prerol music
Herald: OK, then welcome come back
everyone. With these void spaces of the
Internet into which we've all been forced
to migrate. This is our last talk for
today: "How to solve conflict in a
community of equals" by Merlijn. We'll
talk about specifically how to solve
conflict in a community in which there is
no leader based on his own experiences from
hacker camps and the hackerspace in Gent
in Belgium. So without further I do. Merlijn
the stream is yours and start the talk.
Merlijn Sebrechts: Thanks for the
introduction and thanks for having me here
to share my experience, so to give a
little bit of background about why I'm
doing this talk. About seven or eight
years ago, I came into hackerspace Gent.
And at that time it was still flourishing.
But in 2014, the hackerspace imploded
because of internal conflict. And this is
something that seems to happen a lot with
hackerspaces and with other organizations
which are less structured, don't have
clear leadership or a clear hierarchy. But
in 2014, one of the original founders of
the hackerspace started the idea to
actually create workshops around finding a
system to fix our community. I was very
interested in that initiative. So I joined
the so I joined the workshops and together
with the other people from the
hackerspace, we started building a system
that basically got the best out of people,
but that was still very close to anarchy,
very a very chaotic system. This is my
cat, Simba. He will be also here for the
talk, probably. And in throughout the year
2014, we started writing down how the
system would work. First very informally,
and in 2015 I decided to become a board
member of hackerspace Gent with the
explicit goal to implement this system.
And the first thing I did was basically
change the role of board members into
removing any of their leadership
responsibilities, but keeping the goal of
maintaining the core infrastructure of the
hackerspace and acting as a counselor in
order to fix conflict. And it's this
second role that I will talk about in this
in this talk. Throughout the following
years, we kept on hacking the system,
hacking our own hackerspace, and finally
everything we wrote down, we bundled it
into the "hackerspace blueprint", which is
basically a small booklet describing how
to run a hackerspace using doocracy. But
it's written very generically so that it
can also be used by other organizations
which want to know more about how to
actually run a doocracy, how to run an
organization where nobody is actually
leading the organization. In 2019
throughout the previous years, that
hackerspace kept becoming better and
better and the environment and the
atmosphere and the hackerspace kept
becoming better. But in 2019 we had this
real point of like this is the point at
which the space is running itself as a
board. We don't need to actually intervene
anymore. The only thing we need to do is
make sure the bills are paid and make sure
our Internet still works. But the
doocracy worked. And so I started I
organized a bunch of talks and and
discussions all on our experience with
building this community. And time and time
again, I got the exact same question, how
do you how do you actually solve
interpersonal conflict. And. So, as I
said, "The Hackerspace BLUEPRINT". It only
talks about how to build this community of
equals. It doesn't actually talk about how
to solve conflict in this community. The
only thing that's described in "The
Hackerspace BLUEPRINT" is to use the
private talk pattern, but it's not
actually explained by the private talk
pattern is. So in this talk, I will
explain what a private talk pattern is and
and how to use it to solve conflict. Solve
conflict without having to use authority,
without having to use explicit leadership
or forcing people to fall in line. So the
private talk pattern, we didn't invent it.
This is an old hackerspace pattern. Which
is something that a lot of people, a lot
of different hackerspaces and notice that
they were using the exact same method in
order to solve conflict and in their
hackerspace. And so it became like a
design and design pattern for
hackerspaces. This is a good way to solve
conflict. And so it works in two stages.
The first stage is that when there is a
conflict, you first talk to the involved
parties in private. You listen to them,
you let them know how the group feels
about their behavior and you find you
trying to find the root cause of the
actual conflict that's going on. The
second part is that you done moderate a
discussion between the different parties
involved in the conflict. The goal of this
discussion is to help these parties
understand each other and to discuss and
write down concrete solutions. Now, I
could end my talk here, but I don't think
it would be very useful because there's
actually a lot of beneath to using this
pattern. Well. And so I'm going to get
more information about each stage and
about the kind of mindset that you need in
order to use this pattern. So the first
question is, obviously, who should do
this, who should organize these talks?
Well, you you should do this because
you're the person listening to this talk.
You're clearly interested in how to solve
this conflict. And so you're probably a
very good person to actually organize
this. There is no formal authority needed
because this pattern is about offering
your help, you are not forcing the
conflict to be solved. You are not forcing
people to solve conflict. You are going to
people and you're saying, hey, look, it's
clear that there is some conflict here and
this conflict is an issue to everyone
involved. So can I help you solve this
conflict? And when you open your help,
most people actually accept it without
questioning it. However, it's very
important that the person who does this,
they need to be seen as someone neutral to
both parties. This is this becomes an
issue. For example, if you've already
chosen sides in the conflict, then the
other party will not see you as a
trustworthy, a neutral person. This can
also be an issue if you're like very good
friends with one of the parties of the
conflict. Then again the other party will
not see you as neutral. The second thing
is, is that you have to be prepared to
listen, everyone joins every conversation
with a whole bunch of preconceptions,
especially when a conversation is about
conflict. Everybody has an idea in their
head about what the issue is of the
conflict and how it should be solved.
However, a lot of times those issues tend
to those preconceptions, those preexisting
ideas tend to be wrong. And when you
actually listen to people, you can
actually figure out what the root cause is
and you might be surprised. And it's
hurting is that it's very important to
stay authentic because the people involved
need to trust you. And the only way to get
them to trust you is to show them that
you're authentic and that you are
genuinely willing to find a solution that
benefits both parties. Then the next thing
you need is you need the right mindset and
the first part of the right mindset is
that conflict needs to be solved. As
humans, we have this tendency to, when we
see conflict, to just try to ignore it and
hope that it goes away by itself or most
reasonable humans. This is their first
initial response. However, by ignoring
conflict, you actually allow it to grow.
And when it grows, it becomes more and
more difficult to actually solve it
because more and more people get involved
and it becomes harder and harder to find
the actual root cause of the problem. So
you need to solve it and you need to solve
it as early as possible. It's much better
to to solve this conflict, to intervene
too early than too late, because given
that this is a process that is beneficial
to both sides, there is not really a
downside to intervening to early. You're
not forcing anybody to do anything, you
just want to hear them out, you just you
just want to know more about the conflict.
Then the second thing is that the only
people who can stop the conflict are those
involved. I said that the first response
is to ignore conflict. Well, the first
response is to ignore conflict when you
were interacting with the people who are
involved with the conflict. And then when
you get to people who are not involved
with the conflict, you start talking about
it, then you start discussing it and and
start discussing what might be done to
actually solve the issue. And most of the
times, these discussions happen without
the people who are involved in the
conflict or without the people that other
people are having issues of it. And this
will almost certainly fail, these
attempts. Talking to third parties has has
very little value. You can do it in order
to get some ideas, but you always need to
include the people involved in the
conflict in these discussions or your
attempts will fail. Then the third mindset
point is that the contributions of a
single individual or a few individuals in
your organization are never worked having
that conflict. A lot of times and people
in their head, they start to make a
balance of like, yes, this person is
creating conflict in our organization, but
this person also contributes a lot to our
organization so that in our heads, that
gives them some kind of right to make
conflict, but they are never worth it. You
do not owe it to them to allow them to
create conflict. If you are afraid that by
talking to them about a conflict, they
will lower their contributions, then you
should know that you are trading short
term gains by compromising long term
viability. In the short term, they might
keep contributing. But in the long term,
this will poison your community and your
community will not be long term viable,
given that this is the track for hackers
against climate change. Climate change,
for example, is an issue that requires
long term solutions and that requires
communities who keep putting pressure on
everyone over the long term. And so. Or in
terms of conflict, you should always
optimize for long term viability, not for
short term gains. And the thing is that
solving the conflict even becomes easier
when these people are actually really
contributing a lot to your organization,
because you can start your discussion by
with saying we really value your
contributions and we want to keep you
here. And that's why we want to solve this
conflict. You're not a bad person. You're
clearly not a bad person. There's just
this conflict that needs to be solved. The
second part of the right mindset is that
complex needs to be solved and you need to
see solved as like solving a puzzle or
solving a math equation. You can't force
people to stop conflict. You need to
figure out how the pieces are not
connecting to each other. And you need to
figure out how you can connect the pieces
in a way that a puzzle works. As an
example, punishing people will get you
nowhere, even though it is like an innate
response that we have when, when when
conflict arises. We want to see people
punished, even though this this doesn't
actually improve the situation to punish
people. And when you dig deeper into the
conflict, you see that that's most
conflict is created by by bad
communication, by cultural differences and
by differences in expectation, not by
people being bad people. And so there's
actually no reason to punish anyone when
you're trying to solve a conflict. So
every time you want to do a certain
measure like banning people from joining
your community space for a while, you
always need to ask yourself, how does this
improve the situation. Temporarily banning
people can be very useful. It can be
useful to de-escalate conflict. It can be
useful to to to make sure that stuff
doesn't blow up before it's at rest. But you
should always do it in order to solve
something, in order to get a certain
result, not in order to punish people for
what they have done. The whole point of
this is that when conflict is solved is
actually solved, everybody involved should
win. Nobody should feel like they are the
looser because almost always people do
not actually want conflict and people do
not actually benefit from conflict. The
third thing about having the right
mindset is, that you need to get into
these kind of discussions and these kind
of talks with people with the mindest,
that most people are good.
Hanlon's razor also says:
"Never attribute to malice that
which can be adequately explained by
incompetence." It's a very complicated way
to say that if you have two possible
explanations for some of these behavior
and one of those explanations is this
person is trying to do bad things. And the
second explanation is this person is
incredibly incompetent, then probably the
explanation that involves incompetence
will be the right explanation, because
most people are good. So most of the times
when you need to choose between these two
explanations, choosing the incompetence
one is the right one. And so when you are
in talks with people always in the back of
your head, think about where can I find
the incompetence? What is the incompetence
that that created this issue? And so I've
talked about cultural differences. For
example, not being aware of cultural
differences is an incompetence. Not having
the right communication skills is an
incompetence. If you try to search for the
incompetence, most of the time, you will
get to the root cause of the conflict. So
the first step in the private talk pattern
is the private talks, the individual
talks, the goal of the private talks are
first to let the person vent. Because in
the end, we want the two in both parties
to talk to each other. But that's not
possible if there are too many emotions.
So these individual talks are in order to
let these emotions out and make sure that
these people are hurt. When they are hurt,
when they vent these emotions to you and
they have the feeling that they are heard
by you, then these emotions will be become
smaller. And then the next talks, they
will be able to have more rational and
less emotional and less explosive
conversations. The second goal of these
individual talks is to build trust and
understanding. And this has to be both
ways. You have to be able to trust them.
And they have to be able to trust you. And
this understanding is very important.
First of all, you need to understand their
point of view. This doesn't need to be on
a level of like I would do the exact same
thing if I was in your place. But you need
to understand why they're doing it. And
then second of all, they also need to have
some kind of understanding of what the
problem is from the other side, like like
as outsiders. How do you look at this
problem? Then the last step of these
individual talks is to find the root
cause, find the root cause of the
conflict. So, a lot of times and I've seen
this happen a lot in hackerspaces, a lot
of times. When you look at the surface of
the conflict, it seems to be that that
that it's about certain behavior like this
person said. This person was very
dismissive of my work, for example. But
then, when you dig deeper, you find out
that there are actually other problems
which caused this and a lot of the times
some of the root causes that these people
don't actually trust each other. One of
the ways to find this out is to to ask a
person. So say the other person said
something that hurt you? If somebody else
would say the exact same thing, if a
friend of you would say the exact same
thing, how would you interpret it then?
Would you interpret it differently? And if
they would interpret it differently, then,
you know, that's the root cause is not
this communication, but the root cause is
the actual trust, the root causes that
everything the other person says is seen
through a very negative light. Everything
the other person said is interpreted in
the most negative way possible. And so if
that is the root cause, then you just need
to build trust between these people and
that will solve most of the conflict. So
let's do some practical tips for these
individual talks. First of all, it needs
to happen in a neutral place. If you have
like a clubhouse or a place that you
frequently gather, you can't do the
private talks there. You need to do it
somewhere else. It's better if the place
is public in the worst case for
everybody's safety, but also because
because it helps people have some level of
control over their emotions. For example,
a local bar or a comic-cafe or a board
game club is always very good. Find
something that these people are
comfortable with. Second of all, you
always have to do these talks, either face
to face, away from keyboard or by using a
good video chat solution, because body
language and tone is incredibly important.
You need to be able to see each other. You
need to be able to see each other, facial
expressions, and you need to hear the tone
of each other's voice. And the quality
needs to be good, first of all, in order
to have this extra channel of
communication. And second of all, in order
to remove the frustration, because this
kind of private talks can be very
frustrating and can be very taxing both to
the person involved in the conflict and
the person who wants to solve the
conflict. And so having decent audio and
video make sure that removes that
frustration. And so then you can focus on
the frustration of the conversation
itself. Third of all always take
notes during this conversation. It helps
build trust. It shows them that you are
actually taking what they are saying
seriously and they can be very useful to
reflect on the conversation afterwards.
Then you can initiate a private talk
simply by being direct and authentic. Just
say: "I'd like to talk to you in private
to understand this issue better". Things
like I'd like to help and I want to
understand your point of view. Those are
very good things to say in order to
initiate a conversation, make sure that
it's very clear to them that you are there
to help them too. It's also important to be
authentic and to be humble. Don't say
things that you don't actually mean.
However, you have to get into the
conversation with the mindset to listen,
with the intention to listen. And so this
might be, this can be a bit controversial,
like these two things might be against
each other because it's it's very hard
when you see a conflict to get into this
first conversation with the idea of I
don't actually understand what a conflict
is about. But even if you think that you
know what the conflict is about, very
often when you try to find the root cause
of the conflict, you find out it is
actually something else that is different
from from what you told. And so be humble
about your own knowledge about the
conflict. Then the individual talks itself.
First, it's very important to explain that
they are valued. Try to think about the
valuable things that this person brings to
your community or the valuable work that
they are doing. And then second of all,
just ask them to explain their point of
view and listen, let them blow off steam
and start to build trust by showing them
that you want to understand them by
validating their feelings, but stay
authentic and don't pick sides. It's very
important not to pick sides. It's very
important not to pick sides because
otherwise people will think that you are
not neutral and it will be a lot harder to
fix this conflict. Then towards the end of
the conversation, trying to find the
actual root causes of the conflict and
summarize that. Summarize them verbally
and try to write them down and ask the
other person's opinion about, do you agree
that that this is the root cause and this
really requires digging deeper? I
explained the example before where a lot
of times when somebody doesn't trust
somebody else, they will start to
interpret any communication in the worst
way possible. And so in order to figure
out how to dig deeper, to figure out if
this is the cause, you can ask, like if your
friend would say the exact same thing,
would you have the same reaction? Most of
the time the people answer: "no, no". And
if I would think maybe I misunderstood it
because this is my friends, they don't
want to say something so negative about
me. Then this point is optional, but it
can be useful to explain other people's
views if you already have some idea of
other people's views, it can be can be
useful to also discuss this in this first
initial conversation, and especially
explain your views like this conflict is
dragging our community down. This is the
reason why I want to solve this conflict.
And finally, ask them how they think it
could be solved. Sometimes these are
completely ridiculous ideas, but sometimes
they also have some very good ideas about
how the conflict could be solved. The
second step in this in the private talk
pattern is the discussion of the two
parties together and never do a group
discussion. I would try to always do it
with two people. And the goal of this
discussion is to get these people talking
to each other, because a lot of the times,
a lot of conflict is created by people not
communicating properly with each other.
And that at a certain point, the
communication just stops completely, and
that's the point where stuff starts to
explode. The second goal is to work
towards understanding each other's
viewpoints, but this requires people to
actually talk to each other. And then the
third goal is to define concrete steps to
solve the issue. It's very important that
these steps are concrete so that you can
later coach them and see if these steps
are being followed. So the setup of the
discussion is the same as the setup of the
individual talks, which the distinction
that it's very important to be the first
person there. If it's in real life
location, come there 30 minutes beforehand
or come their on time, depending on if
it's common in your culture to be on time
or not, or if it's an online video call,
make sure you're the first person that
initiates the call. Because if these two
people are there without you, it will
become very awkward. Then the course of
the discussion. The first thing you need
to do in this discussion is to explain the
root cause and then discuss and write down
concrete steps to fix the conflict. They
need to be concrete because you need to be
able to track progress and and every party
needs to be. There can be no confusion
about whether or not there is progress. If
those steps are not concrete enough, then
you can start to start to have a
discussion about whether or not there is
actual progress about whether or not the
steps are being followed. If they are
concrete enough, then there's no
discussion. A bad kind of concrete step is
keep the desk smartly clean desks in
hackerspaces, specifically clean desks are
often an issue. But one of the big issues
is that people's ideas and people's
expectations of how clean the desk should
be are very different. And so keep the
desks more clean. Will will mean different
things to different people. So make it
concrete. For example, clean does desk
completely every time you leave the space.
This step is something that might be
overshooting. So in hackerspaces, for
example, it's often allowed to have some
clutter on the desk if you're working on a
long term project, but there are always
people who have who succeed that limit,
who have who leave way too much clutter on
desks and who take up all the desks in the
entire space and having a clean desk,
having them clean the desk completely
every time they leave the space is
something that is like an overshoot. It is
too clean. Then what do we actually want
as a space. But it is that way because
that makes it much, much easier to track
progress that make it makes it much more
concrete. If they are out of the space and
the desk is still cluttered, then they
didn't do it. Then they broke their
promise. Another good step is when this
person says something to me, and I think
it's insulting. Talk to it, talk about it
to another person, and maybe the other
person can translate what the person means
if during the discussion you see that the
these people really start to communicate
very well, then a step could be. But I
think you are insulting me. I will say it
to you and then we can discuss it together
and then we can clear it out that they
don't actually mean it in an insulting
way. Finally, understanding each other and
having that discussion and starting
communication is often already a very big
part of the solution. So if you don't have
a lot of clear steps that might not be
such a big issue, because simply talking
to each other solves a lot of issues. I
think 90 percent of all teen drama series
would be solved by just having the
characters talk to each other. And this is
sadly the case in real life too. So after
discussion, right down the concrete steps
that you agreed upon in a discussion and
send it to everyone. Send it to everyone
involved, then the short description of
this was the core issue. This was the root
cause of the conflict. And this is what we
are going to do to address it. Put it on
paper, even though you don't have any
authority, even though they don't have to
follow it, simply having it written down
and having them agree upon it during the
discussion will make it much more official
for themselves. You don't need authority
for this. Second of all, it's very useful
to keep coaching and do the follow up.
Make sure that the conversation between
these two people keeps going, otherwise
the anger and frustration will start to
get bottled up again and then at a certain
point they will start to interpret all
communication again, very, very
negatively. And then the conflict happens
again. So the overall idea of the of the
private talk pattern is that most
interpersonal conflict is solved by
talking to each other. However, emotions
make that very, very hard because people
just stop talking to each other because
they're afraid of the confrontation and
because when they talk to each other, the
emotions make stuff explode. And so first
you do the initial private talk where you
get out all the emotions and and and you
make sure that people understand that
that's you make it clear that you
understand them and that you hear them.
And then during the second talk, you get
these people together and you get them to
talk to each other. A second smaller idea
of the private talk pattern is that
conflict is extremely hard to solve in the
group. During meetings, meetings are one
of the worst places to solve conflict at
having private personal talks is much,
much better than doing it in the group. So
I have to add a disclaimer to this. I
started the talk by saying most people are
good. Well, some people are bad. If
people have genuine malicious intent or
inherently incompatible with your
community, you have to kick them out. The
private talk pattern will make it very
clear who is like this, the private, after
going through this entire process, it will
be clear whether or not these people
actually have genuine malicious intentions
or whether these people are inherently
incompatible. If it's the case, kick them
out. But again, you're not kicking them
out to punish them. You're simply kicking
them out to protect the community. Most
times the community is the common of the
organization, you might have a certain
goal, but you can only reach that goal
when you have a healthy community. And so
in order to protect this community, you
need to make harsh decisions and kick
people out. Of course, given that these
communities are, for example, run on
doocracy or run on consensus decision
making, you can't decide to kick them out
yourselves. But use the processes that are
in your community to kick people out when
after this process it's very, very clear
that they're inherently incompatible. So
thanks for listening to the talk, I hope
it was useful and I hope some people can
solve some conflict in their communities.
Obviously, this entire talk was based on
my own experience, which hackerspace Gent
in Belgium. And so your mileage may vary.
This worked for us. This worked very well
for us. Every time we tried it, it
actually worked. But tweak it, make it
your own, make it so it works for your
community.
My name is Merlijn Sebrechts. I'm from
hackerspace Gent in Belgium. If you want
to know how to build a community of
equals, go to hackerspace.design and read
the hackerspace blueprint. And it also has
links to other talks I did about doocracy.
And then finally, this talk was partly
inspired by a video by Jono Bacon: "A new
way to look at conflict resolution." And
surprisingly, I think a few months ago he
released that video and surprisingly, the
process that he used in professional
organizations and companies to do conflict
resolution looks a lot like the private
talk pattern. Jono Bacon was the former
community manager of the Ubuntu Linux
project. And so he's a very experienced
person and knows a lot about how to build
communities. So if there are any
questions, let's hear it on.
Herald: OK, thank you for your talk. There
are indeed many questions, and the first
is you've mentioned repeatedly that this
is, of course, based on your own personal
experience. But, what do you think that
this model of something like it could also
work on a larger level, on a perhaps
regional or even super regional scale?
Merlijn Sebrechts: Are you ... I am I'm
going to interpret that question as like
having having different countries solving
conflict between different countries. I'm
not sure. I'm not sure because this matter
to specifically for interpersonal
conflict, conflict between different
people, although the idea of finding the
root cause is still very useful. I'm not
sure if it's possible because you can't
talk to a country as an individual. The
country is composed of many different
people, and so it is the total behavior of
this country is some emerges from the
behavior of all the individuals. And it's
very, very hard to find a single
individual that you can talk to that
represents this total group.
Herald: I'm not sure if the question was
actually meant that way. If it wasn't,
please write it again in the chat and I'll
ask it again in a more specific way. And
the next question is, what if we don't
have a common basis for such a system
anymore and we cannot start with personal
conversations anymore? Because just
letting things implode and then start
rebuilding everything from scratch is
probably usually not an option. So would
you have any ideas on
how one could proceed then?
Merlijn Sebrechts: I'm also not a big fan
of starting completely new. What we did is
that we actually didn't start from zero.
We during the hackerspace workshops, we
started from the the system that we had
and we started to think about what do we
like about the current system and what do
we dislike about the current system. And
we started to gradually change it. And
throughout the years with gradual changes
and by keep having these having the
hackerspace workshops every single time,
and we encountered issues, we were able to
gradually change and improve our
community. So even though, like the big
implosion happened in 2014, the big
resurgence didn't happen at once. It
happened over the course of a few years
and it happened by slightly improving it
and slightly changing the system every
every year and took a very long time in
order to to make that complete change. So
I would my concrete advice is to start
doing workshops in order to fix the
system, in order to fix your community,
start doing workshops and see what comes
out of those workshops.
Herald: OK, so at least hope is not lost,
I guess, even if it can be difficult. And
then the next question is, isn't it a
problem that you mentioned always
identifying a root cause of a problem?
What do you do if the cause of a root
problem is somehow subjective and cannot
be agreed upon? What should one do then?
Merlijn Sebrechts: I think there always
needs to be some common base. And in our
hackerspace, the common base is that the
hackerspace itself and the hackerspace
community is the thing that we need to
protect. And so if there is ambiguity of
the cause, the cause of the conflict and
we simply start to look at what behavior
is advantageous to our hackerspace and
what behavior isn't. And we use that as
the common ground and we start to build
from there depending on what the goal is
of your community. The common base will be
different, but I think in every community
there will be this common base, even if
the common base is simply that it's the
existence of the community is the thing
that everybody wants.
Herald: OK, then, thank you again for your
great talk. There is one last question,
which is someone wanting to see the cat
again.
Merlijn Sebrechts: The what?
Herald: The cat.
Merlijn Sebrechts: They're sadly not
anymore. It seems they've gone downstairs.
Herald: OK. That's all we have is the
waving cat in my screen, which is. We'll
have to make do. OK, thank you for your
talk and, have fun at the remote chaos
experience alone and everyone watching
this. Of course, this was our last talk
for today. We'll see you again tomorrow.
Until then. And happy hacking.
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