (and again, this approach applies to anyone experiencing this, not just parents), or they are told by their child they are ‘going on and on’, or they feel themselves that they are continuously talking to try to get something to happen, I would say, if you find it possible to do so, just stop and listen: To yourself. What is happening inside you when you do this? What are you wanting to happen as a result of your talking? If you are repeating yourself, why do you feel the need to do that? Is it helping you to repeat things? How is your relationship with the person you are repeating things to? How do you want it to be? What can YOU do that might help that – that doesn’t depend on them being different?

You will notice that all my questions are about the speaker’s experience of doing what they do, what they want and what they can do. And that is to help them look at what they are experiencing in themselves rather than what their experience and belief is about the other, their child in this instance. We often repeat ourselves when we think someone hasn’t heard us or is not listening to us. But are we listening to ourselves?

Also you will notice I’m asking questions and do not have a ‘strategy’ for parents about how I think they should act- Try this, try that etc. I don’t do that because I don’t know who each person is who will read this and I don’t know their child and for each situation the way forward will be unique. And it might even be different on different days and in 3 months time. The point is are we open to someone else being who they are and are we willing to look at what we are thinking and feeling first of all and how that is affecting how we communicate and respond to conflict with others, rather than make changing or controlling them our first priority? Some people may say you have to do that. My question then is ‘Does that work?’ - for you and for the situation?

As one can read from his answers, Alan’s experience has taught him that the best way to resolve conflict and miscommunication issues is to stop and reflect on how each individual is acting in a given situation. It is about personal accountability and responsibility. One person cannot change another person nor should it be attempted. Instead, one should attempt to examine how she or he is approaching the situation and how he or she can change. There is no formula that will work in every situation with every single person every single time because each time is different for different reasons. This is not something that can be taught but it can be learned through practice and patience and by example.