Meta-Culture: Changing the Culture of Discourse

July 20, 2010 — Last week, we were thrilled to announce that one of our partners in the field of conflict resolution, India-based Meta-Culture, has been chosen to receive the Outstanding Leadership Award from the Association for Conflict Resolution. In this follow-up to that post, Meta-Culture shares more about their unique vision for building a team that can help "change the culture of discourse."

Meta-Culture: Building a Team

Meta-Culture’s vision conceives of a world where people approach instances of difference as opportunities to enhance communication and transform themselves and their societies. To achieve this vision, we aim to change the culture of discourse, that is, to actually change the way people talk with each other, especially in the face of conflict. Since as practitioners, this change is our vision, we ourselves must imbibe and model it. At Meta-Culture, we believe we must strive to realize this change within our own organization if we are to have a fighting chance of doing so in the world.

This said, not everyone who comes to work with Meta-Culture is automatically aligned to the vision, or understands what it demands of individual practitioners to realize it at the organizational level. One of our main challenges in the last five years has been building and maintaining internal alignment with the vision and mission. Because of the moral responsibility that comes with engaging clients in dispute resolution processes, we are serious about holding our staff accountable to transparent, proactive, and effective communication, especially when there are workplace tensions. Our internal norms require that Meta-Culture’s conflict resolution trainers and consultants demonstrate the will and ability to deal with their own conflicts in a constructive and mature manner before attempting to resolve those of our clients. While we recognize the importance of growing and scaling our organization, we have sometimes compromised on staff size in favor of working with a smaller team that is clear about and committed to the vision.

Continuous learning is not merely a goal but an active requirement at Meta-Culture. Quality is a notion with which we constantly wrestle; we define quality as the rigor with which we strive to apply critical thinking, precision in language, and the principles and methodologies of conflict resolution both within the organization and in the larger world.

Within Meta-Culture, we periodically invest time in improving our employees’ skills through facilitated discussions and learning workshops. At our daily morning meetings, we share individual experiences and discuss how to approach difficult client interactions. We strive to improve the quality of our client-based work by remaining vigilant about the quality of our own intra- and inter-team communication and collaboration, management and staff relationships, and the general workplace environment.

With respect to our client work, we invest time in understanding the nature, dynamics, and complexity of a particular situation before recommending interventions. When making recommendations, we use a toolbox approach wherein we select from a range of conflict resolution methodologies (e.g. assessment, mediation, dialogue, consensus building, system design, coaching, training, etc.) to creatively devise an approach that will best suit the client’s needs. We practice interest-based conflict resolution, which demands our sensitivity towards and support of all stakeholders’ real needs, emotions, and desires. We seek to generate stakeholders’ deeper understanding of each other while helping them arrive at mutually beneficial agreements.

All of these practices comprise a unique organizational culture that contributed to Meta-Culture received the Association for Conflict Resolution’s 2010 Outstanding Leadership Award. In our everyday functioning and internal interactions, we are committed to the rigorous application of conflict resolution tools and principles. We are serious about being the change we want to see in the world. It is our hope that Meta-Culture might be a model that inspires other organizations to exist in a similar manner.

Interested in working at this terrific organization? Learn about Meta-Culture's current search for a Trainer & Consultant and a Business Development and Client Manager for Corporate Education programs.