Toolbox: You’ve named it, now what?

Season 2 episode 13 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we talk about a few tools to respond when conflict is happening in a meeting. 'The sad update that we have is, at least to our knowledge, there is no fancy Magic Bullet intervention.' Show notes, links An outline of the VERA model: Validate “I understand why it seems that way…” “Yes, I can see why you think that…” “Yeah, I’ve definitely heard that it’s a struggle to get council housing, given the long waiting lists…” Explain “I like to think of it more like…” “If we look at [this fact], then…” “…but I don’t think that’s because of ‘too many migrants’ taking houses – especially as so many migrants are barred from social housing lists…” Reframe “So if we look at it from that angle…” “Which means I think…” “…I think the the real problem is decades of underfunding of social housing, meaning that there aren’t enough houses for the people who need them, and the ones that are there are often shit quality…” Ask “What do you make of that?” “…does that make sense?” Some of the other tools we mentioned: Name, frame, pause. Pro = don’t need a solution to respond with this, or even know what’s going on. Example phrase = “It feels like there’s some disagreement and heat here that’s not really being acknowledged. Is there something I’m missing here? Do you two maybe have different priorities when it comes to this topic?” Request a group pause. Pro = can use the break to reduce the heat and switch tracks to approach the conflict from a different direction Example phrase =  “I think things are getting tense here, and I don’t think I can continue to focus, could we maybe take a few mins break and come back?” Enhanced name, frame, pause — where you talk to someone else to explore a challenge and why your group isn't already dealing with the problem. Pro = dealing with thornier problems is easier with support. Some resources: Seeds for Change's guides on giving and receiving feedback and active listening A handout from Boston University about using "I statements" And finally, some perennial resources: our sister facilitation collective Navigate have a conflict facilitation booklet (from back when they were called Seeds For Change Oxford). See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources. We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe! Transcript ALI This is Resist Renew, KATHERINE the UK based podcast about social movements, SAMI what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens. ALI The hosts of the show are KATHERINE Me, Kat. SAMI Me, Sami, ALI and me, Ali. SAMI I'm recording this now, baby! ALI Shit, it's a podcast! ALI Okay, welcome back to the toolbox. In this episode, we are going to look at tools and tips for handling conflict in the moment. In all the other episodes, we've given a lot of content around frames and ideas about conflict, and some tools for preventing it or handling it outside of the moment. And now we are going to get dive right into what to do if conflict is happening right now. SAMI Great, and I guess one, one thing that will probably soon become obvious is for various scheduling readings, various scheduling reasons, Katherine is not here for this recording. So you'll just have to make do with me and Ali. I hope that's fine. And so we're gonna, we're going to put forward a few like, very high level scenarios, and then we're going to talk through so like: Okay, so in this situation, what could you do about it? So one scenario could be the classic one, which is that there is some form of like active beef in a meeting. We've made the distinction before about like when there's forms of conflict that lie under the surface and forms of conflicts that like sp...