Mediation To Prevent Lawsuits w/ Kimberly Best

How do you handle conflict in order to prevent going to court?Kimberly Best, RN, MA, is a Tennessee Rule 31 Listed Civil Mediator and Tennessee Rule 31 Trained Family Mediator, owner of Best Conflict Solutions, LLC. Her practice focuses on Family Mediation, Health, and Elder Care Mediation, Civil and Business Mediation, and personal and organizational Conflict Coaching and Conflict Consulting. Kimberly is passionate about helping others resolve conflicts in a productive, non-litigious way using mediation, facilitation and collaborative problem solving to find optimal solutions for all parties. She is a speaker and trainer on conflict management, dispute resolution processes, life transitions, and how to make difficult decisions - including end of life issues. She is also a volunteer mediator with the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, Dispute Resolution Program and Community/Police Unification Program.She is a working member of the Association of Conflict Resolution Elder Mediation Professional Development Group as well as a working member of Mediators Beyond Borders, International, and a member of the American Bar Association Dispute Resolution membership committee. Key Points And Time Stamps:[00:03:29] - how childhood affects how we handle conflict[00:04:51] - family conflict and disagreements during the pandemic[00:05:43] - what exactly boundaries are[00:07:40] - how we feel physically ‘threatened’ during a disagreement[00:10:12] - how to communicate different viewpoints without feeling threatened[00:12:37] - how attorney meditators handle conflict during a divorce[00:16:01] - the biology of conflict[)0;18:18] - how mediation prevents potential lawsuits[00:20:19] - mediation work between the LAPD and communities in Los Angeles[00:24:49] - how to get involved in your community and mediate local conflicts[00:26:54] - how storytelling builds bridges and creates understanding[00:29:11] - how to understand and have empathy for those who hurt you[00:31:07] - how to handle workplace conflict[00:33:49] - why ask questions before jumping to conclusionsConnect with Kimberly:Website: https://www.bestconflictsolutions.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlybestmediator/Additional Resources:"How to Live Forever, A Guide to Writing the Final Chapter of Your Life Story" by Kimberly Best"Police 2 Peace" work by Kimberly BestJoin local organizations "Effective Conflict Resolution Techniques And Strategies" w/ Kristine ScottConnect with me:FacebookInstagramKindly subscribe to our podcast.Leave a rating and a review for the Podcast:iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mediation-to-prevent-lawsuits-w-kimberly-best/id1614151066?i=1000615151077Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/347DBhfsDxXE9v18O9v0D5YouTube: https://youtu.be/XC3ZSFCufT4

The feeling that someone disagrees with you or has insulted you triggers our brain very much like there's a physical threat. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode,
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please log on to iTunes and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Let's get communicating.
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There is so much conflict going around from families to communities and all around the world. My guest today, Kimberly Best, a former registered nurse is a facilitation and mediation expert. She's also a conflict resolution expert, is here to talk to us about some revolutionary ideas of some of the work that she does with not only
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corporations and organizations, but communities and police as well. Before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Kimberly. Hi, Roberta. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being on our show. Welcome. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Pleasure.
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Well, you did a great job introducing me. I've been a registered nurse for a very long time. I worked in every intensive care unit there is. I worked in trauma and ultimately the emergency department. It kind of burned out on that, seeing people suffer so much. So I went to graduate school in psychology. That was too slow a process, just the whole field of psychology. It's such slow change that I went.
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back into nursing and then ultimately I went to graduate school in conflict management and got my degree in that. I feel like I was working on physical emergencies and now it's sort of emotional and spiritual emergencies. That's a good way to put it. Conflict is spiritual and emotional emergencies. What made you decide when psychology was not working out the way you had intended? What made you decide that
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conflict resolution was going to be the next step for you? That is a great question. I loved what I learned in psychology, and it's worked so well for what I do now. But I actually went through a really bad divorce about 12 years ago. And my brother, who is an educator, was in Chicago at the time. He told me about something out of Hofstra, University of New York, called transformative mediation, which is one style. And because the divorce was so bad, he's like, this is a way of working things out.
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without tearing each other apart. So I went to Hofstra and learned a bit about that. The first thing I recognized was that dealing with conflict is this set of skills that very few of us have learned. And it just excited me. And so I went back to graduate school and several other places to learn as much as I could about resolving conflict. And I still learn tools every day. It's something that we don't learn.
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Or is it something that we just copy from how what we witnessed during our childhood was how conflict was resolved? So I always ask when I'm talking about conflict, I say to understand how you are in conflict, think back to when you were a child and what happened to you when you were the source of the conflict. So most people are conflict avoidant, interestingly enough, they will fight, some are more aggressive.
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But even to say the word conflict, it's like it's not supposed to happen, but it is supposed to happen. Conflict is not a bad thing. And if we learned how to deal with it better, I think we'd be more comfortable in recognizing it as a sign that something needs to change, as a sign that there's an unmet need, or as a sign that we've stepped on someone's toes. Instead of it being just such a bad, awful thing, we have to avoid it or we're bad people if...
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we have conflict? We do certainly see it as a bad thing, so to speak. If you look at the last three years during the pandemic, you had families having this strain, having this conflict. You had families breaking and not having spoken in the last three years due to all that's been going on, having different views on vaccinations and the pandemic and how we're supposed to conduct ourselves. Is it also because of the pandemic?
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because we don't have the tools. We haven't been taught the tools to deal with conflict. Absolutely, not understanding conflict. You know, Roberta, one thing that someone said to me a while back is, just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean that I'm against you. It means I'm me. It means that I have different life experiences. I have a different biology. I have different circumstances that have arrived at my conclusion. But it doesn't mean I'm against you.
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And also in that particular thing, we disagree. So we forget that there's so many things we do agree on because we're locked into the thing we disagree on. And I've got to say during the pandemic, my family, I have five kids, four of them are grown, four grandchildren, we got along always so well. But the pandemic affected us too. And it's hard. There is an epidemic of estrangement.
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too right now. They're because we don't have the tools. If someone disagrees with us, they are against us and we just cut them out of our lives. And sometimes we call that boundaries. But I don't think they're boundaries. I think they're walls. This word boundaries is floating around so much right now. Like you said, it could be walls. Are we really setting boundaries? There are cases that merit that. But sometimes I could have one disagreement with you after this recording.
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boundaries, block Kimberly, never again, I'm setting my boundaries. That seems to be what most of us are doing right now, no? A lot of people are, and like everything we do, there's a price to pay. And I tell people, especially with family, if you block enough people, you're gonna run out of people. You know, and that's gonna matter somewhere down the line.
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But again, I think if we knew how to have the conversations, if we knew how to speak our truth without blaming someone else, if we knew how to name our needs without you having to be wrong, then I think we have hope to stay in a relationship, maybe to know where we shouldn't talk, but to be able to see what's good about the relationship and what's good about the other person. When I was in South Korea, a lot of my American friends, which are big...
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end of November and everybody talks about, oh, we could be in Thanksgiving and my uncle would be there drunk. But I remember in the two previous elections, a few more of my American colleagues in Korea said, I'm glad I'm not home because we are gonna have a political debate. I'd rather be here in Korea and not be home for Thanksgiving. But most people are like, every chance I get, if I travel, oh, I'd love to be home.
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The potential conflict is big enough for me to be a reason not to want to be home. So I was in France a few years back and a guide said to me, I understand that in America, you can't sit down and discuss politics at the dinner table or anywhere. Here we can disagree about politics and still stay in relationship. And he was right.
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The feeling that someone disagrees with you or has insulted you triggers our brain very much like there's a physical threat. Someone insulting you triggers the same kind of defenses as someone holding a gun to you as far as your body's reaction, as far as the fight or flight, as far as the quick adrenaline rush, as far as the need to protect yourself. But the difference is we also have a brain that can think and recognize that and calm down. So for me, it's a difference between being reactive.
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and being responsive. When we react, it's like a Tyrannosaurus rex is about to eat us. And we say or do things that aren't very helpful. When we can slow down and respond, then we can have those conversations. Exactly. We say things that are not helpful, things we wish we could take back and now it's too late. Yeah, I'm going to say we think that we say things that become a wall. It's hard. It's our reaction.
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But we have to find a way to turn those walls into doors. That is to say, we're all human, we all say things we don't mean. Recognize it, not just your partner, your friend, we do it too, we all do it. So the grace that we need, we need to give to other people. But after that insult, it's the what next. That means everything. So you insult someone, you say, I hate you, I never liked you. And we throw up our hands and say, now I know how you really feel.
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The truth is it's not how someone really feels. It's their defensive reaction. It's a reaction. So you have to go back to that and say, I recognize I reacted. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry I hurt you. This is what I really feel about that. That wall becomes a door. But that requires the person who was offended to not want you to be wrong so badly that they won't let you turn the wall into a door.
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Now, if we both disagree on something, like you said earlier, you're not against me. How do you communicate to me that I should take comfort in the fact that even though we have different viewpoints, you are not against me? How do you make me understand that? I think the clearer the better. So I would probably say, Roberta, I have a lot of respect for you. I disagree with what you think about that. For me, it's this.
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But I respect that your opinion and hey, I still care about you. You know, you can voice care as easily as you can voice the not care. Why does the second come easily? It doesn't come easily. You're exactly right. So the question then is this, Roberta, when we feel like it's going to cost us so much to do, what is it really costing us?
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What is it we're afraid we're going to lose by admitting we're wrong or by giving that extra? Because all we have is to gain, that we have really nothing to lose. So I ask people with things around disappointment that we're so afraid of, I don't want to be disappointed. What happens if you're disappointed? What's the worst thing that can happen if you're disappointed? That's the thing you want to give them to happen. How bad is that? Like your arms and legs fall off? I would hope not.
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My mom used to say sometimes to handle disappointment or things not working out the way she and hope. She would say, you know what, I had a whole full life before expecting this to be in my life. So I guess I'm going to have the same life after this. That is perfect. That is beautiful. Who told us that we weren't ever supposed to be disappointed? I mean, we're not supposed to get everything we want all the time.
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And I'll take that a step further by suggesting that we sometimes don't even know what's best for us. So I found that instead of deciding I must have this and getting on a path, being more open to what may come up is often better than I could have planned. You know, just being more open to the universe, to what's going on. The results are better than I can imagine because I only know what I know. But there's a world out there that knows so much more.
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If you allow me to take you back to your painful divorce, if anybody's listening and they're going through it, because another thing the pandemic brought was suddenly the divorce rate went higher. That's right. How do they manage that conflict while especially if the children are still underage and they need to co-parent and there's so much that they're still sharing, how do they make the transition?
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in a more peaceful way rather than going for the conflict. A lot of attorney mediators are trained in getting a settlement, but not trained in managing the relationship as well, especially for the sake of the children. Those who refuse to get along even when there's kids, who weaponize the kids against the other parent, all those kind of things. A brilliant mediator said that's when they hate each other more than they love their children. And do you want to do that because you have a choice?
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Who do you want to be in that divorce? Who do you want to model for your children, how you're going to be? Divorce through attorneys elevates the acrimony. There's an algorithm. Attorney A does this, attorney B trumps it, attorney A trumps that, attorney B trumps that. Things escalate, the emotions escalate, the consequences escalate, and the cost escalates. If you can start mediation before that.
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I always use an attorney as well, at least one attorney between them, but they can start the talking process. And in that talking process, for me, there's even an opportunity to talk about the hurts. But one of the things we build in is how do you want to parent moving forward? Like, how do you want to relate to each other? There's a lot of pain around divorce. There's a lot of grief. There's a lot of loss. It just is. How can you do that without blaming the other person?
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Because the one thing I love about mediation is it's not about who's right and who's wrong. It's not my place to decide that. Because both people have their truth. And when I stand in that shoes, I can see where they're coming from. When I stand on the other side, I can see where they're coming from too. They've just lost the ability to see each other that way, usually because of a buildup of conflict that's not resolved. There's so much pain, but also...
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the pain of what caused the divorce in the first place. Is that what they now bring to the settlement hearing with the lawyers? I think they bring all the pent up disappointment, all the things they didn't say that they hold inside, the disappointment of the dream. I've not yet met anybody who's gotten married that didn't hope it would last. Of course. And I know sometimes when I'm upset with my partner, it's really myself I'm upset with.
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It's just easier to be upset with the other person, you know? So I think there's a lot of that too. I think a lot of it, Roberta, is we doing conflict in a way that someone is right and someone is wrong. And we're going to make really sure we're not the wrong ones. So the other person has to be wrong. A quick story that I share when I'm teaching on conflict too, a really wise friend of mine decades ago, she said, when I fight with my husband, I always win.
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What exactly did you win is always my question. Oh, I love that. I love that. The last word, you know, the last point she said, because I'm better at words, because I'm more assertive, because I'm a better fighter. But one day I realized that for me to win, I had to make him lose. And I want to love enough that I don't have to make someone lose. The same thing with right and wrong. For me to be right, I have to make you wrong.
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And I want to care enough about you that I don't have to make you wrong. So you said earlier that when it comes to conflict, the hurt is what drives us. And so we want to survive. Please, can you explain what you call the biology of conflict? Yeah, so there are personality traits that we are pretty much hardwired for. Well, we're a combination of our genes and our experiences.
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I wish I could show you my slideshow because I have a picture of somebody, the letter six and the person over here, it looks like a nine and the person on the other side, it looks like a six. So there's a difference in perspective always, right? Things like narcissistic traits, neuroticism, our openness to change in new experiences, our capacity for joy versus sadness. These things are hardwired in a spectrum where lots to none.
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They're hardwired in us to a certain range, and we're all different. We have different combinations of those things. That when we're dealing with conflict, it's not just a matter of being a certain way or making up our mind or how we do it. It's also our biology that's part of it. Plus we have these wonderful things called cognitive biases that are fooling us and lying to us all the time.
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But we also have a brain that can figure things out, that can slow things down. And we have people who love us, who will be honest with us, hopefully, and help us see the things that we don't see. It's good to have someone close to you. I was going to say to you, do you think that was a win? And what happens next? Yeah, that's exactly right. No, that's a great mediator question, by the way, because mediators aren't telling you how to do something. We're asking the question so that you come up with a solution that you want.
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Someone asked me the other day if we have, like some mediators have rules before mediation, we're not gonna shout, we're not gonna whatever. I don't do that. I mean, it's about empowering people to make the decisions in their life for their life to turn out the way they want. But if they're arguing while they're trying to resolve something, after a while I'm gonna say, is this working for you? Is this working? Are you getting what you want and need this way? Is this making you feel any better? And they're like, no. It's like, are you willing to try something different?
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Because Roberta, that's the thing is we keep doing the thing that doesn't work and we keep doing it harder thinking it will work and we have to find new ways that do work. You said in your website mediation can prevent potential lawsuits. Oh, well, 100 percent. So as mediators, maybe not the attorney ones, but in lawsuits, one person wins and one person loses. So they say. But the truth is, I think both people lose because it takes a long time. It's a.
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expensive, you lose relationship. Now there are causes for lawsuits, not all of them, though I'd love to live in a world where we sit down and work it out all of the time instead of resorting to lawsuits. But every conflict from, you know, a neighbor conflict because there's too much noise to a divorce, to a civil matter, can be mediated instead of litigated. You can work it out. And the alternative saves time, it saves money, and it
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most often saves relationships too. The third one is, I think is what we need to work on the most. We seem to be losing and having this barrier between ourselves as humans because the relationships are just taking a nosedive. You know, Roberta, I say that as far as grace for mistakes, we're kind of expecting people to never do something wrong. And when they do, we're pointing fingers. We're just shaming them and holding them up.
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Their worst moment defines them. But here's the truth. Every single moment is an experiment because it's one we've never been in before. Sometimes we're gonna get it right and sometimes we're not because we're human in its life, right? So we call that learning, that's learning. I don't even know, it's not even a mistake. It's doing the best you can in the moment, but it doesn't turn out well. It's being human and it doesn't turn out well.
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and to give an opportunity to readjust that, to apologize if you need to fix a wrong that's happened, but know that this is just life. Would you like to talk to us about the work you do with communities and police and unifying them? So I found that interesting, especially because I don't think it's ever been covered in the news, please talk to us about that. Yeah, it's growing, thankfully.
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I'm going to talk about a couple of community things, but I work, I'm a volunteer mediator with the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office in their community police unification program, their CPU, which is out of their dispute resolution program. Community members who file a nonviolent complaint, racism, a stop that they didn't feel was right, they felt like they weren't respected, there's an opportunity for them to have a mediated dialogue with the police officer. And it is.
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an incredible thing because we talked to both of them separately, set them up to do well when they talk to each other, identify what the problems are, how they experience the problems and they both share their perspective. And 100% of the time, community members have said, we appreciate the police, we need you. And 100% of the time, for me, the ones that I've done, the police officers are like,
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I get it where you're standing, how that was. They're learning from each other. And I've had the results of that be everything from somebody wanting to go out for ice cream, a police officer offering to take some of the ice cream, to a community member wanting to go have margaritas with the police officer afterwards. Oh, that you don't see every day. Uh-uh, no, because this is an opportunity to see each other as humans. So the police officer does not come in uniform.
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I told you earlier, I have a son who was a K-9 police officer. I have a son-in-law who's a Missouri State Trooper. And I'm a community member, and I know lots of community members. And I see what's going on too, but I also know there's a lot of very good people who are putting their life on the line to serve us. I know that too. So doing this work so that we could start communicating and stop what we're just doing so much of, which is taking the worst case scenario and acting like it's everywhere.
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To have these conversations and watch people see the humanity in each other, to know what's really going on underneath is transformative. It connects people. We've done this also in facilitations after some serious social things, like the school shooting in Buffalo or the tragic car wreck in St. Louis. Facilitators will hold space for people to have dialogue about how the experience affected them and what they might want their future to look like.
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how they can change what is. And I've never not seen community members say, this was so powerful, we need to do more of it. Everyone's heard. Everyone has an opportunity to speak how this is, whatever it is, is affecting them and what their hope is. And then you're hearing everybody else and you know what you're finding out is, we want the same thing. We want our kids to be safe. We want to start something. All of us. Right.
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And there are the extremes, there are extremes on both sides of the political and there's extremes, but they're not the majority of us. So we can't let that become the definition of who we are by this extremes. That is true. And then the question becomes, why aren't initiatives like those being more exposed so the public knows, hey, wait a minute, that there is so much good out there. And we all want the same things.
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other side is the ones that's more vocal that gets more exposure and given attention. Yeah, it's kind of against peacemakers to be flashy. I mean, we're servers, servers don't make a lot of noise. Look into your community mediation center and see what kind of work your community mediation center is doing. They're doing restorative practice.
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They're doing things for juveniles in restorative practice. They're doing community building things, listening things, representing people who aren't represented to do mediations instead of having to go through court. They're trying to build community and there's so many people doing that that's unheard of. I hadn't heard of it until I got into this as a profession. It's what gives me hope. These are people who care about people. I have always believed that
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as humans our natural propensity is goodness and kindness towards each other. So now the question becomes if anyone is listening, you've said the one thing they can do is look into their communities and what is they doing in terms of mediation. Is there anything else? So the first thing I would suggest is getting a mirror, looking in it and saying what am I doing to contribute to this? You know, who am I talking about that my kids are hearing me?
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Who am I comparing myself to, saying somebody is better or worse than me? Who am I othering? That's the term we have in peace building, othering, when it's me against someone else. If I'm better than someone else, if I'm superior to someone else, where's that showing up in my own life? Along with my own bias, because we all have those, but maybe my unchecked bias, you know, where's that showing up?
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that maybe is what I do at the dinner table, or when I'm chatting with my friends, even if I think my religion is better than your religion, where am I doing this where I'm putting myself above other people? Look into that mirror, and then maybe figure out, get some books or information on how to have better conversations and dialogue.
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I'm going to email you a link Roberta because there's a group that has probably 20 or more subgroups that are working on dialogues between communities that are differing, including political. Maybe you can send that out with your... I will attach to the show notes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Call up one of those. If you can start calling a drive of people like us that are just part of community who want to do something to start joining these things.
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I think we're going to outnumber then and outvoice in a peaceful way, not because we're yelling and screaming, but in a peaceful way, start making a difference, even if that is to not make it acceptable to hear those voices that are shaming, othering, hating. We have all kinds of isms now. I just sum it up as hateism. We just have hateism. We have to check where we're contributing to that. Again, those isms are just a demonstration of...
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we are focused on what divides us than what we have in common. You know, it often works as storytelling. And that is when I understand your story behind that thing that we disagree with or the person that I'm looking at, when I understand your story, how you got to where you are, it makes it so much different. You know, we all have a story and we're looking at a snapshot of a person.
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And we're trying to make that their whole story. And we're forgetting that there's so much more than that snapshot. Exactly. If I understand your story, I can even understand why you believe the way you do, why you disagree with me on that one point, versus just thinking, oh, you know, Kimberly's against me. I'm blocking her boundaries.
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So I was on a call last week that was absolutely fascinating. And it was about, you know, the legislators here in Tennessee and Nashville that were shut down by one side. It was a group of mediators that were talking, you know, in full disclosure, we were talking about race and racism. And some folks said they didn't think they could mediate that because it hit too closely to home. You know, the thing is, I know that on either side, if I were born into where they were born,
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who they were, their parents, their life experiences, I would be them. And the same with the other side. And if you can recognize that, then we're no better or worse, we're just a different set of circumstances. And I could be that person, obviously, if I grew up like them and had their same parents and stuff. So I'm no better than they are. I'm just different. That helps me have compassion, even when I disagree fiercely, because it's just something totally against my own values.
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Are you able to have empathy or compassion if you feel that I'm the victim of their actions or words? How do I then develop compassion or empathy and trying to understand, oh the reason they act towards me this way is because I'm different in this way and this is the circumstance under which they were born and we're supposed to see somebody who looks like me and perceive me and stereotype me. So,
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How do I get past that and start to develop understanding and compassion for them? That's a beautiful question. But first of all, it's not okay to be treated poorly. Because of any differences, being compassionate doesn't mean that you let it be okay. If we were ever brave enough to say, you know, you saying that to me makes me feel like I'm invisible and less than you.
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that you don't know me, whatever it is, if we could ever say our truth, I can't imagine how somebody would react. I've not seen anybody react to truth like that. When you say this to me, it makes me feel like. But I think the one thing for me that I've always thought, I don't wanna be a victim to anything. If I have an opportunity to learn from it, what lesson is there for me in this? And for me, it's often been, I don't wanna be like that. The lesson for me is,
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How can I try to never do that because I see how it hurts somebody? I think knowing that people progress and learn and become compassionate or not at their own pace and me not to find where they should be, that their reactions are for now, if somebody does something rude to me, I sometimes wonder what's going on in their day. I know one time I heard a story of somebody driving fast and almost running somebody over and the.
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person getting all mad, but it turns out they were taking their child to the hospital. I mean, you don't know what people's circumstances are. So if we can give grace in that too, I think we can have some compassion. But there's a consequence, right? There's a consequence for the people who are unkind and judgmental and hateful. They're paying a price just like we're paying a price when we choose who we're going to be conflicted work. How do you.
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separate the work you're supposed to do and accomplish. And whether it's a colleague, it's even trickier if it's your leader, like they're bullying me, it's toxic. How do you handle that? So for me, if I'm working with an organization, you know, your workplace is at least a third of your life. So it matters and your experience there matters. And it's a third of everyone else's life too. Now everybody's not gonna automatically get along. That's just true. So when I'm working with an organization that's in conflict,
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I speak to each person individually to find out what their story is and what they're experiencing and what they can be empowered to do differently, whether it's to respond or tell themselves something so that they look in the mirror, the mirror that person's holding up may not be them. It may be their own problem, the other person's problem. So we go through that process and then I bring people together and it's what kind of workplace do you want to have?
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And when there's conflict, what kind of system do you want to have in place so that you can work it out? Do you want to work it out? The new trend that's working, which I absolutely love, is having a conflict manager, a neutral like myself. Mediators are neutrals. We're not for either side. I say we're for both sides. And by having someone who is for both people, how can we create an outcome that works for the people, which will make it work?
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for the establishment. So that they have a common goal to work towards rather than focusing on this survival instinct to taking my job, creating toxicity. A common vision, that's exactly right. One of the things I often have them do is write a mission statement. Who do we wanna be when we go home? What do we wanna say our workplace is like? Now, how do we design that?
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And people say things like, well, I want there to be respect. Okay. What does respect look like? Like it's not good enough to say, right? Right. How do you know you're being respected? And we just put all that stuff up there. Acknowledgement of how we're doing. And here's the other thing, Roberta is we don't know the people we work with very often. They're just the person in the cubicle next door. So an opportunity to know each other as humans. One example I had in a workplace was workers.
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very upset because they experience one person is always on their phone on Facebook. That's the story they told themselves. When we brought them together and talk, it turned out that person had a father in the hospital who was getting a leg amputated. So she was on the phone all the time. That's a big difference between on Facebook. So having the communication to understand the story instead of making up our own story, very, very helpful. You'd be amazed how many stories you make up and it turns out not what they do.
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The odds of getting it right are slim to none. People who know me can't believe I genuinely don't make up a story. Ask the question, save yourself the problem of having to tell yourself a lie. That might hurt you and another person and ask them. And here's how I do it, Roberta. So Roberta, the story I'm telling myself is that smile that you're giving me right now is really like you don't believe what I'm saying. Of course I'm making that up, I don't have that. And then you have an opportunity to say,
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Well, actually, what I'm doing is getting a piece of lettuce out of my teeth. There are, you know, because you're right, it's never the thing that we make up. It never is because there's so many choices. How could it possibly be the story that we are telling ourselves? Unless you have psychic powers, yes. Or that smile could be you thinking, oh, she just wants me to get done.
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because we were recording it. Oh, she just wants me to go say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, finish template, quickly, quickly, we have to go. Are you telling me something? Or somebody else could say no. Or somebody else could interpret it to mean, oh, she's, you know, affirming what I'm saying. Someone else would mean a grinning, not smiling. Oh, she must be one of those not sincere people. She just grins. There's so many ways to interpret the situation. Can we stop making up these stories in our head? Just ask, just ask.
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I don't know why we can't ask. What we think, because we've already made up the story, right? I don't want the confirmation that it's true. I think we're more afraid of being wrong. Oh, really? Than we are being right. Yes, I mean, if I tell myself a story and I'm acting on that and it comes to find out that's not what's really going on, I'm responsible then. And I think there's more discomfort in that than in being right. But then that's room to grow. That's a place to grow.
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Kimberly, is there anything I didn't ask you that you were hoping to share with our listeners today? I think you asked me everything. No, you were very thorough, Roberta, I appreciate it. You were even more thorough with your responses, the tools you've given us to resolve conflicts. So thank you. We appreciate you for sharing your wisdom and insights today. I love spending time with you. Thank you, Roberta.
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We should do it more and please know you're always welcome to come back to the show anytime. Oh, I'd love to. Thank you. My pleasure. And before you go, where can we find you on the internet? Yeah. Kimberly Best pretty easy to find, but it's best conflict solutions is my company. My website is best conflict solutions.com. It's easy to get in touch with me on LinkedIn. If you're on LinkedIn and then there's a pretty good description of what I do.
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on there as well. Kimberly Best. So best conflict solutions is your website. That's correct. Excellent stuff. Thank you so much for being here today. That was Kimberly Best, former registered nurse, facilitation, and mediation expert, and conflict resolution expert. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating, and a review on iTunes and Spotify.
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and stay tuned for more episodes to come.

Mediation To Prevent Lawsuits w/ Kimberly Best
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