Class 1: Challenges and Opportunities as you enter the Workforce

Class 1: Challenges and Opportunities as you enter the Workforce > Managing Societal and Workplace Conflicts: Interview with Mary Rowe > Video:Managing Societal and Workplace Conflicts: Interview with Mary Rowe

• What is an ombudsman or a ombudsperson or ombuds- whatever the appropriate term is? And what does a person in that role do? An organizational ombud- and there’s lots of us now around the world.
• Could you describe what some of these tools are that are needed for people in your role to be effective? Well, people in my role need various kinds of tools.
• We think of a sense of humor, integrity, intelligence, caring.
• Especially important, especially because of what you were saying before about the origins of conflict, we think of ombudsmen as needing to have a lot of cross-cultural experience.
• I think you’re also thinking about what needs to be in an organizational system to deal with conflicts in the workplace and with students, and so on.
• Lots of people who think about this question think first about, do we have a formal grievance procedure? And that, of course, is a very important question for the most grievous problems and the ones that need a management decision.
• Most problems will yield to people thinking about their own interests and those of others at what people- at what organizations think of as the lowest possible level.
• At the last end of the line, we would think of formal grievance procedures, and then there are lots and lots of steps in between.
• What would some of those options be? When people think about ombudsmen or when they think about taking an ombuds job, they often think about conflict management as dispute resolution.
• Point of fact, very good ombuds and those in place for a long time generally spend more than half their time helping people help themselves to learn how to deal with conflicts and even to prevent them.
• So helping people help themselves, listening to people talk about their issues, getting them to articulate their concerns, having more formal consultation in organizations and forums for affinity groups, and maybe sometimes counsels of people coming together.
• I was overwhelmed by having 100 people come to me in my first week, no two of them with the same issue.
• What I did do with the total backing of my boss, the president, was to get any two people who had the same issue together with each other to try to figure out what kind of systems change might help deal with that issue or even prevent it.
• Well, I like the emphasis that you put on systems, that these different options need to be there, because people have different preferences for how they approach these issues.
• You have been very skillful in helping people find something they’re comfortable with.
• I think that’s really critical to making these work.
• Many people nowadays remember him, a very prominent psychiatrist and a neurologist.
• There are hostile acts, as all of us know, and there’s a great deal of small acts of racism, and religious intolerance, and sexism, and so on.
• I thought to myself, if some of these problems come from unconscious bias, and there’s no way we can be aware, without a lot of work at least, to be aware of our own unconscious bias, what hope is there for me? So I read and I thought.
• Psychology gave me a clue, which is that if one always behaves in a respectful way and seeks out that which can be affirmed in everything around one in one’s work group, always genuinely, of course, things that really are going well, if one’s whole life is spent in genuine affirmation of other people’s excellence and in respectful behavior, you can block your own unconscious bias.
• So by affirming good behavior and recognizing it and providing psychological rewards and role modeling in your own behavior, you often make it contagious for others in one’s work group, it sounds like.
• I want to turn to another idea that you have championed and used so effectively over the years, and that’s something that we call bystanders, that you call bystanders in particular.
• The term bystander effect is often used to mean somebody who stands by and lets racism or unsafe behavior or something terrible happen.
• I collected everything that people told me in my office that they had considered when they saw either wonderful behavior or terrible behavior.
• What options did they consider? And it’s very rare that they considered going to authorities, and mostly they did want to act.
• So can you give us an example or examples of actions that you’ve seen people take that have been effective? Well, again, your question is a perfect one.
• Because in real life, people often don’t act on the spot, in the moment.
• They might act on the spot in the moment, but they think about it, and they worry about it.
• Some of the options they choose would be to go home and talk with trusted family, or in the workplace with trusted friends and peers.
• Like, boss, if something like this were to happen, what would you think about it? What could the organization do with a problem like this? Other possibilities would be that they would get a generic approach to deal with it.
• I’m thinking now, who do I trust in my workplace? Who would come with me to talk with a boss? I wonder if I could write a note.
• Maybe I could write a note and have them think about this kind of problem in my section of my organization.
• Well, I like the way in which you describe how you talk with people to generate options like this.
• Maybe really skilled people or people who have a mindset can interrupt behavior on the spot, but often it’s reflecting, OK, what could I do tomorrow? What could I do today in retrospect? And it’s finding those different approaches that’s so key.
• So if I’m hearing you right, Mary, what you’re saying is organizations really need to have respected, independent neutrals who are supported by a conflict management system with multiple options, because people have different approaches to dealing with workplace problems, and they need different outlets for addressing them.
• They need to have tools and training so that not only are the professionals good at addressing these issues, but so are managers, and so are frontline employees, so that they can be ready to put these tools to use, and they have to trust these tools.
• You have to create a culture in the organization that empowers people to take action to help themselves and help others safely.
• One is if you who are listening to this is just an individual by yourself, and maybe even young and you think you have no power, you always have options, just one person, to make things better wherever you are.
• If you who are listening to this are a manager, think about a systems approach within your organization to help other people to help you with a strategic plan to build an affirming workplace.
• Thank you for all that you do and all that you have done, not only here in our organization, but around the world to help others build these kinds of systems and capacity.