Learning How to See
by Milly Sinclair (2023)
Unconscious Bias and working with conflict as a Systemic Conflict Transformation Practitioner (SCT)
To work with conflict, you must be objective, non-partisan- impartial and clear thinking. I used to pride myself on being all those things. With a vague shudder I now look back at the 25 years of being a practitioner working with relational, community and organisational conflicts, and I realise I rarely was. In fact, the longer I have been a practitioner of this work, the clearer I am around this unsettling and uncomfortable fact.
Even in my most relaxed self, I see the world through a particular lens, passed down from my experience, my family, my culture, and my education. In conflict, whether it's my own, or other peoples, I am even more likely to find safety in my blinkered ways of seeing. If I am not careful, I make snap judgments around who is right and who is wrong, who to listen to, and who to ignore, who I like and who I don’t, what information to include, and what to exclude. In contemporary parlance, this is my unconscious bias at play. It’s like I’m driving a car with a besmirched windshield that clouds my ability to see clearly. Dangerous in any situation, let alone conflict, as we can crash.
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“Unconscious bias is when we make judgments or decisions on the basis of our prior experience, our own personal deep-seated thought patterns, assumptions or interpretations, and we are not aware that we are doing it.”
(Oxford Dictionary definition)
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Unconscious bias impacts everyone. It is part of being human and has helped us survive for millennia.
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There are many biases, but I’m going to share some of the ones that I believe impact our ‘way of seeing’ as SCT (Systemic Conflict Transformation) practitioners. From Brian McLaren’s book: “Unconscious Bias: Learning how to see.” Helpfully, for memory, they all begin with ‘C. Have a look at the list and reflect on a conflict you are in, or have been brought in to ‘help’, which are the biases that are most impacting you.
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