Contributed by John Durkin, PhD, a TIR and LSR Trainer.
I am an advocate of peer-support and a practitioner and trainer in crisis intervention, having worked in New York’s fire and police departments after the 9/11 attacks. Having later discovered the techniques of Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) I wondered where the limits of their application might lie, and whether some of the principles might be adapted for use with groups. Last year, in a humanitarian aid setting I was presented with a problem that I, given my role as a consultant, was asked to advise on. There were some members of staff in small teams who seemed incapable of working together. Two had reached the point where they could not talk to or look at each other. The importance of the relief work these people were involved in demanded that such relationships should be repaired as soon as possible. There was no obvious solution to this problem for managers overseeing these aid workers, beyond taking disciplinary action against some or all of them. Such a decision would, of course, effectively paralyse the teams while action was taken and might even lead to having to replace staff. It was probably understandable then, that the current problem had been allowed to persist.
After a few minutes of calling to mind techniques from the TIR Expanded Applications and Life Stress Reduction Workshops, I thought I could envisage a way to apply the person-centered principles and other basics of the subject to develop a procedure that might be applied. It would not be me who would attempt this so it had to be brief and simple enough for me to teach to a member of staff to facilitate. Fortunately, she had already completed the TIR Workshop so the application of the Communication Exercises and Rules of Facilitation was familiar. I thought of this as a technique that could be referred to as “conflict resolution”, and this is what I suggested:
The Technique
Arrange the seats in a triangular shape so that each staff member sits apart, at an angle to one another but each facing the facilitator. This would indicate the expectation that communication would be primarily between the facilitator and each person in turn, not between the two people themselves.
Insist on the following ground rules:
- Talk to me (the facilitator)
- Stay in your seat
- No shouting
- No interrupting
- When I ask you for an answer tell me one thing
Protocol
- The facilitator chooses one of the staff to ask the first question: “Tell me something you want me to know about this problem”
- When answered, acknowledge. Turn to the other person and ask: “What would you say to that?”
- When answered, acknowledge. Turn to the first person and ask: “What would you say to that?”
- When answered, acknowledge. Turn to the other person and ask: “What would you say to that?”
- Repeat to a resolution.
I anticipated that each response would remove some charge and that eventually the people who would not talk to, or even look at, each other would take increasing notice of what was being said. I suspected that they would eventually feel compelled to explain something directly to their critic and that when most of the charge was gone direct communication would prove irresistible.
Case A
Two women who were finding each other intolerable and untrustworthy sat as described with the facilitator between them. I watched from a window (they were sitting outside in a courtyard) as the heads of the staff faced the facilitator directly during the early questions with only the direction of the facilitator’s gaze to indicate who was speaking. For the first few minutes the non-speaking participant did not look across at the other while she answered. Then each began to look across to directly witness what was being said. Eventually, within about 10 minutes, the two people who had been in dispute were talking, initially with large gestures and then calmly, to each other. The smiles were evident as each rose to her feet and the facilitator ended the procedure. When the two women returned to the office I checked with the recently-coached facilitator as to how she felt it had gone and she said “Fantastic”.
Case B
Two women, one in her 50s and one in her 20s were finding conversation very difficult and agreements almost impossible. Each blamed the other for the problem and the team leader was at a loss as to how to persuade them to work together without threatening punishment on them both. The procedure began in much the same way as the first had but within a few minutes the facilitator’s frustration was becoming evident so I approached slowly to see if my presence would be welcome. It was, and I stepped in to find out what was happening. The older of the two women was avoidant and disruptive and it was clear that she was uncomfortable with the process. By contrast the younger woman was happy to express herself and was hoping to continue.
When the older woman left without an explanation I was disappointed and struggled to understand why this time the outcome was so different to the first. It was later that day that I was informed that the woman who walked away had been recruited to her job without adequate checks and was not, in fact, trained nor suitable for the demands of the post. With this information I was a little more optimistic that the technique had some applicability in this setting. In this case, perhaps an impossible situation had been quickly resolved because the attention to “what was going on” had readily exposed some of her inadequacies. The facilitator thought so too and decided that in future she would attempt to employ the same procedure to unearth the source of similar problems and hopefully resolve any conflict.
I have yet to hear whether the facilitator in this case has tried the procedure since then, but it has at least made me feel optimistic about the possibility of TIR-related techniques being successfully adapted and applied to small groups. Any thoughts, alternative explanations or comments on this would be welcome. Was this apparent success a case of “beginner’s luck” or is there a logical explanation for what happened? I’d be interested to know what other facilitators and trainers think.
