Conflict First Aid

This document has a series of suggestions for things you can do in your group when a conflict arises.

Take time to listen to each person for a while separately. Focus on:

• taking in what they are saying, understanding what matters to them, what they’re feeling, the meaning this has for them

• being someone who is alongside them in whatever they are experiencing

• If both/all are up for sitting together in a supported conversation, create an agreement about how long you will talk together.

• active/empathetic listening from a position of being on everyone’s side

Generally, try to not say too much and don’t try to fix the situation.

Say what you are hearing.

This is important to the people so try to get to the core of what matters to them, without reinforcing or disagreeing with their perception or narrative of what happened, for example “it sounds like you were really frustrated because you just wanted to know clearly what was going on”

Ask the people to express what they are hearing is important to the other/s.

For example ask Person B what they heard was important to Person A, and check back with Person A whether what Person B heard was what they wanted heard. Do this both ways, so Person B also gets to find what Person A heard.

If people seem to have a sense of being understood by each other, the energy/tension seems to be settling, and they are wondering about how to move forwards, you could get parties to agree on what needs to be done differently next time.

Here, try to support them to find an agreement that they really genuinely all feel ok with, and that is as specific about what they WILL do as possible.

E.g. “I will call you or text you within 15 minutes if I get any information about what the police are doing, and text between 10pm and 7am” rather than “I won’t be so slack” or “I will be more communicative”