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Just Resolutions

September 2024 – Ombuds Committee

The Secret of the Controlled Burn

Laurel Gordon and Marcus Malone

The Secret of the Controlled Burn
Justin Paget via Getty Images

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When it comes to difficult conversations or talking about difficulties in our lives, many of us choose to “tactically egress” – law enforcement language for flight. So, it’s no surprise that avoidance is a well-practiced coping mechanism in today’s hectic world – even among those considered “tough,” “Type A,” “challenge accepted” types, such as law enforcement. We see this as ombuds: visitors will call us at the height of their conflict, when they are flush with indignation at a recent action by the other party and crave vindication. We talk them off the ledge, validate their experience of what happened, help generate space for them to consider the other party’s perspective, suggest ways to embark on conflict resolution. They calm down, say they will consider what we’ve said and call us back – and then they rarely do. They get back to their busy lives – until another flash point happens, and then they are back in our offices, again in deep pain, wanting only to stop feeling this way.

This is a challenge for us as ombuds: we know that to resolve the conflict, our visitor needs to slow down and put in the time and mental energy to talk it out, try different techniques, focus on how they want it to be. But we are voluntary. How do we force someone to work on something they don’t want to think about when it’s not bothering them?

We at the United States Marshals Service, Office of the Ombuds, are attempting to navigate this difficulty using a concept we call “the controlled burn.” Our Office was established in 2016 and serves an employee population of approximately 6,000 federal law enforcement officers and administrative staff primarily spread throughout the United States. Like many ombuds offices, we struggled to be understood by our constituents and agency leadership for many years. Fortunately, we have slowly been seen as a resource not only for employees facing challenges, but also managers trying to proactively address a brewing conflict or poor morale.

In this context, we were contacted by a manager about a long-standing conflict between the only two employees in a sub-office. The employees’ distrust in each other had spiraled out of control: they each alleged stalking, racism and misconduct by the other, and their spouses had gotten involved. They refused to work together and were constantly reporting on the other to management. Something had to be done.

We coached the manager on how to have an “intervention conversation” with his two employees: how to say, in no uncertain terms, that this behavior was unproductive, unprofessional, and must end – or else. Then, he was to offer a voluntary resource: a mediation with the ombuds office. If they were interested, they could contact us. They did. Neither was particularly happy to do it, but they understood the mandate from their manager. Now, our practice as an office is to schedule several sessions individually with each visitor before conducting a mediation to ensure the necessary ingredients exist for the mediation to be successful. Of course, both these employees spent the first several conversations with us complaining about the other. At the conclusion of each session, we asked if we could schedule another. We could tell they felt annoyed every time they got on the phone: they both said things were ok at the moment and seemed loath to dive into the conflict. But still, they did. And slowly, we could feel that space was starting to be made to consider the other’s perspective and personally accept some responsibility. Finally, we felt ready to schedule the mediation. By the time we got there, we had spent many hours over many weeks on the phone with them.

It was a raging success. One started out immediately apologizing to the other, explaining specifically how he imagined the other felt. The other reciprocated by thanking him and apologized. We asked them to explain their own personal experiences, and they both reflected and validated the others'. Then, we made plans for how they both would behave going forward along with a process for missteps and miscommunications. We finished in three hours. Later, we got a call from the leader saying he couldn’t believe how successful this had been. Solutions had been thrown at this conflict for years, and nothing had worked until this. Many mediations result in one or both parties calling back a few months later. But we have never heard from these players again.

We believe that the time we put into discussing and staying with the conflict was fundamental to the mediation’s success. Even though the visitors dragged their feet the whole time, they still participated. They were burning with discomfort each time we spoke, but, together, we were able to maintain a “controlled burn” – and the wildfires never appeared again.

Months later, we encountered another opportunity for a controlled burn. We were called in to give two days of conflict resolution training for a group that we knew had been plagued with conflict for years. We started with our PowerPoint presentation about how to have a difficult conversation – only to be met with eye rolling and snide remarks. Some of those who wanted to listen to our presentation snapped back at the disruptors or rolled their own eyes.

The conflict we knew was out there had ignited and was burning right in front of our faces.

So, we stopped presenting and invited them to talk. And, very slowly, they did. It was certainly not easy – for any of us. We struggled to not take their passive aggressiveness personally. Each person struggled to stay in the room with this open discussion of their problems. We all were feeling the heat. But we challenged each person to share what was on their mind and reframed what they said so it was less incendiary. We asked them to state what their ideal workgroup would be like, using specifics. And what did they think needed to be done to get there? We were making progress, but it was tense, exhausting, and hard to see a productive outcome. At the end of the first day, we left them with a dose of positive feedback and self-care homework and, with relief, left the room.

We didn’t know what to expect on the morning of the second day. Would anyone even show up?

To our surprise, everyone did. Furthermore, there was a lightness in the room that was in complete contrast to the energy of the previous day. Spines seemed straighter, hearts seemed more open, tongues seemed looser, and words seemed gentler. They opened up and shared. By the end of the day, they were openly articulating appreciation of each other, without our prompting. They were developing specific plans on how to get along. We had eliminated all the undergrowth during our controlled burn of the previous day. There were no more sparks. All of us working together had tamed the forest fire.

We started to wonder: was the discomfort itself crucial to these resolutions’ successes? Was staying with it, facilitating it, not allowing it to be avoided what motivated the positive change?

There is some evidence for this in research. We’ve taken note of two papers in particular: each making use of the aphorism “no pain, no gain” in their titles. In Jones, E., & Kelly, J. (2009), “No pain, no gains: Negative mood leads to process gains in idea-generation groups,” the researchers tested creativity by assigning different participants the task of generating marketing slogans. They found that the most successful and creative slogan-generations happened in those who were induced to have a negative mood beforehand and were in a group – as opposed to working just by themselves as an individual. The researchers concluded that both the negative mood and the multiple people – accountability to others in persistence on the task – motivated the generation of the best slogans.

Another review of multiple studies cited the color-naming test. Participants are given a timed test in which they are told to state the color of the word they see, and then they are shown, for instance, the word red written in yellow. Of course, most people say “red” instead of the correct answer, “yellow.” It has been found that failure on this task motivates the participants to slow down and focus, and then they are able to achieve success. In essence, the conflict between expecting to get it right and seeing that they aren’t causes participants to mobilize their self-control.

The International Ombuds Association’s Standards of Practice make it clear that accessing an ombuds’ services should be entirely voluntary. Standard 1.2, General Practice Standards, states that “[t]he Ombuds assists people through voluntary consultation,” and Standard 4.4, Informality, maintains that “consulting with the Ombuds is completely voluntary.” So how do we ensure our “controlled burn” is voluntary, when our visitors are obviously uncomfortable? Chris Voss, former FBI negotiator turned Harvard Business School lecturer, tells us that “time falls off.” People will stay with a process they see is working, he says. We should of course remind them that they can exit the process if they would like to. In our limited experience, however, they don’t. They intuit the meaningfulness of the process even through their discomfort. This aligns with what self-determination theory tells us. A person will be intrinsically motivated to continue engaging in a process – whether it is a video game or a conflict resolution – if the process meets three universal psychological needs: competence, agency, and relatedness.

Controlled burning is also known as “prescribed burning.” An ombuds, like a professional firefighter, has the skills, training, and time to be more than just someone who throws water on a fire. We have at least somewhat of a prescription, a plan. Prescribed burning is “scheduled for a time when the fire will not pose a threat. . . [and] conditions [are] right to allow burning but not enable a fire to spread out of control.” Whether a person in conflict arrives at the Ombuds Office after being referred by a manager (via an “intervention conversation,” carefully scripted with the ombuds) or comes of their own accord, an ombuds can start and control a burn by being persistent. The ombuds consistently, persistently asks curious, powerful questions of the visitor and schedules follow-up calls. If the visitor does not want to continue scheduling sessions or ignores check-in calls, of course the ombuds cannot force them to engage. But if they do engage, the ombuds should periodically remind them of the voluntary nature of our process.

Aside from that, the ombuds controls the burn. We slow things down. We give space for reflection through our questions and the silence we allow afterwards, our spacious frame of mind. We take the time to sit with them and empathize while they struggle. We introduce the ingredients that produce intrinsic motivation: we teach our visitors how to say things productively and congratulate them when they do (competence), we let them direct the process by generating their own goals and their own steps to get there (agency), and we show that we care for them as humans like us (relatedness). Like a therapist taking a client through exposure therapy for a phobia, we trigger the pain and then we hold their hand while they face it. We are just as ombuds always are: curious, calm, caring, and there, controlling the burn.

At the risk of extending the metaphor too far, we want to end with information about the benefits of a controlled burn from a National Geographic encyclopedic entry:

Controlled burns are lit for a number of reasons. By ridding a forest of dead leaves, tree limbs, and other debris, a prescribed burn can help prevent a destructive wildfire. . . . In addition, fire can be rejuvenating. It returns nutrients to the soil in the ashes of vegetation that could otherwise take years to decompose. . . . Some plants, such as certain pine species, require fire before the cones or fruits containing the seeds can release them. These cones or fruits need fire to melt a resin that holds the seeds inside. As a result, without fire these species cannot reproduce.

We all know that conflict can release a person’s knowledge about themselves, unearth their values, give nutrients to a relationship. Properly managed by an ombuds, a conflict can be rejuvenating too.

We are interested in hearing what other organizational ombuds think about the idea of the controlled burn. Please contact [email protected] or [email protected] to share any thoughts or feedback.

 

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