The Anatomy of Peace, Fourth Edition: Resolving the Heart of Conflict

We should never expect anyone to share anything deeper or more honestly with us than we have shared with them.

Do my relationships with people who look like me—in skin color, gender, sexual orientation, age, religious views, or physical ability—seem different in quality than those with people who don’t look like me in any of these ways?

What’s more, this kind of listening will most often lead to a sense of something we can do to help things go right.

Unfortunately, most of these efforts to change biased, discriminatory behaviors focus on changing behavior alone. Despite good intentions, these efforts are doomed to fail. Why? The reason is embedded in the following question: are bias, discrimination, inequity, and a lack of diversity and inclusion behavior problems or way-of-being problems?

we can build relationships only to the degree that we are willing to share our hopes, goals, needs, challenges, objectives, and headaches with others.

Ultimately, my effectiveness at each level of the pyramid depends on the deepest level of the pyramid—my way of being.

For this reason, to overcome the challenging societal and organizational issues we face today, organizations must first help people change their way of being—the way they see and regard others. No behavioral prescription can overcome the deeper underlying mindset that drives behavior.

“Am I listening to correct and teach, or am I listening to learn?”

Not the kind of listening that sorts what others say (or don’t say) through the lens of our justification-seeking agenda. Not the kind of listening that intensely looks for fallacies and logical flaws. Not the kind of listening that pounces on inconsistencies or a poorly chosen word or phrase.