I decided to return to school to earn my PhD while I was still working in the corporate world. I chose Union Institute & University, because the school encouraged interdisciplinary studies. My passion for conflict resolution began when I was a child, and only grew stronger as I became an adult.
For the design and development of The Working Circle, I used a tremendous number of sources. I went outside the norm for my studies, as there were very few PhD candidates focusing on conflict resolution in 1993. As you read on, I expect that the ingredients for The Working Circle might surprise you; I assure you, they transformed both me and my work. I include them here so that you can better understand the richness of The Working Circle, and why it is so effective.
The ingredients of The Working Circle are as follows, along with explanations of how each component contributed to the end product:
I was introduced to the field of conflict resolution when I earned my Masters in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, Teachers College. One day, Dr. Morton Deutsch, one of the "fathers" of the field, gave a guest lecture, and I was enthralled. His talk demonstrated to me that there was a field of study that matched my passion. But I was just entering the corporate world, to test my competitive mettle, and so that passion would go underground and not surface again until my last corporate position, 12 years later.
The field that captured my attention was transformative conflict resolution, as defined by Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger, in 1994, who described two goals arising from conflict: resolution and personal transformation. In their book, The Promise of Mediation: Responding to Conflict Through Empowerment and Recognition (Jossey-Bass, 1994), they wrote, "In the transformative orientation, the ideal response to a conflict is not to solve the 'problem.' Instead, it is to help transform the individuals involved..."
The study of how groups behave has always been fascinating to me. The areas of decision making, group influence, and so on were all critical to my work, and the work of I. L. Janis was at the top of my list. Groupthink, a term coined by Janis, occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of "mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment."[1]
How adults learn became another knowledge component that I needed for my studies. If I wanted to be able to teach adults how to resolve conflict and to transform, I needed to understand under what circumstances adults learn best.
It seems that most tribes indigenous to North and South America used some form of the Medicine Wheel in their cultures. I studied the Medicine Wheel with Rosalyn Bruyere, a medicine woman and healer, living in California. Her book, The Sacred Medicine Wheel Workbook[2] was a valuable source for me.
"The Medicine Wheel," Bruyere wrote, "is a practical system for maintaining a balance of power among all tribal peoples. It was the knowledge that no one lodge, no one tribe, could hold all the power which kept native people living in harmony here on Turtle Island (i.e., North America) for thousands of years before the coming of the White Man. When this nation was formed, the six Iroquois Nations taught the Wheel to our Founding Fathers, most notably Thomas Jefferson, and it is based upon these teaching that our government's system of checks and balances was originally based."
I recognized that the basic structure and layout of the Medicine Wheel, as opposed to the traditional linear processes so often used in conflict resolution, would allow for a journey of perspectives.
During my doctoral studies, I attended many individual sessions with Lopon Claude D'Estree, at the time the Buddhist chaplain at the University of Arizona. I learned that compassion had to be the foundation of all of my actions. Buddhism teaches that we need to be compassionate beings: that is how we can help others out of their pain and suffering. Having suffered a good deal of pain while making my transition from Chicago/New York, and the world of corporate human resources, to life as a consultant in Tucson, Arizona, the lessons of Buddhism resonated within me.
My study of Jewish mysticism had begun long before I undertook my doctoral studies. The Kabbalah gave me a greater understanding of how all religions really are connected at the spiritual level.
What was the most poignant aspect of these studies for me, and how did that contribute to my understanding of conflict resolution? Similar to Buddhist philosophy, the Kabbalah views life as a journey. When there is evil or wrongdoing, it is not evil by itself; it is the absence of good. I translated that into the belief that people did not have to regard each other as evil; what we needed was to understand one another's perspectives. (Do not misunderstand: I am not naïve—I know there are evil people in the world.)
Therefore, the study of Kabbalah reminded me that in my design of a conflict resolution model, I needed to keep in mind that, underneath it all, we are all human. For me that translated to mean that when we are not intimidated by anyone or any situation, conflict resolution and personal transformation is possible for everyone.
After I completed my PhD, I used The Working Circle in both my work and volunteer activities. Over the years, I made modifications—not to the design, but to some of the language. The Circle has never failed me.
Subsequent to my formal studies, I digested and incorporated the concepts of emotional intelligence, especially the work of Daniel Goleman. Participants in my seminars loved hearing that emotional intelligence (i.e., the ability to resonate with people) was possible for all of us, no matter what intellectual capacity we are born with.