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ON THE SIMILARITIES OF PEACE OF MIND AND PEACE IN THE VALLEY Int J Group Psychother. 2013 Apr;63(2):206-32. doi: 10.1521/ijgp.2013.63.2.206.

Hugh O’Doherty, Ed.D.

Dannielle Kennedy, LICSW, Ph.D.

Dr. O’Doherty is a senior associate with Cambridge Leadership Associates, an international

consulting firm that works with organizations, teams, communities and individuals to identify

their most significant challenges, generate new solutions, and exercise the adaptive leadership

required to bring them to scale. He is a member of The Institute for International Mediation

and Conflict Resolution and The Peace Alliance.

Dr. Kennedy is a psychotherapist and principal of WorkLab Consulting, a firm with offices in

Cambridge, MA, and New York, N.Y. WorkLab uses management and behavioral sciences to

help clients translate strategy into effective action; align people with process; and create

feedback systems that accelerate learning. Dr. Kennedy is a member of The A.K. Rice

Institute, and the American Group Psychotherapy Association.

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Abstract

Abstract

This article examines the practice of organization consultation using the Adaptive Leadership

approach through a case example of a large system intervention in a peacemaking project in

Nepal. The authors define core activities of the Adaptive Leadership model and provide

parallels to psychodynamic group psychotherapy theory and technique that demonstrate how

group therapists can apply their expertise to larger systems and arenas beyond the group

therapy office.

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If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Mother Teresa

A friend recently answered the proverbial greeting, “How are you?” with the line, “I

am between problems,” referencing the underlying rhythm of life: the inevitability of the

traverse from equilibrium to disequilibrium and back again. For a split second along the

pendulum’s arc, things are integrated, and then the process of falling out of equilibrium and

into conflict with the environment begins again. As the process continues, each new

adaptation brings a new balance, a new place where for a split second, the situation is back in

balance again. All new integrations are an intricate adaptation to an ever-changing

environment.

This underlying dialectic between conflict and integration finds expression at all levels

of dynamic systems, from microbiology to astronomy, from the cells to the planets.. Each

new solution is a complex and highly tuned set of arrangements between and among the

components of the system. At times peace holds for a while and at times, the system becomes

mired in protracted conflict. When conflict in human systems reigns for too long, the risk of

damage and harm increases and people often seek help from the outside.

There are, of course no recipes, easy formulas, or templates for how to come to

resolution, how to devise adaptations. Facilitating, catalyzing, and enabling system adaptation

is work for a range of change management professionals. We are writing this paper for this

community, specifically for psychodynamic group therapists who have an interest in larger

systems and want to expand their professional domain beyond the consulting room.

We describe the theoretical territory between psychodynamic group psychotherapy

and systems psychodynamic consultation through the lens of adaptive leadership theory.

Then we present a case of a peacemaking project in Nepal that used the adaptive leadership

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approach and in doing so hope to demonstrate how to apply the consultative stance already

familiar to group therapists.

Regardless of where the boundary is drawn, whether around the individual, the family,

the work group, the political party, the nation,..we can see peace as a state of integration of

the various parts that comprise a system. When “at peace,” more energy is available for love

and work – for living by values, expressing identity and pursuing purpose. In the

psychological as well as in the political sense, conflict represents the other side of peace.

Conflict brings imbalance, tension, wariness, and potential harm either internally, between

parts of the self, or externally between the individual or group and others. Thus, the group

therapist and the peacemaker though perched at different levels in the hierarchy of living

systems, labor at the same task. This work of helping systems move from a state of

disequilibrium, disintegration, and conflict, to a more peaceful and integrated place is the

subject of this paper.

Individuals, systems, and adaptive leadership

We will begin with a brief sketch of the models under consideration. Psychodynamic

group psychotherapy is a theory and practice about helping individuals grow emotionally by

forming, experiencing, and examining personal relationships with the therapist and other

group members within a group. By experiencing and understanding both the conscious and

unconscious, here-and-now behaviors of individual group members, of sub-groups within the

group, and of the group-as-a-whole, participants develop insight and wisdom about their own

psychodynamics and those of others that they can then apply to their lives outside of the

group.

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The group-as-a-whole perspective of psychodynamic group psychotherapy theory is

especially interesting to organizational consultants because it dims the spotlight on individual

psychology and brightens it on the group itself as a single unit, as a social system, and

examining how subgroups within the group cooperate on both conscious and unconscious

agendas. These subgroup and group-as-a-whole patterns of behavior available for study in

therapy groups illuminate the behaviors of groups everywhere and can be used to understand

all manner of work groups ranging from business, to education, to government, to politics and

beyond (Wells, 1985; Agazarian and Gantt, 2011).

In the 1940s, the individual and group approach to psychology expanded to consider

the psychodynamics of organizations. At the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in the

UK and the National Training Laboratories in the US, among other seminal communities of

thought, theories emerged based on the work of Freud (2012), Bion (1961) and others about

the psychology of larger systems. This body of scholarship, named group relations (A. K.

Rice, Eric Miller, 1967) or systems psychodynamic theory (French and Vince 1999;

Hirschhorn, 1993, Gould et al. 2001; Long 2008), drew from open systems and

psychoanalytic theories to understand the behavior of social systems. These theories

highlighted the exercise of authority and leadership in organizational life and purported that

leadership is not a position, an official appointment, or set of traits, but in fact, a relationship

created by followers who select leaders based on the value of their contribution toward a

collectively held goal or aspiration. They regarded leadership then as not a static state but an

activity that helped move people in the direction of a collective, shared goal or an aspiration

whether consciously or unconsciously held. Through the process of developing a conference

model to study both the conscious and unconscious aspects of organizational life, these

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thinkers devised a style of group-as-a-whole consultation that has been adapted by

psychologically minded professionals who do organizational development consultation. (Eric

Miller’s papers, 1989).

In the 1980s, Ronald Heifetz and others at Harvard University built upon these ideas

to create a practice model known as Adaptive Leadership. Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky

(2009) emphasized the process of overt and covert adaptation in human systems and regarded

leadership as a process that enabled and enhanced conditions under which adaptation was

likely to occur. The case material on the peacemaking effort in Nepal will demonstrate how

leadership that contributes to adaptation can come from any corner and how taking an

adaptive leadership approach helped a country move from monarchy toward democracy.

Nepal Context: Monarchy to Democracy

In 1996, with the aim of overthrowing the Nepalese monarchy and establishing the

"Federal Republic of Nepal," the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) started a decade-long

war that killed as many as 18,000 citizens and caused massive damage to the economy.

In a last ditch effort, King Gyanendra officially dissolved parliament, appointed a government

led by himself and enforced martial law. In opposition to the king’s takeover, a broad

coalition called the Seven Party Alliance formed and the government and Maoist rebels began

peace talks that resulted in the Comprehensive Peace Accord signed on November 21, 2006.

A transitional representative government was formed and at its first sitting, it voted almost

unanimously to end the monarchy and gave birth to the Federal Democratic Republic of

Nepal.

Creation of Constitutional Assembly

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As part of establishing the republic of Nepal, the major parties created a 601-member

constitutional assembly with an ambitious agenda to produce a new constitution by May,

2010. Participants dreamt of a nation-wide, deliberative process that would engage all

stakeholders in building a new democratic republic.

However, inter-party mistrust severely impeded progress on any front. The UN

Security Council warned in January 2010 that “The brinkmanship and confrontation between

the Maoists and the government, accompanied by a sharp and dangerous hardening of

positions, is making a negotiated solution significantly more difficult.” (Article II. 10)

Group therapists and peacemakers alike understand the attachment groups have to

their current identities and political positions. Groups in conflict, particularly physical or

political conflict, capitalize on the opportunity to project out their own depressive and

persecutory anxiety by finding real-word justification in the behavior of other groups.

(Jacques 1974, Klein 1959). The coming together of former enemies and rivals presented the

Constitutional Assembly robust opportunities to do so. Many in the mainstream Nepali

government were nervous about the strong influence of the Maoists and projected their own

doubt by questioning the Maoist’s commitment to a democratic process. As for the Maoists,

who comprised a full third of the constitutional assembly and a clear majority, they were

suspicious that the mainstream was trying to wipe them out by casting them as dangerous

extremists. Solutions to this adaptive challenge were nowhere in sight.

Karuna Center Involvement

As negotiations between the major parties reached stalemate, the US State Department

asked The Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, a non-profit organization that offers nonviolent

solutions in troubled or war-torn countries, and its Nepali partner, the Institute for Conflict

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Management, Peace, and Development, to design a program to help Nepali political leaders

complete a constitution and establish peace. Based on his expertise with the Adaptive

Leadership model and his peacemaking experience in the Northern Ireland conflict, in

Cyprus, and the Middle East, the Karuna group asked one of the authors (H. O.) to participate.

Although this intervention was designed as training on Adaptive Leadership its impact

went well beyond the classroom. It not only introduced participants to negotiation and

leadership skills, but helped them apply these skills in real time to address the contentious

political challenges they faced in creating a new form of inclusive state governance.

The Adaptive Leadership Framework

The adaptive leadership framework is a set of ideas and activities that prepare the

ground for adaptive work. In figure 1, we have selected five central “activities” of Adaptive

Leadership as a rubric to help frame the underlying psychodynamic commonalities between

group therapy and consultation in change management situations. We will describe these five

activities and how they played out in the work with the Nepali constitutional assembly

training project

Insert Table 1 about here

.

Creating a Holding Environment in Adaptive Leadership

Creating a holding environment is one of main activities of Adaptive Leadership. Just

as the mother communicates confidence and well-being through the way she literally (and

figuratively) touches and holds her baby, a group leader provides hope and confidence in the

future by the way she or he “holds” the group, the constituency, the system. Holding is a

complicated idea because it involves not only holding that which the infant or child or even

the system is aware of but also that which is out of awareness (Winnicott, 1985).

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Psychoanalytic theory holds that individuals and groups often defend against internal

conflict by splitting the emotions or contradictory perceptions into the acceptable and the

unacceptable and disowning or disavowing the unacceptable. These unwanted aspects are

unconsciously projected out of awareness and away from the wanted or claimed self or group

and on to other people or groups (Klein, 1959). Consequently, to help their patients

understand themselves and others, group therapists know they have to help them identify and

track what they split off and project. In order to do this, they create a holding environment, a

metaphorical vessel of sorts that can contain and appreciate all parts for the role they play in

the overall drama of adaptation. At the right moment, when the patient or group is ready, the

therapist/consultant can bring that which is unconscious into consciousness. The right

interpretation at the right time can help the group see more of what is happening and aspects

of the situation that were previously externalized and those parts can be taken back into the

groups conception of itself without creating the conflictual havoc that it once did.

Creating a containing or holding environment then, is a key aspect of practice for both

the group therapist and the peacemaker and true integration is not possible without the

inclusion of all stakeholders in the system under consideration. In group therapy, a holding

environment is created in the relationship between the client and the therapist and by

extension between the client and the group. It is a quality of containment that rises from the

sense of trust and connection that the client feels in the reliability and predictability of the

therapist and the group-as-a-whole. Under these circumstances, group therapy encourages

patients and enables them to bring all of themselves, all of their parts, to the moment, even

those aspects that have been previously split off, projected and disowned whether consciously

or not.

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Creating a holding environment in the adaptive leadership model is no less central. In

adaptive leadership practice, a holding environment is created by ensuring that all parties, all

stakeholders, and all factions, are recognized and included in the negotiation. In large

systems such as political parties and communities, creating a group to work with that includes

all aspects of the entirety, all constituencies and stakeholders, offers the best possible “holding

environment” for observing and analyzing the assumptions and the behavior dynamics that

keep a conflict apparently intractable in the whole system.

Establishing a Holding Environment in Nepal

Phase One of the program began with a ten-day training in Boston in June 2010 for

twenty-five Nepali Constitutional Assembly members. This was an intensive program in

conflict management, interest-based negotiations, and state-building held in partnership with

the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The program invited

participants from each of Nepal’s major parties and party factions, and designed the program

to teach practical negotiation skills while addressing contentious leadership challenges.

As the program was about to begin, three Maoist participants who had arrived in

Boston for the program were ordered by their leadership to return to Nepal when the visa of

the fourth member of their party was revoked by the U. S. State Department. A human rights

organization had suggested that this member was responsible for some human rights

infringements, which meant that the State Department would have faced tremendous pressure

had they issued him a visa.

How might we interpret their absence? Was it a Maoist strategy to sabotage the event

unconsciously? Were they hoping, opportunistically, that if the State Department would issue

this fourth member a visa then then it might absolve other party members with human rights

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violation? Perhaps it was the US State Department’s unconscious way of sabotaging the

event. Trainers wondered what aspect of the whole was being split off and projected into the

Maoists, something they could not study without the Maoist’s participation. In consultation

with the members of the other parties who had arrived in Boston, they decided to proceed

with the program. Everyone involved trainers and participants alike, resolved to stay with the

effort to bring all the stakeholders, including the Maoists, into the conversation.

The Karuna Center team decided to try something new. They organized another series

of trainings and meetings only this time in Nepal. They hoped that this would eliminate the

need for visas and so allow the Maoists to participate. The Maoist representative whom the

authorities had denied a visa to come to Boston was again put forward as one of the Maoist

team, and once again the Maoists were excluded from participation.

With the effort to create a true representative subgroup stymied, the Karuna group

knew they could not create a lasting integration, an adaptation that would create a new

balance. Though it was not yet clear what the nature of the projection into this Maoist was the

point became clear to all: that “they” were part of “us”.

The “Backchannel” Group

Participants expressed a concern, given the day-to-day pressures on them because of

their work in the Constitutional Assembly that it would be difficult for them to be able to

gather frequently as a whole group in Katmandu. They felt it was urgent to generate ideas that

one could feed quickly into the Constitutional Assembly and were afraid that the traction

gained during the seminars would be lost. To address this concern, the Karuna team

introduced participants to the concept of a “backchannel” (Wanis-St. John, 2006)

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We frequently employ back-channel communication in conflicts when negotiations

between party leaders become deadlocked. Carried out by very small delegations (or even

individual representatives) either talking face-to-face or through a third party, back channel

communication can help unfreeze deadlock by reaching a joint definition of the problems and

issues that have to be addressed for resolution and then feeding policy ideas of merit into the

larger front channel negotiation process. Away from public scrutiny, the backchannel enables

representatives from parties in conflict to work outside the main “front channel” negotiation

process.

Once introduced to the idea, participants immediately recognized the value of creating

such a group and put it into action. They selected representatives from each party who would

work together more intensively and feed ideas to the 601-member Constitutional Assembly.

They felt that this might reach what they called the “big leaders” in their respective parties

whom they believed held ultimate decision-making power.

In December 2010, we held a one-day meeting to launch the Backchannel group with

four participants from each of the Nepali Congress, CPN (UML), and Madhesi parties. All

were enthused about the potential for such a group to have a significant impact and agreed

there was important work to be done while waiting for the Maoists to join.

Overtime, this backchannel group self-organized and established a steering committee

as well as a thematic committee to prioritize areas of focus. The group chose state

restructuring, army integration and rehabilitation, constitutional principles, governance

structure, and the electoral system as the key issues.

Maoist Participation

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Finally, in February 2011, the Karuna trainers and the Nepali Institute for Conflict

Management, Peace, and Development colleagues, along with the support of a key figure in

the Maoist leadership, devised a way to bring the Maoists into the program. They decided to

invite directly participants rather than having the Maoists select their own representatives.

This allowed the Maoist leadership to avoid losing face by having their chosen leaders

rejected in the larger interest of having party representation in the program.

Initially, the Karuna team felt it might be valuable for the team to work separately

with the Maoists to bring them up to speed, but they decided instead to provide the Maoists

with the introductory training in negotiations and adaptive leadership together with new

participants from other parties. The local organization, the Napali Institute for Conflict

Management, Peace, and Development, believed that skill-building in a multi-party context

would soften the split between Maoists and the other parties already participating in the

program. So the trainers ran a two and a half day introductory seminar in Nepal for twelve

Maoists and nine leaders from other parties who had not yet attended any of the trainings but

who were regarded as influential actors.

The program focused on communications skills, adaptive leadership, and basic

negotiation and joint problem-solving skills. We adapted the agenda to provide more time to

work on more disciplined listening to the interests of other groups, with special emphasis on

how to promote genuine inquiry. We chose the issue of army integration as an example of one

of the complex and value-laden problems that they had to resolve as Constitutional Assembly

members.

Using the issue of army integration worked well, as party members came to see their

tendency always to advocate only for their own position, resulting in no understanding of the

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concerns of others, and no progress in finding common ground. An exercise in generating

options also enabled participants to experiment with moving away from their party positions.

The training ended with a discussion of relationship mapping and strategies to

influence both the key decision makers and broader party constituencies in adapting more

collaborative approaches to the constitutional process.

In their seminar evaluations, participants identified listening, questions of inquiry,

dialogue, and getting past positions to interests as essential skills. They spoke of the need to

open their minds in order to create an environment where they could begin to understand one

another. They spoke of how the workshop created a climate that was more conducive to

honest exchange and could lead to greater trust. They also appreciated the work on leadership,

especially the notion that real leadership is based on activity rather than authority.

Thus, the Karuna team was able to create a true holding environment for the subgroup

of Napali constitutional conventioneers. They remained committed to finding a way to include

all stakeholders, regardless of the various resistance maneuvers, much as group therapists do,

by holding the expectations for it, analyzing resistance to it, and holding the frame. By

calling for full representation by all constituents, the Karuna peacemakers were finally able to

create a vessel that could contain the entire system.

Identifying the “Adaptive Challenge(s)”

A second “activity” of the adaptive leadership approach is to frame the adaptive

challenge facing the group in terms everyone can understand and join. Heifetz et al. (2009)

draw a distinction between technical and adaptive problems, pointing out that technical

problems have a known answer and the work of a system is to implement the answer or

solution. Adaptive problems, on the other hand, have no known answers and, in apparently

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intractable conflicts, no agreed definition of the problems. Adaptations are made through trial

and error, through discovering the nature and roots of problems and taking note of what

moves the work forward and what does not. Adaptation requires letting go of old solutions

that might help to contain anxiety but no longer work when searching for something new.

Many clients come to group therapy asking for technical solutions to adaptive

problems. Often they believe they will learn straightforward, rational techniques that will

help them relieve their anxieties or reach their goals. They often believe solutions will involve

doing what they are doing now only better, harder, faster, or more. Over time, however, the

group members learn to accept the inadequacy of the current solution and begin to appreciate

the deeper and broader aspects of their problems. They learn that there are no easy answers,

simple techniques, or short cuts to their desired outcomes but that together they can learn their

way forward and develop more nuanced and mature adaptations to their problems. Through

interpretation and analysis of dilemmas in the group process, they identify defensive patterns

and behaviors and learn how to tolerate the pain involved in owning and changing the way

one contributes to one’s own and others’ suffering.

In Kleinian terms group members grow by letting go of maladaptive solutions to

emotional problems, by giving up the paranoid position where fault lies outside the self, and

by grieving idealized images of the self. Over time, group members develop the capacity to

see and tolerate the depressive position, an adaptation to interaction that involves owning and

claiming all parts of the self, the good and the bad. Blame, in the form of taking responsibility

for the problem, falls much closer to home, within the boundary of the individual, and though

sadder, people are able to act to solve problems and remain compassionate toward themselves

and others (Jacques, 1985).

Comment [v1]: unclear

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In the Nepal program, the adaptive challenge and the pathway to a new and better

solution fit this Kleinian model of moving from the paranoid to the depressive position.

Federal restructuring of the state and deciding how to treat the 19,000 former Maoist

combatants emerged as the major demands of ethnic and regional activists. The debate about

these issues was extremely politicized and polarized. While each party fiercely held onto the

paranoid position that their view was “the truth” and the other’s view was “the problem,” the

underling adaptive challenge required that each group acknowledge the legitimacy of

interpretations other than their own and begin to recognize their own stake in the other’s

positions. The various groups would have to give up their paranoid attachment to ways of

seeing themselves as good and right and the other groups as bad and wrong. In order to face

their adaptive challenge the peacemaking team would have to help them find a way to shift

how they saw themselves and how they saw the others.

Helping Participants Identify the Adaptive Challenge

To help surface the fears and concerns hidden underneath the various points of view,

the team drew on the work of Fisher and Ury (1991) by introducing the difference between a

“position” and an “interest” and invited participants to experiment with stepping into the

“other’s” shoes. They asked the participants to address each of the issues, guided by the

following questions: 1) From your point of view, what do you think the other parties want? 2)

What do they need? 3) What do they fear? The next step involved each party sharing its

thinking with the other groups so that their views could be confirmed or disconfirmed.

The National Congress members shared with the Maoists their perception that the

Maoists wanted to establish a communist regime. They feared that even though the Maoists

espoused a multi-party state, when given an opportunity, they would impose a single-party

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communist government. For their part, the Maoists responded that they in fact did not want a

communist regime but not pluralism either because pluralism left open the possibility for the

monarchy to return, which in their opinion was unthinkable. At the same time, the Maoists

were able to acknowledge that they understood the rationale behind the National Congress

members’ fear.

The result of this process of inquiry, of standing in the other’s shoes, is that each

group was able to test its view of reality and to move from argument to inquiry and dialogue.

They could then move to the next stage of the process that involved joint work on options that

took into account the interests and fears of each party.

Thus, while the delegates thought their work was to best represent their positions and

make sure they did not lose ground, a technical approach, their real work, their adaptive

challenge, was to transcend their fears for survival so that they could see their common

humanity and common underlying interests and in doing so develop trust and cooperation.

The technique Dr. O’Doherty and his colleagues used to loosen the knot of projections

that held the National Congress and the Maoists in tight conflict is one familiar to the group

therapist on a smaller scale. For instance, in the midst of a solid holding environment, the

therapist may ask the client, sub-group, or group-as-a-whole to check out their view, their

projection of meaning, with the other party. When the O’Doherty group did this, the views of

the National Congress and the Maoists about “the other” were disconfirmed. Standing in each

other’s shoes and listening to the representatives enabled each group to see themselves in the

other and begin to listen and to participate in a conversation. In psychodynamic language,

these constituencies were able to “take back” their projections and recognize them as parts of

themselves over which they had control. Each group was given a chance to view their own

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projections and notice their eagerness to push away from themselves that which they did not

want to own: the impulse to dominate and manipulate that fear engenders.

Defining the adaptive challenge is important because it not only establishes a problem

as not easily solvable with known technologies but it also prepares all parties for the fact that

something new has to happen, that learning, stretching, and the inevitable frustration of

growth are part of the pathway to liberation.

Giving the Work Back

People frequently avoid the discomfort of facing adaptive problems by looking to

authority figures for easy answers and quick fixes. They want those in authority positions to

own the problem and take responsibility for solutions. While initially the consultant (group

therapist and facilitators of peacemaking projects) accepts a degree of dependency and

contains anxiety while the client adjusts to a challenging situation, an important activity in

consulting in the Adaptive Leadership model is the process of giving the work back to the

stakeholders. In this model those in authority do not do the work of adaptation, they do not

solve the problem per se, but instead they orchestrate the process of adaptive problem solving.

Once the collective is able to appreciate and manage the need for adaptive change and the

anxiety involved, the consultant then gives the work back to the people who have the direct

access to the situation that enables them to devise innovative solutions.

For the facilitator in Adaptive Leadership, giving the work back to the client for the

group therapist is both science and art. Through predictability, dependability, and reliability

the group therapist and the group itself allow new group therapy clients some degree of relief

and an ability to count on the therapist and the group as a place where they can work on their

adaptive challenges. Feeling held in this way, the group members are able to regress, expose

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transferences, and behave in ways that reveal underlying and often unconscious beliefs and

assumptions about reality. By providing containment while at the same time not accepting

responsibility for the client’s progress, the therapist creates a space where he/she can interpret

both individual and group-as-a-whole behavior as hypotheses for examination and testing.

Familiarity with this process helps group therapists move into consulting roles and manage

the process of adaptation in groups with purposes other than therapy.

In the Kurana program, not surprisingly, the participants began by taking a dependent

stance. They viewed the trainers, the facilitators, as authority figures, as “experts”, and

expected them to propose an agenda and a process for their work together. The participants

also expected the facilitators to provide protection and security along the way. The group split

off and projected externally its confidence about its own capacity to manage the task of

peacemaking as a way of avoiding the emotions that go with holding both the dependent and

needy aspects of the people in the group and the competent and responsible parts as well.

A major facilitation challenge in the Nepal project, therefore, was to bring this

dependence to light in such a way that the participants could assume their shared

responsibility for creating the system that kept them apparently entrapped.

The facilitators chose to use an OD technique derived from the work of Argyris called

“mapping the system” (Argyris et al., 1985). Argyris theorizes that people operate from

theories-in-use or values that involve making inferences about another person’s behavior

without checking whether the inferences are valid. These entrenched behaviors, called

defensive routines (Argyris, 1990; 1993), while protecting people from embarrassment or

threat, also limit learning and action by closing off analysis of underlying causes for worry.

Locked into these hard-wired defensive maneuvers parties in conflict ignore the underlying

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dimensions of conflict, the fundamental fear, needs, and interests that motivate each

community. They can only:

Advocate their views without encouraging inquiry (hope to remain in unilateral control and

win); unilaterally save face - their own and other people's (minimize upsetting others or

making them defensive); design and manage situations unilaterally (in order to maintain

control); evaluate the thoughts and actions of others and themselves in ways that do not

encourage testing the validity of the evaluation; attribute causes for whatever they are trying

to understand--without necessarily validating them; engage in defensive actions such as

blaming, stereotyping, and intellectualizing to suppress feelings. (Argyris?? date?? page??)

Caught in this kind of unconscious and uninspected pattern, the parties in the Nepali

constitutional congress found themselves trapped in a self-sealing bind, a “game without

end,” with no way out. As time passed with no resolution, the Nepali public grew more and

more frustrated alienated from the constitution-writing process, viewing it as superficial, a

theater of rhetoric that was accomplishing nothing. Pessimism and fatalism became the

pervasive mood that helped keep the stalemate intact.

In an effort to bring the defensive routines to awareness and expose their projections

to the light of day, the trainers turned to Argyris’ mapping technique. After careful listening to

how the parties construct their respective theories to explain the conflict, they constructed two

maps (See table 2)

Insert Table 2 about here

Framing the maps as hypotheses that can be tested and not as fact allowed the

participants to mutually arrive at a point when they could say, “Yes, the map captures the bind

we’re in.” This moment of ownership was very dramatic in that it confronted the participants

with, in essence, an existential choice. Since they acknowledged shared responsibility for

creating the bind they found themselves in, did they now want to confront the implications?

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Did they want to change the dynamic? If so, then to what? What actions must they now take

and what losses must they address and endure if they want to break out of the bind?

The map offered a systems analysis of the self-reinforcing bind of mutual suspicion

between the National Congress Party and the Maoists and helped to make explicit the implicit,

unexamined, or unconscious assumptions that participants were using to make sense of the

conflict. A very revealing dialogue resulted about the sources of mistrust that were hampering

inter-party consensus on the most contentious issues. Nepali Congress members spoke of deep

concerns as to whether the Maoists were actually willing to uphold a democratic process.

They felt unfairly labeled as wanting to maintain the status quo when actually they had fought

for basic rights and participation for decades. The Maoists in turn complained that they had

not received enough credit for their sacrifices in bringing about the end of the monarchy.

They believed they had made many compromises to work with the other parties, but that it

never seemed to be enough. They felt continually asked to compromise further.

Mapping the system created the possibility for insight on behalf of the parties. They

saw on paper what they could not see in themselves: the need to take responsibility for the

situation they co-created and the possibility of curbing the scapegoating, the splitting and

projecting of their unwanted selves onto one another. Mapping the system enabled the

stakeholders to take back their responsibility and the work.

The system mapping work that the facilitators did with the group of constitutional

representatives parallels the consultative stance the group therapist takes with the therapy

group. Just as mapping the system helped the Nepali representatives take responsibility for the

situation they co-created, the group therapist, through interpretation, paints a picture of what

is happening in the group, and enables the group’s projections, fantasies, and emerging beliefs

22

to be surfaced and exposed to rational analysis. In both models the consultant

(facilitator/therapist) acts to bring what was out of awareness to light and provides the holding

that enables clients to tolerate the unsettling emotional state that new awareness creates.

Managing Resistance/Loss What is it that keeps parties in conflict and group therapy patients attached to their

maladaptive solutions? Both the group therapist and the peacemaker believe that people do

not resist change per se, they resist loss. Two relevant streams of psychological theory

intertwine around consulting to adaptive change – loss of the idealized self and loss of

identity.

Loss of the Idealized Self.

Extrapolating from Melanie Klein's model of human development people strive to be

“good” and worthy of approval and love by those whom they respect (Klein, 1959). The

developmental achievement is to be able to integrate -the good and the bad at the same time

and still maintain the capacity to love and feel lovable. This means an individual has to have

matured to the place where they can accept disappointment in others and tolerate the pain and

sadness of not being the purely “good” self that is easier to imagine as lovable. Thus, the

mature individual (one that has achieved Klein’s “depressive position”) can tolerate the loss

of the idealized other and self.

This developmental dynamic operates at the social level as well as the individual.

Some groups get attached to the feeling of being “good” and “right,” projecting the “bad” and

“wrong” out onto other groups (the “paranoid” position). Other groups however are able to

accept their humanness, their complex mixture of the good and the bad and thus not requiring

a “bad” or “wrong” group to carry the shadow. Group therapists know that when individuals

and groups understand their participation in splitting, projection, and projective identification

23

they can more easily comprehend loss. When all of the parts, pride and shame, love and hate,

competence and incompetence, kindness and cruelty, when these are all recognized, held, and

owned, within one’s self, within one’s group, within one’s party, within one’s nation, the

capacity to see situations in terms of black and white and winners and losers fades. With this

awareness, members feel held, carried, joined by everyone in the loss and shared humanness,

which brings the freedom to join and move forward.

Defensive positions evolve into identities and attachments to these identities can grow

very strong (Volkan, 1998). Helping individuals and groups loosen their grip on their

“defensive routines” by unpacking, analyzing, and mining them for adaptive solutions is the

work of both group therapist and peacemaker of helping people and groups manage loss.

Loss of Identity.

The greatest loss parties in conflict fear is loss of identity. Ironically, relationships

based on enmity cannot be "transformed" without warring parties letting go of their

attachment to their particular framing of identity. The paradox is that the "self” which each

party claims they must be free to determine as a basic human right is changed as a result of

true dialogue. Or, more accurately, the attachment to "self” must be released. This involves

confronting the fear of "disorganization and death" which Nudler (1992) postulates as the

alternative to "the most fundamental need of the person" for identity.

An essential activity of the Adaptive Leadership model and an essential task in

peacemaking therefore is holding parties in conflict through the process of confronting and

enduring loss – orchestrating the painful process of helping them distinguish what is precious

and essential from what is expendable in their current identity and way of relating – clarifying

what matters most, in what balance, and with what trade-offs.

24

One of the parties in the program who most feared for loss of its identity was the

Madhesi people who reside in the southern plains region of Nepal called the Terai. They

constitute 40% of Nepal’s population. To protect their identity, the Madeshi demanded the

introduction of legal provisions in any new constitution to guarantee proportional

representation of marginalized groups in government and administration. Because they are

indigenous to these regions, they demanded preferential rights to natural resources and

agradhikar – priority entitlement to political leadership positions in the future provinces.

They wanted provinces named after the most numerous ethnic and regional groups and

boundaries drawn to make them dominant minorities.

For their part, the National Congress members shared their fear that the Maoists

wanted either to integrate the maximum number of their former combatants into the Nepal

army or to establish them as a separate security force. Either way, they feared that at some

point in the future the Maoists would use these fighters to establish a one-party communist

state. They believed that recognizing the People’s Liberation Army meant legitimizing and

glorifying violence and that the only way to convert the Maoist party into a democratic party

would be to dismantle the People’s Liberation Army. For its part, the Nepal army feared that

the integration of non-professional former Maoist combatants would dilute its

professionalism.

The Maoists in turn were afraid that the National Congress party wanted to maintain

the status quo relative to reintegration of combatants. They believed that the National

Congress party wanted rehabilitation, not reintegration, which would mean integrating a small

number of former combatants into the army and demobilizing the majority. The Maoists saw

this as humiliating. After all, they believed they were responsible for ridding Nepal of the

25

monarchy and so were deserving of greater respect. They were afraid that all they had fought

and died for would be trampled on.

Surfacing these fears for identity helped the parties unfreeze from their very rigid

positions and allowed fresh thinking to emerge. The maps we used helped with this

unfreezing. We were also able to introduce and discuss the particular strategies that groups

use to defend against these fears for identity and to resist change.

That people cannot let go until they feel that those responsible understand and

appreciate their loss seems especially relevant. Under these circumstances, leadership has to

do difficult things, and good people and valid names, places, processes and procedures often

have to go. These are painful actions to take on behalf of adaptation to a better future and

those affected often experience them as betrayals. With proper recognition and support from

authority figures and from enlightened peers, however, painful outcomes, need not be

avoided, but can be endured.

Connect to Purpose

Connecting people to purpose, generating the fire or energy for change, is a key challenge in

the exercise of adaptive leadership. As participants in a peacemaking process like the one

described in Nepal take responsibility for the system they have created they must own their

part of the mess. As they become “humanized” in each other’s eyes, as they understand each

other’s fears and aspirations, they begin to develop together a compelling vision of the future.

They are not dependent on the third party facilitators for this vision but it emerges in their

journey together. This vision then provides the fire, the aligning force that pulls the latent

energy of a cooperative mindset into the future. It provides the energy and momentum for

their continued journey. This shared purpose will hold them through the losses they must face

26

and through the period of transition inherent in all change when nothing is clear and no one is

satisfied.

Over time during the Program, the Nepali participants began to recognize that they are

collectively responsible for the success of the people’s movement that resulted in abolishing

the monarchy, but also collectively culpable for the current deadlock and the competition

between their parties that destroys their credibility with the population at large. During the

dialogue, participants witnessed themselves no longer representing their parties but speaking

as Constitutional Assembly members with a joint and enormously challenging task. There was

a shared sense that something actually happened, that with the birth of the Backchannel Group

might actually move forward. Specifically, they saw the Backchannel as a space for reaching

a deeper understanding of what lies behind each other's positions and where they can generate

a variety of options on the most contentious issues to bring back to their respective parties.

After the program ended, the Backchannel Group continued to work in a focused

manner on the issues of army integration and state restructuring. The group worked in multi-

party teams to devise options for resolving the issues, getting feedback from stakeholders, and

convening meetings with international experts on each of these subjects.

On November 1, 2011, the major parties finally reached a landmark deal that settled

the future of the 19,000 former Maoist fighters. About a third of them will be integrated into

the security forces. The remainder will receive financial compensation. In addition, weapons

used by former Maoist fighters will be handed in to the state, a peace and reconciliation

commission will be formed, and land captured or confiscated by the Maoists will be returned

to original owners.

Conclusion

27

To an outside observer, the solution to a conflict may appear to be simple. The group

with power should simply give up some of its power and the violent factions should agree to

accept the compromises of the political process. However, as we have tried to illustrate in

this paper, the complex process of achieving peace is an adaptive, not a technical, leadership

challenge. Much more is required than simply getting a few representatives from the warring

parties to sign a peace agreement.

Conflict provides the parties with meaning. Therefore, to transcend the conflict the

warring parties have to give up their dependence on having an enemy to define their sense of

purpose, honor, and glory—their very sense of group identity. This is threatening, so warring

parties usually avoid dialogue in order to remain immune from accepting responsibility for the

violence and death that their actions have created. Values and norms they have clung to for

centuries are at stake.

The adaptive challenge of peacemaking, as it is in group therapy, is designing and

managing a process that helps the warring aspects of the system shift these old values so that

peace, integration has a higher value than what it is that the divided aspects or parties protect

with their enmity. From a context of suspicion and hatred, they are able to develop the

courage to engage in building together a new relationship for which they have no experience.

Both the group therapist and the peacemaker work on the same process on different

scales. Whether conceptualized as peace, integration, well-being, or being “between

problems,” the work is managing a process of adaptive conflict resolution -- intrapersonal,

interpersonal, and interparty. Group therapists will find as they expand their systems beyond

the traditional therapy group that much is familiar to them. There are underlying similarities

between the psychodynamic group psychotherapy and Adaptive Leadership models that

28

enable group therapists and organizational consultants alike to help individuals and systems

be effective in the world. Through containment and interpretation of behavior, they can help

clients deepen their capacity to pursue their goals with intention and a sharp and tolerant

understanding of the obstacles they find in their path, including their own imperfection.

When successful, this process results in a profound change in consciousness, a new way for

warring aspects of a system to be with each other, and a willingness to risk letting go old

concepts of “self” and “other” to seize opportunities for peace at all levels.

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Table 1: Parallel Steps Toward Integration in Two Models

Adaptive Leadership Psychodynamic Group Psychotherapy

Create a Holding Environment - based on

representation of all aspects of the conflict.

Create a Holding Environment -based on

emotional containment (trust, reliability,

predictability of leadership).

Identify the Adaptive Challenge. Diagnose presenting problem and negotiate

therapeutic goals with client that leaves room

for yet unknown challenges.

Give the Work Back to Stakeholders. Create a therapeutic alliance, accepting

transference while interpreting dependency and

responsibility taking in clients’ lives.

Manage Resistance to Loss –a continual

process embedded in the work.

Analyze and bear resistance to loss and change

(similar in both models – letting go is an

essential step in change).

Connect to Purpose – frames intervention

from the beginning. It is continually

negotiated.

Ongoing development of self-understanding of

one’s life purpose and how that guides

behavior.

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Table 2 Title???

Initial

Conditions

Perceptions Actions

Unintended

Consequences

Consequences

Congress

Party (CP)

Suspicious that

Maoists aren’t

committed to

pluralism

See Maoist

actions as

aimed at

“capturing” the

state

Avoid making

clear

commitments

Reinforces

Maoist’s belief

that the CP are

“feet dragging”

Creation of a

self-sealing

bind in which

each party’s

actions to

protect itself

reinforce the

other’s belief

that they are justified in

being

suspicious

Maoists

Suspicious that

CP aren’t

acting on

behalf of the

marginalized

See CP’s

actions as “feet

dragging”

Apply pressure

to make the CP

commit

CP feel they

are being

forced to

compromise on

fundamental

values

No learning

Mutual

entrapment