Mirrors and Echos

Breathing between Intentions and Impacts in Conflict Transformation

The more I work in conflict, the more I believe that we are all mirrors of each other.

I hear the echoes of hurt and longing; I feel the interconnected fears and hopes in each conflict mediation I do. Whenever I am called into service, I feel like it’s only a matter of time before both people/parties saying more or less the same thing: “I don’t want to be judged.” “I want to be seen and understood.” “I think the other person doesn’t recognize the extent of their power.” “I think the other person has more power than they realize.” “I am hurt by them ignoring me.” “I am hurt by them not reaching out to me.”

This conflict echo has reverberated for me especially over the past few years, in my work with clients in organizations, communities, and companies — so much so that I feel it is a strong pattern that can be helpful to identify, as we learn to build community, strengthen relationships, and bridge divides.

I felt this sense of ‘conflict is a mirror’ when I was recently supporting a few folks who are part of an intentional land project here in California. When we started the process, both Brad and Josephine* seemed pretty convinced that they were the wronged one. Their grievance list was high, and their tolerance for the other person was low. The other partners in the land project found themselves in a complex dynamic, alternately empathizing with and disagreeing with their friends and fellow collaborators. The whirlpool seemed to be in full effect, as they kept swirling around each other with no resolution.

As we slowed down, and Brad and Josephine each started sharing more of their truths and listening more to the other, the mirror became evident. A crucial breakthrough moment happened when Josephine said she had wanted an apology from Brad for his reactive behavior, and he showed her the text message with that apology, sent just shortly after the latest and biggest breakdown happened between them. It was there, dated and sent in his phone. And it had never arrived in hers. The subsequent follow-up message from Brad had arrived, which Josephine took as callous and cavalier, whereas it made complete sense to him, given his earlier apology. Her lack of response was then hurtful to him, and so the swirl continued.

Technology was a trickster in this situation, for sure, but this moment also revealed how they each had created and solidified stories about each other — which, not surprisingly, were mirror images of the other. “He isn’t conscious or considerate” was matched with “She doesn’t care about me,” while “She doesn’t follow through on her word” was paired with “He said he had my back and he doesn’t show it.” As we slowed down, reflected and found the points of breakdown in their communication, and where the one-sided stories had taken root and cemented themselves, Brad and Josephine began to see each other more clearly. They also began to see that they were actually longing for something similar — to be acknowledged, cared for and supported by each other with their different challenges.

After about four hours of conscious attention between the two of them, Josephine and Brad seemed ready to shift their three years of breakdown. By the end of the second session, they were able to offer and receive a genuine hug from each other. They clarified their commitments to each other, and they offered apologies to each other. And they are now slowly entering into a new phase of building more trust together and collectively working through their individual and shared challenges. It will take time to dig out the entrenched stories, and yet the mirror has revealed itself and is something we can continue to call forward, to support the re-building process.

One of the tools that was quite helpful in this effort was shared with me by my friend, and fellow YES! Jammer, Jeff Carolin, who learned it from a workshop he attended by Betty Pries. It focuses on Intention and Impact, and the gap and relationship between them. A depiction of the tool is below.

It starts with the Action — what everyone sees because it happens in the public space. This could be a conflict and/or simply an event, something that more than one person is present for or experiences. Behind the Action is an Intention. It could be conscious or unconscious, and either way, when this is teased out, it usually is something that makes sense to the person who initiated the Action, usually with some kind of backstory. The Intention is held in private, generally only known to that person and not visible to others. Then, this Action has an Impact of some kind on a person or group. This Impact is also usually held in private, not visible to others, but also connected to some kind of backstory that explains why this Action was felt or experienced in a particular way. The gap between the Intention and the Impact is filled in with some meaning by our sense-making brains. This can become a grievance story, or some kind of ‘evidence’ to support a case against the other.

Here’s the clincher: I judge myself based on my Intentions, while I judge others based on their Impacts. I want to be absolved when I share what I was intending, and I want to punish others for when I am hurt by their actions.

Note: I don’t like to generalize, and I invite you to consider that you too may have the same pattern. It seems to be fairly universal, as an experience of the panic zone, where I stop listening and go into my reactive brain — defending my Actions with my Intentions, and/or attacking the other because of their Impact on me.

I venture that almost all conflict exists in this gap between the Intention and Impact, and almost all of conflict transformation and relationship restoration has to do with revealing this gap and acknowledging the various vantage points, backstories and meaning-making around the Action.

It gets complicated, however, when the Actions begin to pile up onto each other. I have come to understand that conflict doesn’t grow linearly; it grows exponentially. So one plus one doesn’t equal two, it equals four; plus one, equals 10; plus one equals 25. There is an exponential growth in intensity, entrenchment, and story-making. In other words, when all of these Actions add up, with all of the unseen Intentions and Impacts, we get a good conflict mess! A tangle for the ages, one might say.

The key for transformation is the both/and and the breath between them. That is what made the difference for Brad and Josephine. My friend and fellow Jammer, Kalindi Attar and I were recently talking about this need to balance Intentions and Impacts. She shared that in some of her contexts, there is a tendency to focus on Intentions, as a way to explain the Action and build understanding. I shared how the Intention is valuable, and it can also be over-used as a way to avoid reckoning with the Impact. In fact, if it keeps coming up when someone is trying to share the Impact that an Action had on them, then it almost becomes a squashing tool — disregarding the person’s feelings and experiences by presenting an ‘escape’ card of Intention.

I understand where this comes from, of course, because it hurts to know that I hurt someone I care about, so I want to explain it away, by saying that it wasn’t my Intention. It’s hard for me to recognize how this can be even more hurtful. This focus on my Intentions actually keeps me from really listening and taking in the person’s pain, and offering some love and apology for it. Withholding those compassionate and humble offerings, under the ego of my Intention, just prolongs the conflict.

Kalindi and I then talked about the flip side. We have also been in conversations where people want to disregard the Intentions entirely and focus solely on Impact. I also understand where this comes from, because when I am hurting, I want the other person to see my pain, and I don’t want anything to take away from it. However, focussing solely on Impact essentializes the human(s) in front of me to only one moment, to only one part of their journey, and misses their wholeness and complexity. An Impact-only approach obstructs the possibility that they acted from a place that made sense to them, and that they could simply have mis-read the situation or just missed-the-mark for me.

If I can understand more where they were coming from, just as they can understand more of what I needed, we will build a stronger relationship. We will learn each other more, as Austin (my beloved) once shared with me, when we were in a conflict together early on in our relationship.

I will say that timing is everything in this Impact and Intention exploration. If the two dimensions are piled on top of each other, one hurdled against the other, the breakdown continues. Intention and Impact are not there to cancel each other out in a framework of scarcity and urgency. Rather, the both/and requires some space and breath between them, so that the concretized stories in the mind have some time to disintegrate and be replaced by new neural pathways. Fresh learnings and understandings settle in slowly. If the conversation is rushed, Intention and Impact get into competition with each other, and the conflict can’t transform.

In other words, all the parties involved need to take time to slow down and be in a place of listening, in their respective stretch zones, for this process to be fruitful. That is where we can both see the mirror within this conflict — how most likely, the needs of one are mirror images of the needs of the other. In the stretch zone is also where we can practice mirroring — the non-violent communication and healing practice — reflecting back what we are hearing from the other person, without added judgement or interpretation. Mirroring not only acknowledges the diversities of Impacts and Intentions, but this practice also gives everyone the opportunity to re-state the experiences and perspectives of the other, taking them in and reflecting them back. That repetition gives the new neural pathways more time to take root and sink in.

For me, in working with folks, I try to expand their often thin or non-existent stretch zone early on, in the discovery phase. That is when I am connecting with each person/party around their understanding of the conflict. I ask them, “What do you see is happening here? How do you think you got here? How is this conflict impacting you? What do you want to be understood in? What do you want to understand more? Where are you curious? What would healing and/or transformation look like to you? What is your role in that change?”

We go through these questions slowly and steadily, and I mirror back to them what I am hearing them say and thus empathize with their perspectives. My intention is to support the person/group to move out of their panic zone — which usually has them frozen or stuck in the one-right-answer punitive approach to conflict — and move into their stretch zone instead — more nuance, more complexity, more willingness to see themselves and the situation with tenderness, more curiosity about the the other person/group, and more sense of possibility, of finding ways forward together. In mirroring them, in reflecting their truth back, they don’t need to fight for it. They know I am listening, and this can bring a sense of spaciousness and ease. Their stretch zones expand, and, inshallah, they are able to bring that expansion and the gift of mirroring to the mediation when it happens.

I have heard so many stories of conflict breakdown, and more and more, I sense that it has to do with Intention and Impact fighting each other in a WWF cage-match. When neither party is ready to listen to the other, much less reduce their death grip on their own grievance story, nothing can shift. I wonder what would be possible if we could slow down and reflect on Intentions and Impacts, and the gaps and the mirrors between them, instead? Where might we find common ground? Where might we co-create new echoes of healing?

I would love to hear where you notice Intentions and Impacts in the conflicts you are working with in your own life and work. Please share in the comments, so we can continue to learn together.

*Names changed to protect confidentiality.