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This morning, doing one of my favorite things – listing to This American Life – I heard an interview with violence interrupter Tim White of CeaseFire. Tim is a former gang member who now fills an extremely compelling role in the world of conflict resolution.

With an “intimate knowledge of what motivates an urban youth to shoot,” violence interrupters are trained by violence prevention experts and then connected in to neighborhood networks in order to intervene before violence happens. Usually, this means stepping in when revenge violence is likely.

CeaseFire’s efforts have substantially decreased the rate of gun violence in a city suffering what has been deemed a public health epidemic.

As I explore the practice of mediation, I am exploring how it and related practices such as conflict resolution, conflict management, coaching and negotiation, are practiced professionally. Every now and then, I’ll share with you here brief profiles of the career paths I find intriguing, inspiring, or otherwise noteworthy.

Violence interrupters take a unique path into the world of professional conflict resolution, perhaps making their work all the more compelling to me. It is a true community empowerment model. Community members becoming leaders of conflict management within their own communities. Modeling the change they wish to see in their part of the world.

I’m so glad to know that this exists.

For a more in-depth treatment of the program, hear an interview with the director or visit the Executive Summary: Evaluation of CeaseFire-Chicago published by Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research.

I recently attempted to simultaneously play party and mediator in a workplace conflict, and felt the burn of my green tendencies.

With my new skills, I find myself entering into super-conflict-resolver mode whenever faced with a conflict. Hooray for seeking experience wherever one can find it. This is giving me, and folks around me, ample opportunity to experience my strengths and green tendencies to be improved.

During a basic mediation training role play, I co-mediated a heated dispute between a couple who had recently split after infidelity. The characters were drawn to be extremely emotional: yelling, swearing, overflowing with anger. Early in the session, I demonstrated compassion and empathy, without endangering my neutral status, which helped each party feel comfortable and valued. But … as their emotions, decibel levels, and the tension in the room increased, my warmth gave way to an almost robotic persona which frustrated the parties. My coach helped me identify a way out of this in the moment.

In the face of heightened emotion, as I enter super-conflict-resolver mode, I instinctively become flat. Very flat. My speech becomes slow and deliberate, almost monotone. I am aware of the shift, and yet …It’s almost as though I think the only way to diffuse powerful emotions and maintain focus on the path to resolution is to have no emotion myself. Consciously, I don’t believe this.

But alas, we humans do learn slowly and instincts are very difficult to force to evolve.

Recently, this automaton response lead to a quite visceral reaction from one of the three parties involved in a workplace conflict. This party was already on the defensive, as a coworker and I approached addressing an issue in what unfortunately came down to the old two-against-one game rather than teamwork.

She lashed out at me in a way that turned a minor issue into a major conflict, and provided quite a test for my newly developing skills in conflict resolution and relationship preservation.

While her lashing out shocked me, I realize where it came from. The compassionate me engenders trust and comfort. The automaton me builds rage and paints me as a patronizing jerk who talks without listening. As a mediator and as a human being, I would prefer to be the former at all times – or at least most times.

I will be constantly vigilant in avoiding this pitfall.