#rC3 How to solve conflict in a community of equals

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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