MEDIATION IS LIKE MAKING COMPOST
Finding Insights in the Garden: Lessons from Mediation Before convening a formal mediation meeting, I always have several private conversations with each party. This approach allows me to delve deeper into their perspectives and uncover the underlying issues. I ask questions that provoke introspection: Did the other person make you feel demeaned? What was […]
What is Mothers’ Day to me?
Ouma van Wyk – Ma – Ouma du Toit. I never aspired to be a mother. To me what was normal was this: Girls grow up, they start dating, they meet a guy, they fall in love, they get married, they have babies. My life started before The Pill and abortions were unheard […]
Conflict Management Starts with Self
<1609 words> Recipe for Conflict A minimum of two people and an issue on which they disagree. Add to the recipe the factors that the people each bring into the relationship: Values, Culture & Triggers Our values are what we judge to be important in life: our personal principles. The rules we live by. They […]
RESPECT & CURIOSITY: On Elephants and Others
<1281 words> I have a great deal of respect for wild elephants and am careful to show that respect by backing out of their way when they come walking down the road towards my car. I believe I’ve learned a thing or two about elephant culture in my multiple trips to various game reserves across Africa […]
Four Decades of Being a ‘Senior’
<1243 words> FOUR DECADES OF BEING A ‘SENIOR’ WARRANTS A CLOSER LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCES There are more and more forecasts that more and more of us will live to be one hundred. Our eligibility for Canada Pension kicks in at 60. For many of us that marks the beginning of our new status – we’ve […]
“Eat your peas” and Conflict Resolution
<436 words> I was recently asked about my background in conflict management/resolution, and specifically, how many years’ experience I have in the field. I help people with all sorts of conflict – The inner conflict you have when you should have stood your ground but didn’t, which you still regret after all these years; […]
Syrian Refugees: Who Helps the Helpers?
<1160 words> The harsh truth about helping Canada’s Syrian refugees is with us now. The state of their kids’ teeth, our inability to communicate in Arabic, and all that. I’m sure there are many misunderstandings that have the potential to gnaw at the goodwill cloud that swept the Canadian nation when first our new PM […]
The Elephant in the Room
<520 words> I was at a meeting a while back, in a room with a low ceiling, comfortably seating about 8 people around a board room table; plastic water bottles and everything. During the conversation someone mentioned that there was an elephant in the room – with reference to something we all knew and thought […]
PERSONAL SAFETY IN THE FACE OF GLOBAL TERRORISM
The recent spate of fundamentalist terrorist attacks across the globe had triggered exactly the weapon it was intended to unleash: fear expressed as anger, causing confusion, separating us rather than bringing us together. It is a time when we may be so exhausted by confusion and fear that we readily sacrifice the rights and freedoms that are so hugely important to us. We’re at risk of running backwards. I’m not prepare to do that.
Fairness is simple. Bring culture into it and bedevil everything.
The way of breaking through cultural barriers to fairness is to return to our human origins. Fairness is the default position; culture is the way in which we express and judge it. The more culturally divergent a workplace is the less likely it is we’d have consensus on what constitutes ‘fairness’.
This paper explores Brown’s human fundamentals via Pinker; Frans de Waal’s research on the moral behaviour of animals; and then human culture via Hofstede, with a view of stimulating HR to look at how they ‘do’ fairness differently. What is being done currently doesn’t quite meet the human standard of fairness.
And so, how does one set that standard? The answers are in your approach and your level of cultural competence.
Some ideas are offfered on how fairness might be viewed and enacted differently – if someone has the curiosity and courage to do it.