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Segment 2: Build Local Skills for Peace and Promote Mediation Worldwide.  MBB’s Liberian project just ended after a successful 7-year run. The intensive project brought about a higher employment rate as well as less violence among the participants. They have now established a mediation center in the Liberian camp and have been asked to come back and do some work with women in the community as well.

MBB’s mission is simple: to build local skills for peace and promote mediation worldwide. The idea is that practitioners from around the world can actually contribute to building the capacity for peace on every level. They focus on the local level with volunteers who initiate projects with an invitation from MBB. MBB puts out a call for action, collects volunteers who have the necessary skills, and then they’re off and running. Each project looks different, with different participants, different volunteers, different issues, different goals.

Prabha divides their work into two main categories: building local advocacy and promoting mediation. These projects are always in partnership with local volunteers. The goal is to find what is resilient within a particular community and use those properties to rebuild the community after a trauma.

Segment 3: Nepal, Sierra Leone, and More.  MBB also has a Nepal project going, as well as one in Sierra Leone. The organization consists almost entirely of volunteers, with many of them funding their own trips to countries in which they are assigned. Although the long-term impact is difficult to evaluate, there is reason to believe their work is having an effect, even in as short as an 18-month period. Since they work at a local level they leave a group of people who help to train others on the ground. There is a huge range of projects in which MBB has been involved.

Segment 4: A Web of Peace.  Doug believes peace begins with our neighbors. We can’t depend on political leaders or foreign diplomats or NGO. It has to happen person-to-person and face-to-face. MBB creates a web of peace, and that’s where the real change occurs. To find out more about Mediators Beyond Borders, or to get involved, please visit http://mediatorsbeyondborders.org/. They’ll put you to work if you have an interest in being an on-the-ground peacemaker.

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Arianna began her career in fundraising but quickly found that the work that she most enjoyed was more of the communications-based one-on-one work with donors. After going back to school she eventually partnered with another mediator and started a Family Law mediation business. At the time she was going through a complicated divorce herself and found the work tremendously therapeutic and healing. Her current practice consists of both coaching and mediation, but her cases are predominately mediation. Divorce is an emotional-based issue. Arianna helps her clients navigate a slippery legal slope, but she realizes the social management portion of the divorce is just as, if not more so, important than the legal aspect.

Segment 2: They Just Want to be Heard. ianna tries to humanize the situation and personalize what her clients are going through. She tells stories of similar situations, as well as her own mistakes and how she’s acknowledged them and moved forward. She also uses humor. Divorce is so difficult on an all-consuming level. She wants them to feel safe and supported when they’re in her office. It’s important to build trust right away.

Often clients are feeling a deep injustice. Their brain is telling them that they want vengeance, but in reality, they are wanting something else. They want to be heard. They want connection. They want control of their own lives. Arianna reminds people that when they go to court they end up disempowering themselves and putting their needs, wants, desires into the hands of a judge. In mediation, however, they have total control.

Segment 3: Empathic Listening. You cannot deal with emotions with logic alone. When in the middle of a conflict, don’t listen to the words; listen to the emotions. There are four levels of being an empathic listener:

1) Repeat the words

2) Paraphrase

3) Give core message

4) Label the emotion

Segment 4: The Cost of a Divorce.  It costs roughly $100,000 to get a divorce in LA County. It’s a huge waste of money. Collaborative Divorce costs about 60% of a regular divorce, and mediation is considered to cost 10% of the cost of a regular divorce. Mediation is the way to go. Additionally, Loyola and other law schools have programs where people can go to and get free advice. As a client, you need to go in knowing what needs to get done and have your homework ready (including financial data, etc.). She encourages clients to constantly do a cost-benefit analysis of their actions. Ask yourself, “How much is this day in court going to cost me? How much would mediation cost me?” To find out more about Arianna’s services, please visit www.ajmediation.com.

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Sheryl’s knowledge and study of the Restorative Justice process goes back over 20 years. As a student under Mark Umbreit, she took a workshop and knew immediately that Restorative Justice was the direction she wanted to go in. She began to incorporate restorative dialogue in her work, whether it was in her then-current career or her volunteer work. Mark took her on as a protégé and she began facilitating community mediation and witnessing reconciliation cases. Sheryl has learned that there are moments when you have to allow silence, and just trust the process.

Segment 2: Repairing the Harm.  Defining Restorative Justice is difficult, but Sheryl’s quick definition is: repairing the harm that crime or wrongdoing has created. It’s about putting the situation, the community, and the people involved in a different and better place than before the conflict occurred. There is a lot of prep work that goes into a RJ session, and a big part of the prep is managing expectations. Sheryl’s goal is to make the players on both sides aware of what they might expect in a session and the key elements that are on the table.

Segment 3: The Victim Offender Mediation Movement is Not Going Away.  Doug tells us that Fresno was the birthplace of mediation and also the birthplace of three strikes, which is a striking paradox. Sheryl’s experience with judges and prosecutors has been mostly positive regarding Restorative Justice. However, she’s currently working with a woman from Michigan who has asked to meet her offender. The victim did not know how to precede with a meeting, so she reached out to Sheryl for help. Sheryl approached the Michigan government, including the State Attorney’s office, but they rejected the idea of victim-offender contact. “No contact” between victims and offenders is very staunchly imbedded in their system. Sheryl is starting a ground roots movement to ask Michigan to change their policies and allow victim offender mediation. She believes that this type of movement is not something that is going away. It makes great economic sense and is going to become more commonplace in the future.

Segment 4: Tell Their Stories.  Southern Truth and Reconciliation (STAR) works primarily with organizations that are seeking to do some Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) projects in terms of racial violence that has occurred in some of these communities in the past. STAR partners with communities for projects and outreach programs, which speaks to Sheryl’s passion exploring the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, her first love, as an African American, is researching the Civil Rights Movement and learning how those events shaped her own life and the lives of her parents. Restorative Justice is trying to put a name to the harms that were done and a name to the reconciliation process. Sheryl’s goal with her book is to research and interview larger-than-life figures, like Andrew Young, listen to them, record their stories, and begin the healing process.

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Janine tells us that her Marquette students are very passionate about the Restorative Justice Initiative. Once she is able to get people to understand what RJ is, they fall in love with the process. Her students feel privileged to journey with a victim and find a different way to deal with harm and conflict. The RJ process changes their outlook on life and what they do after they graduate.

Janine and her colleagues also do prison work where they’ve been running a program for 15 years in a maximum security prison. They take 25 high-end offenders serving life sentences and bring them together with victims (but not the offenders’ actual victims). The two groups sit in “circles” for 3 full days, during which they go from building community in the room to having an understanding of how the crimes hurt the victims to everyone telling their stories and doing activities together. It’s a very spiritual and transformative experience for all involved.

Janine’s main take-away from this work is that everyone has the desire to be heard and understood, and that simple dialogue can transform relationships.

Segment 2: There Will Always Be Grief.  In additional to her work in prisons and Marquette’s Restorative Justice Initiative, Janine has a caseload of victim-offender dialogues that she and her coworkers facilitate. These meetings are always at the victim’s request, and the minimum prep time is at least six months. It’s a personal journey for the survivor and the offender to go back in time and process their feelings about this terrible incident. The victims decide what they want to ask and what they want to resolve. The meetings are incredibly powerful. It becomes a flow of dialogue between two individuals, and Janine does not interfere. It’s unbelievable for most of us to think that someone whose child was murdered can sit within feet of the offender. Janine stresses that there will always be grief, but often the victims find themselves in a more peaceful place and with an opportunity to move forward with greater ease.

Segment 3: The Circle.  Wardens who have sat in during the process have been impressed. They tell Janine that they notice a change in the offenders who have participated in the circle for three days. Janine looks at RJ in a broad sense: through the lens of harm, and not just crime. She and her colleagues have facilitated RJ peace circles with high school sports teams to explore un-sportsmanlike conduct, and with racial profiling cases, and with medical malpractice, and much more. The facilitators first need to just get the two sides to meet, and then reassure them that it is a safe environment meant to start a dialogue. It’s not particularly touchy-feely. Many victim advocates fear the process, as if the victims will be re-victimized. Sometimes it’s difficult to get past the advocate to see if the victim is even interested in exploring the process.

Segment 4: Lawyer to Peacemaker.  Janine’s students tell her that they practice law differently because of going through her program. There are many little victories throughout the process, and people’s lives are forever changed. Janine believes if we can improve the way we react, and lawyers can become peacemakers and problem-solvers, then the Restorative Justice Initiative’s teaching will be successful. To learn more about Janine Geske’s invaluable work, visit http://law.marquette.edu/rji/.

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Due to his training in social work, Bill had insights as to why people behave the way they do. As a lawyer he noticed that the high-conflict court cases were driven by the dynamics of personality disorders. The characteristics of these types of disorders include: all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, extreme behavior, and a preoccupation of blaming others.

Segment 2: The High Conflict Personality.  Traits and disorders are a distinction that mental health professionals use that are not significant to the average person, which is why Bill began using the term “high conflict personality.” Although HCP people can look and seem normal at times, they are much more likely to get stuck in a conflict or be triggered by the environment around them.  HCPs are preoccupied with blaming others, and they tend toward all or nothing thinking. Their solutions are extreme and unpredictable.

Segment 3: The C.A.R.S. Method.  When dealing with someone who is a High Conflict Personality, one can manage the relationship by using Bill’s CARS method. The CARS method addresses the 4 key areas of difficulty that people have when dealing with high conflict personalities.

C – Connecting. Form a positive connection with these folks (which can be counterintuitive at times).

A – Analyze. Shift away from emotions to problem-solving. “Let’s look at our options here. What do you propose?”

R – Respond calmly to inaccurate information or hostile communications by using a “BIFF” response: brief, informative, friendly and firm.

S – Set Limits. HCPs can’t stop themselves. We must let them know what the consequences of their actions will be. Educate them and let them have a choice. It’s not personal; it’s about policies, or rules, or external circumstances.

Segment 4: www.highconflictinstitute.com.  The more you think about all these steps and practice them, the easier it becomes. To learn more about Bill’s invaluable work and the High Conflict Institute, please visit http://www.highconflictinstitute.com/.

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Segment 1: Restorative Justice, Defined.  Our guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show we have the honor of speaking with Dr. Mark Umbreit, Professor and founding Director of the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota, School of Social Work. Dr. Umbreit is an internationally recognized practitioner and scholar with more than 40 years of experience as a mediator, peacemaker, trainer, teacher and researcher. Has is the author of eight books and more than 200 other publications in the fields of restorative justice, mediation, spirituality, forgiveness, and peacemaking.

Dr. Umbreit defines restorative justice as a process as one which focuses on harm done and involves the people most affected by the harm in the response. It’s about offender accountability, victim assistance and support, and community involvement. True restorative justice is a victim-centered movement. It is also rooted in deep traditional and indigenous and spiritual practices.

Segment 2: A Good Track Record.  Dr. Umbreit says the restorative justice empirical research trajectory is quite good. He has been involved with several meta-analysis with samples as large as 9,000+ that found significant reduction in crime by offenders, positive data regarding serving victims, and satisfaction with entire process. In fact, there is more empirical evidence to validate the core principles of restorative justice – particularly the dialogue practices – then there are for most of our criminal justice programs (which are not examined thoroughly).

Back in the 1980s there were zero states that had an administrative protocol that allowed victims of severe violence to meet their offenders. Now, 27 states have procedures to allow that process. Victims of severe violence have far more trauma, loss, and grief than other types of victims. They usually have the need to get answers and express their pain to the person who caused their loss.

Segment 3: Taming the Tiger of Fear and Trauma.  Restorative justice at its core is simple: it’s about treating people with respect and honoring humanity. Dr. Umbreit’s latest book, Dancing with the Energy of Conflict and Trauma: Letting Go – Finding Peace, outlines struggles with conflict and traumatic events in the form of true stories. He has been blessed to learn from a wide range of people over the years --- people who would normally be labeled as trauma sufferers or wounded --- have been his greatest teachers and heroes. Trauma shakes up your perception of life and the world. This book is about taming the tiger of fear and working with it. At the end of the book there are tools to help heal and deal with trauma.

Segment 4: The Forgiveness Agenda.  Restorative justice is an expression of a deep sense of spirituality. To say Dr. Umbreit honors the wisdom and the teachings of Jesus doesn’t cancel out the wisdom and teachings of Mohammed or Buddha. Restorative justice has affected the way he views and understands the world, how he relates to the community, the way he interacts with his wife and kids. Dr. Umbreit says incredible things can occur when we humble ourselves and be mindful of not pushing an agenda of forgiveness on others. We need to recognize that people have a right to be angry and give them time to work through the emotion instead of dismissing or denying it. To find out more about Dr. Umbreit’s important work, visit http://www.cehd.umn.edu/ssw/RJP/.

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Segment 1: Traversing Protractive Conflicts.  On this edition of The Doug Noll show we are speaking with Dr. Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, President and Managing Director of Kommon Denominator (http://kommondenominator.com/), an award-winning woman owned firm dedicated to helping government, corporate, and community clients successfully navigate conflict and cultural. Dr. Abdul-Hadi Jadallah became interested in conflict resolution when she went back to school after raising a family. Additionally, moving to the U.S. and interacting in a multi-cultural society drew her attention to many issues: how people come together, how they interact, what kind of issues they are facing.

Protractive conflicts are characterized as conflicts that are stubborn and continue to happen. Their roots are usually in communities and between different ethnic groups. Yemen is an example of a protractive conflict. It is an internal conflict, primarily ethnic-driven, about the distribution of wealth, equality, the North vs the South, and corruption. There is a lot of violence.

Segment 2: A National Dialogue.  Dr. Abdul-Hadi Jadallah was invited with other experts to go to Yemen and help begin the process of peacemaking with the goal of designing and implementing a national dialogue. They brought in an international committee and started by thinking about what was needed to build a nation on equal rights and equitable resources. What kind of model should they follow? They put together nine working groups that looked at every facet of building a nation state. They mapped the groups and invited delegates to participate. Dr. Abdul-Hadi Jadallah found that this experience proved that dialog can always facilitate difficult conversation, particularly if there are good intentions and good will.

Segment 3: A Different Paradigm.  Dr. Abdul-Hadi Jadallah teaches courses on culture conflict and diversity to Masters and PhD students. She educates the students by giving them tools to analyze conflict, identify conflict, categorize conflict, design a process, and conduct an assessment. Her students see the value of understanding conflict analysis in their day-to-day lives and in the corporate world.

It takes time and effort to resolve a problem, which is a different paradigm. It takes a lot of introspection. Even the most innocent parties of the conflict play a role. Maybe they contributed to the escalation, or were too passive, or didn’t speak up. Additionally, it’s hard for the perpetrator to actually admit they had a role in hurting the other person.

Segment 4: Create a Safe Environment.  Even though peacemaking is well-intended, it can be taxing at times, both for the mediator and the parties involved. You see parts of you in them, and they see parts of them in you, which is difficult. It’s also hard to evaluate the results, although Dr. Abdul-Hadi Jadallah stresses what an opportunity it is to be able to sit across the table from the other side and start a dialogue. At the end of the day, the conflict is not the peacemaker’s conflict. The peacemaker merely creates a safe environment and a process to begin the conversation. To find out more about Dr. Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah and Kommon Deminator, visit http://kommondenominator.com/.

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Segment 1: It’s Not All About the Fight.  Mediation is a process by which a neutral party helps people in conflict resolve their issues and move forward in peace. To speak about mediation and how it is used within the legal system we are interviewing Jan Frankel Schau, of Schau Mediation on this edition of The Doug Noll Show. Jan has over 20 years of experience as a litigator, and is also a public speaker, an author, and a mediator (http://schaumediation.com/).

Jan was always drawn to the drama and the narrative of law. Her involvement in mediation happened by accident, when she took a class for continuing education units. She soon discovered that mediation is different in the sense that it has two sides of the story, and the other side might have merit if you dig deep enough. She found with mediation that she didn’t have to be so narrow-minded or laser-focused on whomever had hired her as a lawyer. With mediation, it’s not all about the fight and the win; it’s about solving problems and moving forward.

Segment 2: A Heart Shift.  As Jan dove deeper into mediation she had what she calls a “heart shift” from fight and defend to “let’s work it out.” At that point she knew she was no longer an effective advocate, except for peace and conflict resolution. She didn’t have the fight in her belly anymore.

Lawyers who haven’t been property trained in mediation tend to cram human conflict into a narrow box of legal rights and remedies and processes and procedures, which strips away what makes people human. Mediators have an acceptance of the fact that there can be two truths. Instead of a YES BUT, it could be a YES AND. And out of those two stories emerge a new story of hope and peace.

Segment 3: Middle of the Road.  Jan’s newest book is titled View from the Middle of the Road: A Mediator’s Perspective on Life, Conflict and Human Interaction. It started as a personal self-reflection activity, and turned into a book of real stories with fictionalized characters, plus proven tools and rules for mediators and lawyers. To find out more about Jan’s book, visit http://viewfromthemiddleoftheroad.com/.

Segment 4: Plenty of Room for Peacemakers.  Unfortunately, Jan thinks mediation is a concept that hasn’t quite permeated society yet, although she is seeing more and more innovative programs developed by people with skills in negotiation and conflict resolution. The services are extremely valuable but it’s difficult to get the word out that they are available. She reminds us that it’s important to pull yourself back as a mediator and really listen to your clients. The mediator essentially has two missions: to come to an agreement, and to acknowledge the human side of the conflict. Jan believes there is plenty of room for peacemakers within the context of law. Practicing law is not the only way to help people with their law issues. Visit http://schaumediation.com/ for more information about Jan and her services.

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Segment 1: Co-Creative Intimate Relationships.  Less that 25% of couples report being at peace with each other and in their relationships. To speak about how to improve and deepen intimate relationships we are talking with Aleya Dao (www.aleyadao.com) on this edition of The Doug Noll Show. Aleya is a sound healer, energetic practitioner, and a licensed acupuncturist. She has been an alternative healer for over 20 years and has worked with many couples, helping them to foster healthy and co-creative intimate relationships.

Aleya says about 99% of her clients come to her wanting to work on some aspect of their relationship. They crave deeper levels of intimacy, connection, better communication. She thinks the greatest challenge is that we usually have an assumption that our partner is going to see and recognize our essence and love us unconditionally. Instead, after the honeymoon phase is over we often start projecting our own needs onto our partner.

Segment 2: Practice What You Intend to Master.  If we don’t feel safe, we’re not going to be honest or open or vulnerable with our partner. However, sometimes when we are being honest and open and vulnerable, the partner feels attacked, or gets defensive or shuts down, which unfortunately confirms that it’s not safe to open up, be honest or vulnerable. Additionally, we often ask the other person to help us feel safe, instead of finding a safe space inside ourselves and reflecting that back into our reality.

We do the opposite of that which we intend on mastering until we reach a certain level of consciousness and awareness and begin to practice that which we intend on mastering. We might ask ourselves, do we want to stay in the negative spin, or do we want to shift it?

1)      Think about your needs

2)      Meet that need inside yourself

3)      Watch your tone

When people start practicing this, the resentment goes way down, the safety goes way up, and the communication starts increasing because it’s okay to talk about what the needs are.

Segment 3: The Buddha Bubble.  When you are in a Buddha Bubble, realize that your partner is working on learning a spiritual lesson. Look higher at their essence and know that they might have forgotten themselves. Reflect back to when you fell in love with them. Hold vigil for your partner and allow them to go through whatever they need to go through. They are doing the opposite of what they are intending on mastering. Breathe into your belly. Imagine what it really means to be a Buddha. Hold yourself in a place of deep stillness and be a good listener.

Segment 4: Be Self-Aware, Be Present.  When talking with a partner, if you cannot reflect back from your heart with compassion and caring, the other person can detect if you’re being insincere. You can’t build trust until you come from your heart. The tone is also really reflective. Be self-aware and really present. Start small. Put a timer on the table and for 2 minutes offer to listen to your partner about his or her day, and then reflect back what they’ve said. Our challenge is to maintain a non-reactive presence. To the extent that we can place ourselves in a bubble and be non-reactive and non-critical, and come from a place of compassion, we gain great power within ourselves. We feel empowered and self-confident, which is a wonderful start to a healthy, co-creative relationship. To find out more about Aleya Dao, visit www.aleyadao.com.

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The capacity to maintain a “non-anxious” presence within a conflict may be one of your most significant capabilities. Not only can this capacity enable you to be more clear- headed about solutions and more adroit in difficult situations but, a non-anxious presence will modify anxiety throughout the entire group. This aspect of leadership can sometimes do more to resolve issues than the ability to come up with good solutions.

Do not confuse a “non-anxious presence” with the idea of staying cool under pressure. A non-anxious presence is a true state of inner calm. You are connected to your people, but detached from their swirling emotions. Peacemakers are like transformers in an electrical circuit. To the extent that they are anxious themselves, when anxiety in the peacemaking session permeates their being, it potentially comes back into the session at a higher voltage. Consequently, to the extent that they can recognize and contain their own anxiety, they function as a step-down transformer or perhaps as a circuit breaker. In this case, their presence, far from escalating conflict, actually serves to diminish its destructive effect. 

Two aspects of non-anxious presence are worth highlighting. The first is playfulness.  Anxiety’s major tone is seriousness, often an affliction in itself. It is always content- oriented. Its major antidote is playfulness, especially with those for whom you feel responsible. Your capacity to be paradoxical, challenging, earthy, sometimes crazy, and even “devilish,” often can do more to loosen knots in a peacemaking session than the most well-meaning “serious” efforts. This is not because being paradoxical affects the content in the heads of others (reverse psychology), but because the act of being playful frees others by forcing them out of their serious “games.” I have gotten up from a table in the midst of a very heated dialogue between counsel and stepped into a nearby wastebasket. I stood there until they looked up, incredulously. A fifty-year-old man dressed in a dark business suit, standing in an office wastebasket was too much for them.  I grinned at them, they laughed, and the dialogue loosened up. We take ourselves way too seriously in our conflicts and in our efforts to resolve them. This is not to say that peacemaking is not serious, difficult work. It is. But we cannot get too carried away with it. When you have to assume the mantle of peacemaker, keep the load light when you can.

The opposite of playful functioning, which is most likely to heighten the seriousness in a system, is diagnostic thinking. Diagnostic thinking tends to increase polarization, intensifies anxiety, and is the natural manifestation of anxiety. When you become over-analytical, you become anxious about you own analysis. Am I right or not? Will I solve this conflict or not? The parties will pre-consciously sense your seriousness and will misinterpret it as worry or concern.  Their anxiety will skyrocket, with the usual, predictably negative conflict behavior. 

The other aspect of “non-anxious” presence is hope. If the conflict is escalated enough for a peacemaker to intervene, the parties have probably lost any hope that it can be resolved, not to mention transformed. Maintaining a “non-anxious” presence exudes confidence in the parties that they can, together, work themselves out of the conflict. Most importantly, it gives the parties hope. With hope, they will try harder, be more engaged in the peacemaking process, be less competitive and adversarial, and ultimately find the solutions they need. They can be skeptical about outcomes and wary about the peacemaking process. As long as you provide them hope by maintaining your “non-anxious” presence, they will come through. 

Douglas E. Noll, Lawyer to Peacemaker

Creator of Negotiation Mastery for the Legal Pro

California Lawyer Magazine, California Attorney of the Year 2012