Creating Care-full listening and Conversations between Members of Conflicting Multicultural Groups: The Case

of Israeli Society

Yishai Shalifsenior school psychologist and narrative therapist.runs the school psychological services at the City of Modi'in Ilitco-founder and co-director of the Qesem Center as well as a private practice.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

7:00 – 8:30 PM

Israel time [GMT+2]

Creating Care-full Listening and Conversations between Members of Conflicting Multicultural Groups

The Case of Israeli Society –Yishai Shalif

Introduction

• Director of School Psychological Services in a Jewish Orthodox community.

• Narrative Therapist

• Story of a conference in which met Hyam.

• Involved in a group in Ministry of Education for the advancement of dialogue between conflicting groups in Israel.

• When asked why I invest so much in this endeavors? My parents.

Goals of Lecture

•Theoretical basis

•Overview of steps of the program and tools

• Focus on listening and curious questioning

Sources

• Family Therapy

•Narrative

• Public Conversations Project

Principals and Theory•Different principals

• From different fields: philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, anthropology and critical literature.

• In direction of more: possibilities, flexibility, and choice

1. Principal of meaning• Human beings are meaning making

creatures

• Human beings are motivated by goals, values, dreams and commitments and not only by needs

•There always is a choice of what meaning we ascribe to experiences

2. The Narrative principal •Meaning is organized through stories

(narratives)

• Life and reality are multi-storied

•There are always other potential stories which some could be preferred

3. Principal of Social construction

•Ones identity is constructed constantly in the social context and not only individually

•Human beings Narratives and practices are influenced by norms, social and cultural discourses

• In turn these position people through what gets to be said, who gets to say it an with what authority

4. Principal of the Influence of Power

•What knowledge and discourse gets privileged or marginalized has real effects on people

• Some groups get privileged and some marginalized

•To avoid acknowledging the influence of power is a sort of cooperation with it

5. Principal of deconstructing language

• Language as constructive and not only descriptive

• Externalized rather than internalized language

•Rendering the familiar and taken for granted exotic and unusual

• All the above and more allow and invite the deconstruction of the problem saturated narrative and create a space of relational reflectiveness

6. The DNA Principal •The more specific we become the more

general we will be

• Each cell contains the human code –therefore what ever part or line of the story we touch we get to all that is needed for the process

•The very personal and local many times resonates and in so connects

Guiding Principles for Program

• Preparation

• Groups of up to 20

• Meta-cognition at least at end of sessions

• Start homogeneous groups

• Varying the format

• The program is built chronologically but not all chapters are a must

Chapter 1: Cultural stories

• Roots: personal cultural stories from which we draw strength

•Creating listening

•Using experience close language

• Linking between the life stories of participants

Chapter 2: Resonance - Outsider Witness Response (OWR)

• Story resonating a Story – A way to respond

•What touched / moved you?

• Double anchoring – be specific in what you heard and where it touched you.

•Where did it move you to.

•What curious question do you have on what you heard?

Chapter 3: Declaration of Intentions

•What would you want/like to see happen/not happen during/following the discussion on the subjects in dispute?

•Why? What values/dreams/aspirations does it relate/attest to?

•Which hopes does it relate to?

Chapter 4: Care-Full conversations

• In what situation did you feel comfortable to discus conflictual issues and in which not?

• creating guidelines for multicultural listening and dialogue:

• Speak for yourself – without generalizations

• With out judgment and criticism

• Equal time for all and not interrupting each other

• Coming to agreement on how the guidelines will be kept, including who will be responsible to guard them

Possible Care-full Guidelines• Each person speaks for himself and from his

experience and not on others or the “nature” of things

• Don’t make assumptions, ask and clarify about the intention of the other

• Don’t interfere – lets keep equal time to all

•We will listen patiently without argument

•

•Lets try to keep eye contact and listening body language

•We will avoid disrespect, judgment and criticism towards the other.

•We will try to survive and keep restrained when difficult things are said

•We will set guidelines to preserving the rules: who, when and how.

Chapter 5: Questions from a stance of curiosity and “not knowing”

• Practicing questioning according to guidelines to a stance of ‘not knowing’

• Don’t assume

• Don’t fill in the gaps in the stories you listen to – ask and question

• Deconstruct terms even when they are familiar

•Ask open and curious questions

Curious Listening and Questions Is based on open questions expressing

interest in the other, from a “not knowing” and curious stance.

Asking questions that awaken and create thinking in the other.

Create appreciation and encouragement, feeling of caring and feeling of a true effort to listen and understand him/her.

In contrast, questions that evolve from judgment, assumption, prejudice, without expressing interest and clarifying the intention and meaning of the other are experienced as: disconnecting, judgmental, annoying, blocking, hurting, angering, escalating the argument and disagreement.

What we ask and how we ask leads to what we reveal. And what we reveal will effect how we will continue talking.

Examples of Curious Questions• What do you mean?

• What gets you to say this?

• Illustrate what you are saying with a specific example

• What emotion and thought lie behind your words?

• Tell me more about the meaning of these feelings and thoughts?

• What effect do these feelings and thoughts have on your life?

• What values do they represent for you?

• What dreams do they express?

•Lets try to keep eye contact and listening body language

•We will avoid disrespect, judgment and criticism towards the other.

•We will try to survive and keep restrained when difficult things are said

•We will set guidelines to preserving the rules: who, when and how.

Chapter 6: Group Identity

•Our preferred identity and its meaning to us

•Memories of meaningful occasions in the development of our identity

•Meaningful figures that contributed to the development of our identity

•Multiple identities and group belongings

Chapter 7: Externalizing the problem

• Exercise – The Demons’ Conference

• Externalizing the inter-cultural difficult feelings

• Externalizing Conversation Questions

• Naming

• Relative influence (of the problem) questions

• Evaluation and statement of position towards effects of the problem

• Justification – Why? Intentions, values and dreams

Chapter 8:Persons’ influence on the ‘problem’•Where and when does the person

influence the ‘problem – Demon’

• Learn to know your enemy

•Where and when does the ‘problem’ fail?

•What has the person contributed towards his success in influencing / lessening / regulating / adjusting etc. the problem

Chapter 9: Sparkling moments

•Guidelines for ‘double listening’

•Affirmative action to the positive

• Every problem is a frustrated dream

• Exercise – Outsider witness group find maximum acceptations to the difficult multi cultural relationships story

Chapter 10: Being in the Mainstream and in the Margins

•Traditional power versus Modern power

•The effect of privileged discourses on marginalized groups

•An exercise of belonging to a privileged group and/or the marginalized group (majority and minority)

•When did you feel Marginalized and when Privileged?

Chapter 11: Our Forefathers’ Values

•Exercise: Our forefathers values –Clarifying the historical stories as the foundation for value based choices?

•Discussing the multi generational influence vis-a-vi multicultural strife

•What does one choose to keep and what to leave

Chapter 12: Putting yourself in the other person’s place

•Things one sees from there one does not see from here

• Everyone can find the internalized voice of the other

•An additional experience of curious questioning

Chapter 13:Weaving a preferred alternative intercultural story

• A story is woven from actions connected with meaning in sequence of time

• The story/narrative can be thickened multidimensionaly:

•Time

•Action and Meaning

•Social “remembering”

•Realm

•Space and body

Chapter 14: Poetical Summery•What touched, moved or resonated for

you in the process

•Collecting the sparkling moment in the program.

•Using poetical writing as an empowering tool

•Using documents for thickening experiences

THANK YOU

Thank You!

Yishai Shalif

June 15, 2016

Creating Care-full listening and Conversations between Members of Conflicting Multicultural Groups: The Case

of Israeli Society