Blessings and Conflict

The practice of Blessing can be a powerful tool for reducing conflict and stress between people. I recently experienced the power of this activity when I had the occasion to work with a group of people on reducing stress and interpersonal conflict at work. While this was a faith based community, it is not unusual that they would experience the same types of conflicts and stress that people face in any work community. They are a very diverse group of people working intensely on things they feel very passionate about. Given serious work stressors it was almost inevitable that people would face interpersonal challenges.

Diagnosis was relatively easy. We could see the external factors that put stress on the community. We could see the structural dynamics that contributed to the stress. We could see the personal and style differences that made working together challenging.

It was easy to identify what some of the work of healing needed to include. It was important to clarify governance and communication processes, for example. We also determined that the skills and practices found in the book Crucial Conversations was a solid basis for people improving their practical skills at avoiding conflict and working effectively together.

More difficult for us to face was the recognition that Trust was broken. People spoke of not trusting each other. The lack of trust was not set in the context of not being able to count on someone doing something they were supposed to do. The issue was more fundamental. They said they no longer trusted each other as people.

We quickly determined that we did not see a practical path where people could “earn” each others trust. People needed to let go of their mistrust to do the work we needed to do, but that was much easier said than done. For a while we seemed stuck. Then we hit upon the idea of using the notion of Blessing as a way of creating a positive climate for the work. We used John O’Donohue’s book entitled To Bless The Space Between Us to design a practical method of suspending our judgements and imagining that we could work together on these difficult issues.

John O’Donohue defined a blessing as:

“...a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and strengthen. Life is a constant flow of emergence. The beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds.”

He went on to add that a Blessing, “... is not the invention of what is not there, nor the glazed-eyed belief that the innocent energy of goodwill can alter what is destructive. Blessing is a more robust and grounded presence; it issues from the confident depth of the hidden self, and its vision and force can transform what is deadlocked, numbed, and inevitable.”

Clearly, not everyone will be comfortable with the religious language I am using, but the notion that we can concretely imagine positive outcomes is a powerful notion. We do it all the time when we create “vision statements” at work or positively visualize making a great tennis serve. Choose other language if it is useful, but consider the possibility.

People were asked to write three Blessings.

1. One for themselves.
2. One for a person or persons with whom they had experienced conflict.
3. One for the work itself.

It is a credit to the intentions and good will of the people in this community that people took this assignment seriously. The Blessings were submitted in advance of a workshop and they were shared anonymously at the start of the workshop. The effect was very powerful and deeply affected in a positive way the ability of people to work with each other on the issues affecting their working relationships. They heard each other in a different way. It brought the team to a place where they could approach the work more openly than would have been possible without doing the Blessings. Here are two brief examples of their work.

“May you know your heart's calling and find wholeness therein.
 May you be honest, with yourself and with others.
 May you be gentle.
May you prosper from your gifts and be happy.
 May we learn to be easy in each others' presence again.”

“May what needs to be said be said.
 May what needs to be heard be heard.
 But in the telling and the listening may compassion and caring always be present.”

In the end, as one might expect, our work together was imperfect. Stresses remain. Relationships are not perfectly healed. But the team assesses that relationships have improved. The edge has been taken off the stress and conflict. As a team they are in a better place.

When they look back, they assess that the Blessing exercise was one of the most powerful parts of the process. It was a useful personal exercise. It affected the quality of community. For a moment, people were able to see and feel the best in each other. They understand that, when act out of their best and are fully present for each other, the specialness they all sought at work is possible.

So why was this approach so effective and powerful.

• First and foremost, the team took the work seriously and “did their homework” well. There is always power present when people take transformation work seriously.
• Second, structurally, the exercise calls people to be positive, about themselves, for others with whom they are not feeling comfortable, and with respect to the process. There is power in positively thinking about the right outcomes.
• Third, and I believe this is critical, it is very useful to make one’s thinking concrete and granular. This exercise requires the participant the think tangibly about each of the outcomes.

The act of Blessing can be a catalyst for repairing broken community and relationships.

So try it. Try writing Blessings as a way of getting unstuck when confronting difficult relationships. It just might help.