Reply to Forced into a "Healing Circle"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A lot of folks are getting hung up on the phrase "healing circle". Forget the lingo. This is just conflict resolution process and OP -- you should be grateful it exists. You can use it to protect yourself. And ideally, it will actually resolve what sounds like a misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities. My main piece of advice: they need to hire a neutral mediator to facilitate. It's really important.

I once had a similar miscommunication in which I was accused by someone within my organization of having an overly harsh tone (I'm a white woman and so was the person accusing me). But instead of having a process in place for addressing, my very small organization tried to handle the situation "ad hoc." What this meant was that I was told by my boss that I had overstepped and I was ordered to issue a written apology in which I also promised to never "antagonize" my colleague again. Keep in mind -- the email in question had no bad language, was 100% about work. The statement that irked my colleague was the phrase "In the future, please run these changes by me so that I can make sure they are in keeping with the project mission." I remember it exactly because I had to talk about it so many times. I was told by numerous people in the organization that I was being overly aggressive, "shaming" my colleague, and that I should have run the language of my email past my boss before sending. It was a similar situation -- I was project lead and this woman was providing auxiliary support related to area of expertise, but had reached out to our clients on her own without talking to me and promised a fundamental change to our deliverable.

Anyway, I wound up writing the apology. I also wound up leaving the organization within a year. I felt completely railroaded by the process. I would have welcomed a "healing circle" or anything that would have allowed the people involved to have a constructive back and forth about what had happened. But I would request that it be lead by a neutral mediator hired to conduct the healing circle because otherwise there is a risk that one organization or the other will take over the process.

Participate fully. Respond to the requests to do pre-work, even if they seem dumb. But also make sure that it is run in a way that is actually designed to resolve conflict, and not just a way for this woman and her organization to pile-on. Neutral mediator. It's essential.[/quote]

This would NEVER happen to a man for using direct language. NEVER.[/quote]

I'm surprised your boss did not support you and crush this.  [/quote]

I was too at the time. I felt extremely hurt. But looking back, I can see how people in this org used social pressure in this very passive-aggressive way. Everyone, including me, was very paranoid about being seen as anything other than a team player. That's ultimately why I wrote the apology. I felt enormous pressure to prove that I could get along with everyone.

After I left and worked other places, I realized that this is NOT normal and that what seemed like a close, friendly culture was actually pretty dangerously cult-like. I realized, for instance, that people gossiped there all the time. But didn't recognize it as gossip because it was couched as "let's discuss so-and-so because we are worried about her." I know there were conversations like that about me around this time, and I feel certain my boss was worried about being painted with the same brush.

I hadn't thought about this incident in a long time until I stumbled on this thread. At first, thinking about it made me angry all over again. But thinking through it, I realize how messed up that place was and I'm actually really glad I didn't spend more time there. My career hasn't been perfect since, but I've never felt that powerless and ostracized again, not even close.[/quote]

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