Segment 1 - Kenneth Cloke
On this edition of The Doug Noll Show we have with us Ken Cloke. Kenneth Cloke is Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution and a mediator, arbitrator, facilitator, coach, consultant and trainer, specializing in communication, negotiation, and resolving complex multi-party disputes, including marital, divorce, family, community, grievance and workplace disputes, collective bargaining negotiations, organizational and school conflicts, sexual harassment, discrimination, and public policy disputes; and designing preventative conflict resolution systems.
The core values of peacemaking are essentially the same as the values of movements like that anti war movement, civil rights, etc. and this is where Ken’s journey began. The very first thing that touched Ken is the experience of what he was seeing happening in the deep south in terms of segregation which in the early 1960's. It became quite clear to Ken that one either stands up for what you believed in or you made a compromise that weakened your soul. It was simply a matter of bringing what he believed in which in the beginning was very unclear. In general, people should be treated fairly and respectfully but it wasn't until Ken actually worked in the Deep South (Alabama and Georgia) that he really saw what was actually happening. Very interesting journey and a must listen.
Segment 2 - Civil Discourses
In this segment, Doug and Ken discuss the causes the violence that we see and the polarization of our civil discourse. Ken believes we have several issues. First. there are substantive issues that we are divided about. Secondly, there are process issues about how we go about solving those problems. Third, there are relational and social issues. Ken gets into detail with the issues and their details.
Segment 3 - Commonality and Conversation
At the break, Doug and Ken discussed the fact that things move slowly at the global level. There's a lot of fear that people have about losing their independence, feeding their independence to people they don't trust and yet the whole concept the treat of Westphalia set up the whole idea of sovereignty is starting to fail us as a species. How do we get people to the table to talk and get along? Ken believes 2 things are important. The first is to not give up hope that something can happen because it is very easy to slip into the state that nothing can really be done. But what does happen is that you can actually achieve things by combining and talking to each other by coming up with creative new ways of handling problems. The one principal key is dialogue which leads to the question how do you create and design this and the answer is with the problem in mind becomes possible to create conversations between people that is actually constructive and that move them to a different place. Ken gets into some really great examples.
Segment 4 - Conflict Revolution
In the last segment, Doug and Ken discuss Ken's new book Conflict Revolution and how he was inspired to write it and also discussed is how we need a reboot of how we train our mediators.
Click http://wsradio.com/070915-kenneth-cloke-director-of-the-center-for-dispute-resolution/ to listen to this wonderful show.