Here's the big question: do you have a system in place, more or less, where conflict can take place safely, without a ton of pain, destructiveness, or violence?
In countless associations, there is a system: the Declaration and By-laws, rules and regs, policies and procedures. All helpful tools, but they do not create a place where conflict can live. In fact, the framework they provide can make having conflict confusing, risky, and scary.
Other institutions have rules but have created restorative systems. In many thousands of schools in the U.S. and around the world, for example, you have "peace rooms". They should more properly be called "conflict rooms": everybody in the school knows that's where you go to have a conflict--safely, respectfully, and nonviolently.
I visited such a room last year in one school--Sullivan High School on Chicago's North Side. In a very integrated neighborhood, with 20 percent Black kids, 10 percent Arabic origin, 20 percent white, plenty of Hispanic, and so on, the principal took me to the Peace Room on the second floor. He told me the worst class of school disturbances had gone from 120 to 25 a year--in twelve months!!
And for a visitor walking from a condo workshop to the rest room and back, the hallways exuded calm, safety and community spirit. A Chicago Public School high school.
Does your condo association have a restorative system? Send an observer from your Board to Sullivan High School to learn how to do it.
In countless associations, there is a system: the Declaration and By-laws, rules and regs, policies and procedures. All helpful tools, but they do not create a place where conflict can live. In fact, the framework they provide can make having conflict confusing, risky, and scary.
Other institutions have rules but have created restorative systems. In many thousands of schools in the U.S. and around the world, for example, you have "peace rooms". They should more properly be called "conflict rooms": everybody in the school knows that's where you go to have a conflict--safely, respectfully, and nonviolently.
I visited such a room last year in one school--Sullivan High School on Chicago's North Side. In a very integrated neighborhood, with 20 percent Black kids, 10 percent Arabic origin, 20 percent white, plenty of Hispanic, and so on, the principal took me to the Peace Room on the second floor. He told me the worst class of school disturbances had gone from 120 to 25 a year--in twelve months!!
And for a visitor walking from a condo workshop to the rest room and back, the hallways exuded calm, safety and community spirit. A Chicago Public School high school.
Does your condo association have a restorative system? Send an observer from your Board to Sullivan High School to learn how to do it.
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