Managing Difficult Conversations When Stuck in the Middle of Other People's Conflicts

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, host Simon Goode is joined by Helen Jarvis to discuss "accidental mediator" scenarios, where people find themselves stuck in the middle of others' conflicts. They explore three case studies—from a heated argument at a children's soccer match, to neighborhood disputes, to tensions among school canteen volunteers—offering practical strategies for deciding when and how to engage. Throughout the conversation, both emphasize the importance of curiosity, safety, agency, and reflective decision-making in managing these challenging situations.

To find out more about Helen and her PD workshops: https://ripplelearning.com.au

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Insights on Conflict and Communication

05:16 "Facilitating Agency Through Mediation"

09:14 Driving Reactive Behavior Explained

12:06 "Empathy First for Effective Dialogue"

13:15 "Evaluating Motivations and Goals"

18:52 "Clashing Values in Parenting"

22:30 "Engage or Understand Before Acting"

23:32 "Curious Questions and Listening"

28:59 "Accidental Mediator Mindset"

32:41 School Canteen Conflict Discussion

33:40 Creating Safety Through Responsibility

37:38 "Measuring and Ensuring Safety"

40:14 Eating Disorders and Food Safety

45:04 Volunteer Management and Conflict Resolution

47:34 "Planting Seeds of Kindness"

Transcript

0:00

Foreign. Hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe. I am very excited about the episode today. I'm going to be having a discussion with a good friend of mine, Helen Jarvis. Helen and I worked together previously when we were working at Relationships Australia and I was the manager of the RAAM service, the Relationships Australia mediation service across New South Wales. And she was one of the very good people that I used for frankly almost everything. So supervision and co mediation and developing training workshops and everything. She's just so incredibly capable. I really like speaking with her about topics like conflict in communication because it helps me to, I think, develop a deeper layer of insight. I find that some of the ways that she thinks about conflict really do help me, and I'm sure other people as well, to get to that next level of awareness about what our goal is and what's going to be the best path to get us there. So I originally did this recording with Helen a week ago, but I did the full discussion. We did kind of an interview format for that one, looking at a couple of different case studies and then I was telling her how happy I was with it at the same time as I realized that I hadn't pressed the record button. So this episode today is kind of a rego. We're using the same scenarios and I'm always a little bit nervous about that when I deliver training workshops. Sometimes there's somebody who comes along in two days in a row, like they'll attend the same workshop again and again. And I find that I'm a little bit like a comedian. I've got particular little phrasings or little interactive exercises that I might use or something similar. And if you already know what's coming. I don't think that you necessarily get. The full amount of benefit from the session. Certainly not the same amount of enjoyment. But when we did these scenarios again, I found that we went to another layer of deeper analysis which I found really helpful. So we're looking at three different case studies where you're in the accidental mediator position. You've got some conflict going on around you and you need to decide whether or not you get involved. And if you do decide to get involved, what should you actually do? So you will hear from me and Helen about some of our initial thoughts about the three different conflict case studies that we'll go through and then hearing us discuss some of the options that we might consider. So obviously Helen and I will have a particular style and we've got an approach that we've refined over the years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and it's likely that you'll have a different style to either of us. So I just wanted to name at the outset that this isn't necessarily about solving these problems like we're not trying to present. This is the number one path forward. In fact, I think multiple people might deal with the same types of conflict very differently, and even you today might deal with the same conflict situation differently today than you would have dealt with it six months ago or two years ago or something similar. So it's not about right and wrong. And if you've dealt with these kind of situations, obviously I hope that that would be helpful for you. But even if you're dealing with different kinds of conflict, but you're still finding yourself in that accidental mediator chair. Well, my hope is that you'll be able to take some of the ideas that we present and translate them into the other context. If it's useful. I'd be incredibly grateful if you would consider pressing like and consider subscribing if you want more resources and let me know what you reckon. Do you like Helen and her approach? Would you like me to do more of these sort of discussion style podcast episodes moving forward? I'd love to hear from you. If you want to just leave a comment below, that's perfectly fine. Or if you want to shoot me an email@simonimongood.com but yeah, I hope that it's useful. Enjoy the episode. Thank you. All right. Well Helen, thank you very much for joining me again. This is a rerun of the discussion that we had last week looking at a couple of scenarios. So as I've explained, we're going to. Look through a couple of different case studies in a moment and just gather each of our respective thoughts. Helen, could you just give me a bit of an intro for people who aren't familiar with you and your background? Yeah, sure, Simon. Happy to. My working life has really been in three phases. So I started in organization, change, management consulting, helping workplaces navigate change, then retrained as a counsellor and worked primarily actually, but also with some parents to an extent as well. And then in this third phase of my working life, I've been working as a mediator and also running workshops for workplaces on the skills that people need to have those difficult conversations. I ran a social enterprise at the moment called Ripple Learning, and all profits from what we do go to effective youth mental health organisations. Thank you so much. Helen, this is an impromptu question that I'm springing on you. I just thought of it, but how. Would you describe your style in terms of dealing with conflict or as a mediator? I suppose there's a couple of principles that guide the way I engage, Simon. The trauma informed principles are significantly informative to the work that I do. I really value working in a mode where people are able to have agency in the decisions they make in their lives. And I think when people think through and reflect on why they're making the changes they are, or making the choices that they are, and then make really conscious decisions for themselves, any changes that are on the path to resolution of conflict, I think are more likely to stick when they've got that strong sense of agency around the choice of they've made, because they're in a position to choose to live with the consequences of those choices. Right. And each of those changes we make doesn't always lead us on the path that we want, but if we know those decisions have been made after careful reflection and with choice, then it is easier to live with and come to terms with and be at peace within yourself around the choices you've made. So, yeah, so helping people maintain a sense of agency. And so the style, using mediation language we talk about is facilitative mediation, facilitating a process where the participants are the owners of the decisions they make. So real focus on autonomy and then, I suppose, building self efficacy. Absolutely right. And I do find, actually find it fascinating the choices they make. And so often the choice choices people I'm working with, the choices they make are quite often very, very different to the ones that I would make. The human dimension of that I find fascinating in the work that we do. Yeah, very interesting, isn't it, the way that our brains and our whole body almost working as a brain, works to some extent. I wonder how that early work with adolescents probably rings true. Still, dealing with CEOs and executive teams and all that kind of thing when they're having some teenage tantrum moments of their own. That's right, absolutely. The cots are out of the. I mean, the toys are out of the cot. Well, let's have a look at this first case study then. Helen, thank you very much. We're looking at a situation involving conflict on the sidelines of a soccer match here. So I'll read the scenario first and then, Helen, I might ask just to Gather your initial thoughts. I might share some as well, and. Then we can just have a bit. Of discussion, if that sounds okay. So here's the scenario. You're at a soccer match for under nines when an argument erupts between the referee and one of the other parents. Accusations of bias and capacity arise. For example, are you blind or are you really this stupid? And I suppose we can probably imagine a few expletives added in there along the way, too. The ref says that if another comment is made, the parent will be kicked off the field. The parent is pacing back and forth near their child who is in the goals. So what jumps out at you initially about this scenario, Helen? Look, I think the. The first thing that comes to mind for me is actually a whole collection of memories as a parent on the side of various sporting content referees. I'm imagining, Helen. Well, not. Not me, but just observe. Noting it is. This is just such a. A common scenario, isn't it? Parents feeling very emotionally intense and extremely invested. And I think that's the thing that calls out to me most significantly is what's that about? You know, what's that level of investment and emotional dysregulation that's obviously present? What's that about for that parent? What do you mean by investment? Well, there's so much intensity that's being conveyed clearly with their body language, with their voice, in the way they're interacting in the moment. And so are they. What's driving the way they're engaging? Are they focused on their own needs? Are they focused on their child's needs, team's needs? They're probably not making conscious choices. Right. But there'll be something that's sitting underneath all of that that's really driving the way they're engaging. And so in some moments like that, I find myself instantly curious, what is it that's happening for them that is driving this subconscious? Because it's. That kind of behavior in the moment is not a conscious choice that they're making. It's very reactive in the moment response. What's driving that for them? Where's that coming from? Yeah, especially if they're not rationally aware of it or deciding that this is. What I should do. That's right. That's right. Most of the time in these kind of highly emotionally charged circumstances, at least at the first instance, they're not conscious choices that are being made. This is very reactive emotional response in the situation. Interesting metaphor, isn't it? If we invest money in something, then we're going to collect the interest, you. Know what I mean? It's like we're doing it and then we're going to be left with the outcome of that investment. If I invest money in a business and it fails that, I'm not going to be left with very much, if it goes well, I'll be left with a lot. Yeah, you're right. That is a. It's a relevant metaphor, actually, that often those financial choices are being made really consciously and these emotional ones aren't typically, at least in the first instance. But if we invest money in a bank, we're like handing over something that's not us. Whereas when we talk about investment in. The conflict, it's almost like we're captured by it to some extent as an. Amount of us that gets consumed by the conflict and probably will be left with the net result afterwards as well, whether that's feeling embarrassed or better relationships or worse relationships with the people around us. And that's also true for the observers, for us observing if we're another parent on the sideline or whether the same team. The other team, yeah, all of us become in some ways parties to the conflict by the choices that we make. Next, do you have any questions that you ask people like this to get them to reflect on that or as a way of developing insight? So the timing of these questions, I think, makes sense, is really important. Simon, as I said, I'm curious about what's the goal here for this person, and they probably don't know it in the moment. Now, to ask that question is going to bring a challenge to them at a level that they probably can't tolerate. In the first defensive. That's right. That's right. So before I can have that question, if I was going to engage with this parent, and that's. We'll come back to that choice perhaps. But if I was going to engage with this parent before exploring what's happening for them and where this is coming from, they're going to be needed to support, to de escalate the emotions and the intensity of how they're engaging so that the conversation can actually happen in a useful and fruitful way. So the first step is always going to be to seek to understand what's occurring for them and to support them in a very active way, to feel really heard in the moment before we could invite them into an exploration of where that's coming from or how to solve it. Right. But before that discussion, you would really focus on de escalation, lowering the energy. Lowering the intensity, slowing down a little bit. Those kind of aspects? Well, yes, if I'm going to engage at all. So if I'm cast as that other parent that's sitting on the sidelines, I mean, particularly given the professional background you and I both have, the temptation is always to leap in and to support a path forward. Well, it is some conflict. I can mediate my way out of this. That's right. But it is important to think what purpose I think if I, first of all, if I am going to engage, what's my goal here and whose needs am I meeting and why? Is my goal to make the environment more comfortable for everybody? Is the goal to support that parent's 9 year old to feel more comfortable and enjoy the game? To what extent am I concerned about my child's relationship with that child? Am I concerned about the ref's experience? What are the dynamics between the other parents? There's a lot of questions to ask myself and often we're doing this very rapidly, aren't we, in the moment, but to consider whose needs am I meeting? Am I meeting mine? Because I think I could add value. Here or I want to save my energy or whatever. Right. Let's make sure this is purposeful. Whose needs would I be meeting and why would I be meeting those needs before choosing to engage? So a couple of deep breaths to help your thinking get clear before you do anything, I suppose. Right. And also, is this the right time? Yeah. Is this. I might think it's worth engaging, but is it in the moment and am I the right person to engage? I have sufficient rapport with this parent to effectively de escalate. Is there another parent that could do that more effectively because of their existing relationship structurally? Is that the role of the team manager or indeed of the ref to manage that situation? Because just because I could doesn't mean I should or that I'm the best possible person to navigate it. Yeah. The challenge is, of course, we're making. All those decisions without quantitative data, so we don't really know if I'm the best or not. But that's right. They're imperfect choices, aren't they? But what a useful thing to reflect on whatever you land on, whatever you decide, at least you're not rushing in. Almost subconsciously and just reacting as opposed. To taking that pause and giving yourself a chance to respond instead. And I think your comment of taking a breath first actually in where you're going there is probably you've got to actually make sure you're in the calmer space yourself. If you actually have to wiggle Your toes, feel the feeling of your socks in your boots, or whatever you need to do just to anchor yourself in the present moment. I have to admit, I. I find these ones even when I'm dealing with real mediation clients. Sometimes people talk about an issue and I think it is just such a. Nothing burger, like it's such a non issue. It's not a big deal. Why are we getting our knickers in. A twist about a small little thing like this, like a kid's soccer match. But for the parents that are in the moment in this scenario, or for. The mediation clients that I'm working with pretty frequently, it is a massive deal. It certainly feels like a massive deal for them, that investment. They've got a lot of something invested in this issue and they have a very hard time walking away from it or letting go of it. And I can remember I used to. Ask clients questions like, what's the big deal? Like, why is this getting under your skin so much? It doesn't sound like it's that serious, what's happening. It was almost insulting to them, like, how dare you dismiss the thing that I'm angry about. You need to understand what navel, you know, d a hole my ex partner is or whatever. And then it would just probably initiate a bit more of a tirade. But just acknowledging it feels really full on, doesn't it? These situations can be really tricky. Oh, man. Managing a ref that's got a different style to us, it can be so frustrating, especially when you see your kids sitting on the sideline. Like, we almost need to normalize and acknowledge that this feels really intense and. This feels really important. And then let's think about the best. Way to deal with it. And ironically then you often realize, oh, it's not such a big deal. And actually I don't need to do anything right now, or there's nothing that I can do right now, or whatever. It's this really interesting sort of irony, isn't it, that the things that feel really big in the moment aren't. But you can't just deal with that so directly as to say, I think that you're overreacting. Do you come across similar situations yourself? Absolutely. And just watching you talk about it, Simon, and even, you know, kind of clenching your fists as you describe that scenario. Not for you personally, but they're trying to understand why it is so important to them. My head drifted straight back to being on the side of a netball court, actually. So not that a similar scenario, but the conflict ended up being accidentally between me and another parent on the same team because we were in a. We, the girls were in a final game. And I've never been that invested in sport. You talked about where these investments come from for people. For me, I've never been that invested in the outcome. I'm just my value system. And the motivators for me have been more focused on are they these young people being active, are they having fun, are they being good sports and are they trying really hard. Right? So you hear those things and that reflects my personal value system. And so I watched the girls struggling and, you know, a few goals being missed and cheerily shouting from the crying out from the playground. Never mind girls, you're trying so hard, well done. And I had a parent turn around to me, you know, literally with the fist clenched full on, right up in my face, yelling vigorously, don't say never mind. It matters. And at the time I remember thinking, okay, wow, fascinating. But what struck me, I mean, the conflict didn't proceed from there. I just said, okay, you know, thanks for letting me know that's really important to you, you know, step back, de escalate. And we had laugh about it afterwards. But what struck me was exactly what you're saying is that our value systems were very different. For her, her daughter's participation in sport and in netball was her daughter's self efficacy. You could see this parent was tied to the outcomes and the success and her mindset was, well, look, you know, no ice cream for you tonight if you girls don't win. Right? And mine was like, I would be disappointed if you weren't good sports. Now that's, that's not right or wrong. We brought different value systems to the side of the netball court and you. Can'T probably change those kind of values at least quickly, can you? No, no. I mean, many years on the side of many sporting contexts and my value systems haven't changed. And I'm not saying that mine are right or wrong, they just are mine. Yeah, I think it's similar in separated parenting mediations or workplace conflict when there's that real difference in values. Often it's about negotiating. Hey, it's going to play out in. Practice, like what are we going to do? We've got these different perspectives. To some extent, they're both valid. But what would that mean in terms. Of the day to day, like the common expectations that we share? It's not so much about convincing the other person's right as negotiating that we're. On the same page. Right. I mean, that's exactly Right. If I had spent three or four hours trying to convince her to change her perspective, I'm unlikely to succeed. Right. That her view and value systems will have been formed through. Excuse me. Through her childhood experiences, through the parenting style she received. Or. Or a reaction to that. Yeah. Certainly could be all of those different. All of the above. Or maybe she's had too much coffee that morning. Maybe. Maybe. Or a bad week. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. An argument with a different parent that was saying that's okay when they were 40 down or something like that. Thank you so much, Helen. Let's have a look at the next case study. But I'm sure there's some elements that resonate with a lot of other people in what you've shared there as well. I'm just. I want to shut my window for a moment, Helen. The rain's just started and it's really loud. Sure. We've had some beautiful rain down here this weekend. Well, let's have a look at the next case study here. We're looking at a conflict in a local neighborhood. We've got one of our neighbors that's upset about a different person who lives on the street driving too fast and. Probably hell in a similar situation where we're needing to decide whether or not. We engage at all, and if so, what do we do? So I'll read the case study now and then maybe we can have a bit of discussion and share some thoughts. You are chatting with a neighbour, Mark, who begins complaining about another person who lives on your street. Mark says the neighbour has been driving incredibly dangerously and they are completely sick of it. He says he's going to knock on the other guy's door and give him a piece of his mind. Mark has previously had altercations with other neighbors in the neighbourhood, leading to yelling, matches and rifts. I'll share the scenario so we can see ourselves a little bit better this time around. Helen, the neighbourhood conflict, initial thoughts. Look, the starting point for me is always in the same place. I think Simon and you went to that question of do we engage or do we not engage? But it comes back to each time, if I am going to engage, whose needs am I going to matter and why? That in parallel with curiosity around what's going on for Mark, because the two sit together, I can't effectively make decisions around whether I want to engage unless I'm gathering some information and being curious about what's going on for Mark. Otherwise I'm making assumptions. And so, particularly in this situation, a little bit different to the side of the soccer field where perhaps there isn't time for that long conversation. I could have a conversation with Mark and really try to try to understand what's happening for him, what's driving this. Now, there's. There's quite possibly a backstory here and I could well have been having many conversations with him, maybe that. Maybe I do have enough knowledge already. But let's assume for a minute that I haven't spoken with him about it. I've heard that he's argued with others and this is the first time he's really talking to me. If that's the case, then I want to ask him lots of questions. Mark, what is it? What behaviours have you observed when you say he's driving dangerously? What is it that you've seen him do? What is it that you fear will happen when he's driving dangerously? And then in the process of doing that, as I ask those questions, I'm going to want to intersperse that with lots of acknowledging of his perspective. Now, I'm not going to agree ever with what he's saying because I'm only ever hearing one side of the story. I don't know whether what the facts are and whether the other person is or isn't driving dangerously, but that is Mark's view. So I'm going to ask curious questions and then press replay on the tape recorder and just play back what I've. Heard him say using his words. You mean words? Yeah. It sounds like you're really concerned about. I gather what you fear here is. And then follow up questions, always open ones. Can you tell me a bit more, Mark, about how often you've seen that that happen? And I can hear one of the options you're considering is going and knocking on his door. What's your thoughts on what will happen if you do that? What other options have you considered? Lots and lots of open questions and all that, always adding summaries in between. So I'm going to start in a curious space to gather information before I consider whether I'm going to express a view, whether I'm going to engage as a stakeholder or hop on that mediator hat, or whether I'm going to choose to. Then having gathered information, might choose to step out altogether. Gathering information is probably the first point for me. What about you? You are a stakeholder in this. This one, isn't it? It's a little bit different, I suppose. On the sideline of the soccer team, you sort of are a stakeholder as well. Often we are stakeholders. I was going to say, I suppose similar that I would also decide whether or not to engage, but given the fact that Mark's talking to me and the other guy is not here, I think I almost always would listen to him. Like in practice, unless I was in a rush or I just was so. Annoyed at Mark or I was tired. Or something, I probably would listen to him at the least. So to be honest, I think I would. Even though I might consciously be thinking, oh, I don't know if I want to get mixed up in all of this kind of thing, but I probably would listen. But even, even that's a little bit of a risk. Like I. I'm very conscious of being brought into these triangle kind of relationships where it's you and me against somebody else. And I think it's a really dangerous kind of intimacy. Almost like it's a dangerous kind of connection. We feel great, we feel like we're really good friends because we' the same. Team against this other person. But inherently the I think then what we're working with is a culture where at a different day it might be. You two against me. Do you know what I mean? It's not all of us in, together. In collaborative, it's me against you and it's who's on my team and who's on the other team kind of thing. So I'm really nervous almost about that with Mark. I don't want to be drawn into bitching about the other guy and what. You know, whatever else he's done and all that kind of stuff even because it's the kind of stuff that I have trouble forgetting. Like if I've got something I need to concentrate on this afternoon I'll be replaying the conversation that I had with Mark in my head. So that nuance of do I get. Involved or not get involved? Because I am in. I've sort of, I think, been a little bit snake bitten by a few. Friendships and a few relationships with neighbours and I've learned just to tread a little bit more carefully, a little bit more slowly. Those real best friends, from the moment that you meet, they're good. And sometimes you will be best friends forever. But sometimes that can shift pretty dramatically and there's a 180 when they start bitching about someone else that you're friends with or something. So I'd probably listen to Mark, but. Really do my best not to share my perspective, if you know what I mean. Like, we do that all the time as mediators. It sounds like what you're saying is this from your perspective, it's this. From how you see things, it's. It's this. From what you've observed, it's this. From what you're thinking about, it's this. So your perspective is keeping your grandkids safe and it feels really disgusting when you're looking at them playing on the road and the thought of this neighbor coming through. I get where you're coming from, but. I'm not saying I agree a little bit like you. You're right. I'd probably say I can see your perspective, I can see your logic. I can understand that. What do you think's most important? What are the priorities? Similar to yourself, but probably my focus. Would be on the problem solving part of it, of what are we going to do here? Okay, you can go and talk to him. What are you going to say? How's that going to play out? What if he gets pissed off at. You and slams his door in your face? What if he says yes, but then he keeps driving fast afterwards? Like a little bit of that Exploration around the tentative possibilities. And honestly, with the mark kind of characters, a lot of the time, they just cool down from the fact that you've taken it. Obviously they might not do anything. I think part of what you're naming there, Simon, is it's about the hat we're putting on in the moment and the role we're choosing to play. Right. As you talk about the potential for triangulation, my inclination, and it probably reflects the training, but my inclination is to start in those moments in community by putting on my accidental mediator hat. And rather than taking an invested stakeholder participant stance, to start from the hat of I have incomplete information here. Mediators, we live in a world where you hear two truths all the time and you're not choosing between realities you're accepting to typically fundamentally opposed realities and supporting people to find a path forward. So in that information gathering phase, my instinct is to put on my accidental mediator hat, engage with the mindset that I want to be curious and interested, but as you said, not seek to agree with, to validate. I want him to feel acknowledged and heard and understood, but I don't want to amplify his perspective and consolidate it by perceiving I'm aligning with it at all. Now, I might choose to take off that accidental mediator hash when I've gathered further information, spoken to other neighbors and gathered that actually everybody feels the same way. I might choose to observe what's happening more consciously myself and then note that I Share his concerns potentially. Therefore I choose to take off that accidental mediator hat and put on a more conscious stakeholder advocacy hat. Right. But it's about, I think partially about the roles we choose to play. That's a great way of thinking about it. I beg your pardon, Were you going. To say something else? No, no, I don't think so. Yeah. How involved do we get? And then if I care about it too, I'm involved. You could almost then elevate it to. Well, it's not just this guy. There's other people that drive on the street. Right. Maybe let's think about a more comprehensive solution or a more long term option or whatever. It might be like having a lollipop man mount the front of your house or something to install a speed bump. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Traffic timing solutions, structural solutions might be part of it. A sign that says slow down. Kids playing. Maybe that would make Mark feel good. That's the end of what anything else changes. Someone's listened to me, someone's taken me seriously. Right. Yeah. I mean there's lots of dimensions and from a structural perspective too. Whose role is it to play what function in this community? Right. And I might choose to put on. It is about the hats we wear, I think. Am I wearing an accidental mediator hat? Am I wearing a homeowner, parent or grandparent hat? And. Or is there a role here for counsel or police? What. Who is playing what role? And to make sure that I'm not overstepping what's appropriate in terms of my. Role in society, of what's expected and what you can do, but even like the level of authority that you have, like there's some things that a police officer can do that you can't or a local council could consider. Right. They're such good points. I'm just, as a final thought on this one of Mark. I'm wondering if maybe Mark is retired and he's got a little bit too much time on his hands and that could explain it. It might just be that he wants something to potentially. Potentially. And you know what? I don't know anything about his background. You know, has there been loss attached to traffic incidents in the past? It would be very easy for me to make assumptions. I want to be curious. Yeah, that's so true. Thank you so much, Helen. Let's have a look at the next case study. I'll flick to the. The school lunch conflict. We're looking at a bit of conflict going on within volunteers that are working in the canteen or the tuck shop in the local school. So I'll read the scenario first and then again we can maybe have a bit of discussion about it. So here's the case study. You're organizing a schedule for the school canteen, which is becoming increasingly difficult as a number of volunteer parents have had run ins. They've had arguments, disagreements, there have been arguments about hot topics, about topics like how healthy the food should be, leading to long email chains back and forth, ccing in others. You decide that it's time to do something. The only problem is you aren't sure what to do. Well, Helen, I'm sure you've got all of the answers for this one and a perfectly developed game plan here. What do you reckon about this? What jumps out at you? This is quite different to the other two scenarios, I think, because I, I have a role to play organizing the roster for the canteen. What goes with that role is responsibilities as well. Some responsibilities, I think, to keep the volunteer environment safe for all the participants. And so I might want to gather a little bit more information here. But if I've been watching communication as escalate between community members, my instinct is actually to move towards some containment strategies quite promptly, to move the dialogue and environment into a safer place as much as possible. And then there is lots that can be done to bring people on the journey. You and I started today talking about how much I value people being able to make their own informed choices and to be able to take people on the journey. But I also think in a situation like this, I have a responsibility to create safety to the maximum extent possible. And so my instinct is actually to swing first in this scenario to putting in place some structural mechanisms that bring safety to the environment as quickly as possible, noting that as soon as you do that, the conflict hasn't gone away, just shifted gears. Right. And so it'll pop up in other modes potentially. So we can't assume structure. And when I say structural solutions, I mean things like do I change the channel by which people communicate? Do I move away from email, you. Mean, and do something away from email potentially, Do I use an app to enable them to sign up for the volunteer slots? Do they want. Do I send some. An email establishing, here's some ground rules and I'm really keen to consult and get your views. But in the first instance, these are the ground rules we'll put in place. To keep communication itself, you mean? Yeah, great idea. I'd go first of all to some structure, but then create space for resistance, for pushback, for alternative views coming to me rather than Encouraging that dialogue with each other. Of course, there's more work to do. Right, because if you push that underground, does it pop up in the canteen, the tuck shop, while they're volunteering, does it pop up in the playground? So structural solutions don't tend to remove it. They. It often shifts gears and pops up in other locations. So what I'm talking about, I suppose is an and not an or, but containment in the first instance, I think. What about you? It's a really interesting one because as. I mentioned, we recorded this same discussion. Last week looking at it and when I first wrote the case study, it didn't jump out at me as anything particularly significant. To be honest, I was choosing something that was kind of a non issue because the main focus is on the. Process itself as opposed to the issue. But then as we talked about it last week, you were saying that, well, it's possible that some of the parents might be sensitive to it because their children have been through particular experiences with eating disorders or this kind of thing. Or I mean, it could be just so many layers of anything that you just don't know what's going on. For the people that are writing that angry email kind of chain, but that, that topic of safety, and you see it in concepts like duty of care. The organization has a duty of care to ensure this is a safe workplace. But that's not a binary thing that's achieved or not achieved. And it's not like a constant thing that things are always as safe as they need to be and there's no difference in safeguards. Safety. It's very difficult to measure quantitatively what you're talking about. You can measure critical incidents or injuries on the work site or staff mental. Health claims or something else like, what's. It called, the work cover kind of insurance cover that covers you when you're off on long problems with a note from your doctor or whatever. But that's not really measuring safety, do you know what I mean? It's. They're all pretty inaccurate substitutes for what we're actually talking about. And I think for me as a, as a mediator now I've been doing it for over 10 years, so I spent a lot of time thinking about conflict. It's a really challenging topic to discuss within teams, within organizations or families. Even like if a fan, if a parent's sending their kid to the, the other parent who they've separated from. I'm worried about safety, but what am I worried about? Like how safe should things be? How do we even like figure out how to intervene with this aspect, let alone measure where we're at. That's a very challenging sort of amorphous topic to discuss, I think. I don't know that it means we shouldn't talk about it. I still think it's important. You probably need to begin with the understanding that we're all going to be starting from a different subjective point of. What level of risk or what level. Of difficult conversations, or what level of criticism, or what level of anything we're comfortable with. Because you could always say it's not safe. If my boss gives me feedback, I don't feel safe. But that doesn't mean that it's not appropriate for your boss to give you feedback. Right. So it's very challenging. And I think if we were peeling the onion and figuring out what's going on underneath all of that is a challenge. With the way that people interpret pain. Like, is pain and suffering okay or not. Should pain and suffering be avoided? When. In which cases? Because if we're talking about an email that might. Someone might be offended by or they feel bad because their kid's affected, like it's. Their feelings are hurt. It's not like a measurable thing. I mean, maybe you could scan their brain and look at different sections activated with an MRI or something, but it's not. You're not gonna be able to say. I'm 30% sadder than I was yesterday. Because of that comment that you made. But on the other hand, we have a duty of care to ensure that there's this safe forum to put to work and to have these kind of discussions. I. I just always end up naming. That dilemma with the people that I. Work with and saying to them, well, I suppose the important thing is how are you going to treat each other? What's going to be happening? What would be the structure look like that helps you feel more safe? So it becomes almost an aspiration that we're working towards instead of like a prerequisite that if things aren't safe, we need to do something. Well, of course. But you also need to acknowledge that you might not get that very clear. Traffic light signal kind of thing of red light, green light, yellow light kind of thing. I think you often don't. And the notion that safety isn't a binary, I think makes a lot of sense, particularly on a topic like food and the concept of what is healthy food or not healthy food. I'm conscious that what the stats are in Australia around that and that that's where I'm based. Yeah. So I'M sure this, it's not just Australia, but the stats in Australia are that 1.1 million Australians, which is about 4% of the population, are living with eating disorders. About 4% and about 10 and a half percent of the population will have or will experience eating disorders at some point in their life. There that come from the Butterfly Foundation. And so if we think about that in those terms, if you've got a community of parents who are volunteering in a tuck shop, what I don't know is what their individual personal baselines are around, what they can tolerate without the conversation pushing them into actually what could be a very unhealthy or dangerous zone from them, from a mental health perspective. And so I think the care we need to take around safety is not. Is acknowledging that we can't presume that everybody enters this conversation from the same mental health baseline at the same point in time. People move in and out of good and bad mental health over their lifetime. That's true with eating disorders, as with many mental illnesses. But what we don't know very often is what's sitting under the surface and what the degree of vulnerability is. And I might come into the conversation thinking, I don't love conversations about food and healthy eating. I'd prefer to be respectful of everybody's value system. But I'm certainly not going to be made hurt or more vulnerable by the conversation where there are others that in having that dialogue, we could create more risk in their world and trigger something for them which adds more vulnerability. And so again, coming back to that role we play, if our part of our role is to keep the environment safe, we need to acknowledge that there could be some in the mix, either as a parent or indeed a parent of a child navigating an eating disorder. You know, we talk about 4% of the population. Well, when you think about how many of those parents might be also concerned for their children, the percentage of that group might even be higher. Yeah, some family member or a nephew or niece or something. Yeah. So it isn't just about, in that situation. It's not then just about the value systems that we bring and our differing views, the different research, the different knowledge bases we bring, our different perspectives on the way our individual bodies react to food. It's also then about the safety of well being of a cohort that's in a far more vulnerable place at that point in time. The kids, you mean themselves, the kids. And also the parents, if they're living with an eating disorder too, that could be fueling their thinking. It could be the children, it could be the parents. My instinct to go to how do we contain safety in the first instance and then what next? Right. Laughing about the safety of having a block of chocolate in my fridge. And it wasn't very safe last night because I trod on that landmine very, very thoroughly. And that's. Yeah, and that's not a bad thing, Simon. Like, anyway, we were perhaps us getting interviewed. The conversation around food's not helpful to the audience. But yeah, it's a good example though of it's a topic that people might not think about as safety. But then as you're saying, this might be the perspective that a lot of people have and it's difficult to divorce it from that. Like to say that this comment's not. Inappropriate, you're not going to convince them about that. It's often better, I think, to focus on the behavior. Okay, so it sounds like when those comments are made that really affects you. So would it be helpful if we could communicate moving forward without that kind of thing? Or it's like, it's not so much like you're making a big deal out of it. It's saying, okay, it's this kind of a situation, it's this kind of issue. It's when the person organizing sends you the roster in this way, that's the thing that affects you. So whether or not you agree with their reason, it's because I grew up like this or my kids been affected by this, you might still be able to negotiate just how you're going to treat each other. What would the day to day interactions look like? How are you going to manage the roster? Taking it off email. And I suppose then it would mean we might need to then be assertive if we've said to people, this is the way it's going to be, or I've spoken with you all and this is what I think would work moving forward. We're going to make these changes to the menu or we're going to structure things a little bit differently to some extent. That has to be a full stop. It has to be like, this is what we're doing. I'm the person that's in charge of. The schedule and this is what's going to be happening with moving forward. Happy to discuss it and tweak it, but this is the plan. And then if you're getting pushback, you might then need to talk to the volunteer and say, look what's going on? This is what we expected. Sounds like you're still upset about this or you're not willing to do this or whatever. And it might mean then that you need to make decisions like not having volunteers or moving people into different working days so that they're not overlapping or all of those kind of elements. Reducing the amount of time you give people, you might need to reduce the amount of authority that some of the volunteers within the team have. If that's creating disruption and conflict, it's probably the discussion is the beginning of it and a way of figuring out where you should be going and getting your compass. And then after that you need to. Then chart the plan and then follow the path. You do, you do. And I, my head slipped back to the first phase of my working life and that journey of nabi, navigate planning change and navigating change and conscious. We're talking about moving decisively to create safety in the moment. But because you make a change that will always have follow through consequences. If I've got the time, my inclination would be then to reach out to those who I know have been communicating most strongly in the dialogue that I can see the emotions are running more highly for. More strongly for and invite individual dialogue between them and me. You know, so just a coffee or a chat and to give them space if, to express their frustration with me, if they're not happy with the containment strategies I've put in place. Because I'd rather that that conflict is allowed to emerge and come up directly with me than bubble up and pop up in another context. That's right. Invite the dialogue. Let them feel heard, help them feel acknowledged. And. And still, as you observed, hold the line around the decisions I've made around what's going to create it. A safer environment. A good combination, I think, Helen, because I would have just said too bad, too sad. This is how it is. I've heard all this before you've had a chance to have you say, I'm not going to meet you for another coffee. What a lovely way of ending with our different perspectives and probably different styles that we would use. I think part of what happens for me there is I see the opportunity for psychoeducation to Simon and that strong emotion, emotional reaction might support them not having been able to see the other person's perspective. I completely agree. Yeah, yeah. But it depends on how much time I've got available. You've got to be practical with what energy you've got. But I mean, I've worked with you, Helen. We've known each other for a while and you do plant a lot of seeds as you go through your day, it's like, I'll just be a bit kind to this person or be a bit reflective in what they're telling me or something. You're helping them, but you might not get to see the change that happens to afterwards. It might be planting the seed and then sending them off. And maybe they'll remember that Helen listened to them and gave them a bit of time so that next time they're feeling hard done by, no one listens. Well, there might be a point of difference now, whereas before it was always true, so to speak, and becoming a self, self fulfilling prophecy, I think to some extent with some of these people. Creating ripples for change. Well, there you go. And ripple learning, Helen, is ripple learning.com. Is that the best place for people. To go to learn more about you. And your training Workshops on conflict communication, the assertiveness, the accidental mediator kind of areas, or other courses like stress management, self care, burnout prevention or accidental counsel is another one that you do that I really like as well. Helen, thank you so much for joining me. It's been really enjoyable. Thank you. You're welcome. I've enjoyed it too. Thanks, Simon. Well, hopefully we'll have a chance to do it again, but otherwise, what if we leave it there? That's correct.