Best to you

My first retreat experience was very much like yours as well.

I operate on the Open Space principle of passion bounded by responsibility. If someone is ranting for a while in a meeting, my curiosity is piqued and my first question back to them, after acknowledging their frustration and anger, is to ask them what they are suggesting we need to do about the situation. In the vast majority of cases (the one exception being a guy who was tanked the whole meeting, and couldn’t even be silenced by his friends) people respond to this call for responsibility with some ideas that at least create invitational fodder for others.

Passion unbound by responsibility is a rant. Asking someone “what would you like to do about this?” changes everything. And if the person says “nothing” then there is really not much that can be done.

I don;t like it when people rant and rant. I get uncomfortable and I begin thinking that the group must think I’m a bad facilitator. But my first step in making that experience a useful one is to get ahold of these stories and make sure that they aren’t clouding my listening and curiosity about the anger in the room. I don’t shut people down – that contributes to the energy of the room, but I will sometimes stop th emeeting and ask this great question: “what do we learn from this? What has this exchange say about how we want to be together?”

I believe if a conflicted group is talking to one another, there is at least an unstated aspiration for them to be in a better place with each other. Appealing to this aspiration for peace has done wonders for helping people to focus on the benefits of dialogue.

My message to groups on the edge of violence is: If they want to fight, the meeting room isn’t the space for that. Head outside and duke it out if that’s how you feel it will get resolved. That’s not the work I do.

When you’re ready to talk to one another about how you will live together now, give me a call. Maybe I can help.

It sounds to me like you’ve really been in the fire. I believe a critical piece is holding a container for people that helps them not escape their emotions and also take responsibiity for them. The very first retreat I ever facilitated began with a participant wanting to know if things “got out of hand, like there’s a fist fight,” would I try to physically intervene myself! I think my answer at the time was something like, “Hey, if you all are gonna take each other on that way, I’m outta here!” And maybe, though it’s all too easy to rewrite experiences long in the past, I also encouraged the group to be responsible for their own outcomes, and that was one they could choose, though it might not be terribly useful to them.

I’m personally not a big fan of let ‘em yell until they are spent because it can cause such damage and shutdown and sometimes retaliation later, and yet there are also times when I wouldn’t want to abridge the expression of the emotions and content that surface when people absolutely need to be open, must clear the air, must see one another more accurately in order to get through it.

It is definitely very hard work and to me openess is never the problem; it is all the stuff that has been held and boiled inside, that turns into people who are just burning. To me an effective environment would be one in which people can see, feel, touch, experience their own and others’ burning, but they also can hold that energy enough not to feel deep regret or guilt later about what was said or done, which in my experience has been a problem where burning has turned into group meltdown. The goal to me always has to be learning of some kind. And that’s the question I ask when angry exchanges have gone on for awhile — as you asked your exceptional question about better ways to be — I ask, “What are we learning here from this experience right now?” and similarly that can begin a subtle shift toward renewal.

Thank you for opening up this whole aspect of facilitative work, Chris. It deeply needs attention.

However, I agree with you that having a listening piece is critical in these circumstances because it allows us to seperate the truth of the energy of the emotion from the truth of the content. When we can cultivate this capacity, people are better able to express needs in a way that is useful to others, and the others are finally able to hear needs for what they are: true human needs. It makes it easier for others to meet those needs and that way lies peace.

In rooms where there is much anger, there may be many things to be angry about, and talking one at a time slows the process down to allow things to burn and stew and be considered deliberately. In your friend’s terms, it helps mellow the rage into workable anger.

If I was in a group that could not abide by this rule, I might suggest that inhstead of one at a time, we pair up and take turns to express the angry feelings to a partner, so at least the catharsis can begin. That way the rage might disspate and a circle of speakers and listners might better find it’s ground.

And then sometimes, no amount of rule setting from a facilitator will do the trick and people just have to yell and shout and scream until they have no more energy for that. And when they tire themselves out, I am always there with a question: “is there a better way we want to be?” So far, in my experience, the answer is usually “yes.”

A friend commented to me one time that there is a difference between anger and rage. Anger, she said, contains some core personal truth, often not yet expressed. The anger burns away everything until the expression is there. Rage, by comparison, is about helplessness and powerlessness. No amount of expression will lead to more than the sense of that powerlessness at the core. In working with groups it’s been helpful for me to draw out the distinction consciously so that the “truths” and the feelings of powerlessness don’t get mixed up with one another. The other lesson with angry groups has been setting the ground rule that “only one person gets angry at a time,” which means the rest of us listen.