PFI #2 Befriending Paradox

Drawing from the work of Adam Kahane’s Facilitating Breakthrough and Bernie Mayer’s The Conflict Paradox, we will explore the vexing polarities and contradictions we find in conflict. They present themselves to facilitators during our process choices: do we design process vertically, focusing on the good of the group, or horizontally, relying on the autonomy and differing needs of the individuals? Many paradoxes present as dilemmas at the center of conflict for our clients and also for us as facilitators. We will work to deepen our ability to embrace three common paradoxes: avoidance and engagement, emotion and logic, principal and compromise, as well as gaining comfort with toggling between vertical and horizontal facilitation. We will begin a shift: rather than thinking of paradoxes in binary terms, we can explore these seeming opposites, sometimes working in the in-between-space, sometimes strategically cycling between then, while we help our clients do the same.