One of My Favorite Things

Engaging in a difficult conversation taxes all of our emotional and intellectual resources.  It is very hard brain work.  That is why, when we have mediation sessions, there is always some chocolate on the table.  We are using glucose at a furious rate in difficult conversations.  We often need to replenish our supply of blood sugar to be at our best in such conversations.

Patton, Stone, and company, provide masterful analysis of what goes into having a difficult conversation.  However, they do not address one of the critical elements that determines success or failure in such a conversation.  Are you a hopeful person?  Do you have an adequate capacity to envision a positive outcome?  Do you have current confidence in a better future?

I am reading Shane Lopez's new book, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others.  I got the book in part because I am preaching this weekend on Romans 5:5--"and hope does not disappoint."  The book is a great resource for that little project, but it is much more as well.

Hope is an essential element for any positive outcome in difficult conversations.  In every parenting plan mediation I have facilitated, one or both of the parties has come in hopeless.  "I can tell you right now," they say, "that this is not going to work.  We've tried to resolve these issues for weeks (or months or years), and we have not gotten anywhere.  But I'm glad you'll at least try."

At first I tried to talk people out of such perspectives at the front end of the process.  I have learned, however, to simply accept the descriptions and move forward.  As we begin to make real progress in resolving issues, the atmosphere in the room changes.  Hope is contagious.  Hope is also cumulative.  It may be that hope increases exponentially once it takes off.  Often the parties are stunned by the success of their own work.

One of my favorite parts of facilitating any difficult conversation is the process of "option generation."  This is where hope becomes concrete.  One of my roles as a mediator is to keep that process going--sometimes with wild and crazy ideas that make people laugh out loud.  Of course, those silly ideas make the more realistic ideas looks so very much better (thus personal ego is a liability in most mediation processes).  Creating possible new pathways to the future when it seemed that every path was blocked--that's fun!  And that's hope.

This is a concrete application of an insight Lopez shares from his research: 

"Hope is not just a personal resource.  It's one of the most important ways we create our families, our communities, and our society.  Thanks to our big frontal lobes, we humans outstrip every other species in the size and complexity of our social networks.  And from the moment we're born (and in some cases, even before), our brains and minds are shaped by the bonds we form with those closest to us."  Making Hope Happen, page 45.

One of the implications here is that hope-building is usually a communal activity, not a solo act.  One of the main tasks of a facilitator is to create space and structure for hopeful solutions to seemingly intractable problems to arise in the midst of interactions.

That's one of my favorite things! 

You can preview Making Hope Happen at http://www.amazon.com/Making-Hope-Happen-Create-Yourself/dp/1451666225.

You can interact with this material at http://shanelopez.com/.