Omnipartiality – A Bias in Favor of Everyone
The guiding belief behind my work as a Conflict Transformation Catalyst is:
We are all in this together and we all have a unique and important role to play in the whole.
This belief motivates my work support the collaborative communication between all sovereign voices. And the value that supports this is omnipartiality.
We all have a role to play in the whole.
Click here to get your own Role in the Whole button or sticker.
I love to share the concept that “We all have a role to play in the whole” with as many people as I can. I've given away thousands of buttons and stickers with the phrase on it. (Order your's here.)
I like this phrase because it is obviously true, yet it's also provocative. It prompts us to ask really important questions: Why is it so hard sometimes to feel like we’re an important part of the whole? What are the barriers to our authentic contribution? Why do so many of us act at cross purposes with one another? What about the seemingly irreconcilable differences? What about all the ways we fall out of balance and into self-serving and self-sacrificing behavior? What about the people who have roles that I disagree with? What about me? What about us? What about them? What about him?
These questions are important because they highlight the incongruences in our society. It is easy to respond to these puzzles with resignation. People often accept being in difficult conflict as normal and expected, or else they focus on what they need to give up to find “peace.” When things get sticky, people often look to find "neutral" third party authorities (eg: bosses, parents or police) who can regulate the chaos by applying their power or some pre-established rules and laws. Often when folk choose to engage directly in bridging the gaps between their differences, they focus on strategies like compromise and negotiation. These approaches (asking others to make choices for us and collapsing to the middle) are inadequate. These approaches ask us to give up power or push us to care less.
What if the solution was to care more?
What if we chose to respond to life's puzzles by seeking solutions that were best for everyone involved and for the system as a whole?This approach is called Omnipartiality.
Omni- means all or universal, and -partial means being in favor of something or being biased towards it. To be omnipartial means caring for and favoring all parts of a system. It is a bias in favor of everyone and a commitment to move towards the success of the whole. It means wanting the best outcome for ourselves and the best outcome for others too.
“Omnipartiality” was coined by Kenneth Cloke in the book Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution and was born out of an intention to clarify the role of mediators and conflict resolution professionals. Mediators are often call “unbiased neutrals,” but they are not really neutral, unbiased, nor impartial. It is true, however, that mediators are not biased towards one side or another. Mediators are on both parties’ sides at the same time. Mediators are omnipartial.
The idea of neutrality is a vestige from the justice system. Judges (and those in the justice system) need to be "neutral" because this allows them to transcend being themselves, so they can become a vessel for the state, its laws and the jurisprudence of their predecessors.
Those of us in the field of conflict resolution who put ourselves into the middle of people's difficult conversations do so with great care for everyone who is involved. We are not neutral. We need to be able to name the skills and techniques that we bring to influence the experience of those we work with. What's more, it is important for us to be honest about our human biases, our histories and feelings and the systemic influences and prejudices that we bring with us as we co-create a container for the conversations of others.
It was in this mediative spirit that Kenneth Cloke brought us the word omnipartial.
I think, however, that it is time that we begin to apply the principle of omnipartiality to the rest of our lives. A certain sort of magic happens when we think about how to extend omnipartiality in all directions. We can value and work towards the prosperity of all humans and cultures. We can desire the best for past and future generations, for the tiniest organisms and the whole planet. We can even desire the best outcome for life and existence itself. We can be deeply selfish and profoundly care for others at the same time. We can want the best for our allies and for our rivals. We can want the best for the victors and the vanquished. I propose that the omnipartial manifesto would be:
Let’s try to make the experience of life as awesome as possible for as many as possible.
This may sound naïve at first, but let's parse it apart. Omnipartiality is simply a guiding value. You can choose to have it guide your choices right now, in your relationships, in traffic, or in politics. It simply is a choice to care for the experience of everyone involved.
In our day-to-day reality, being omnipartial can seem impractical. It’s difficult to imagine how everyone's needs and dreams can be attended to, especially when they are often so different. This thinking points to a collective sense of scarcity, and a confusion between strategies and interests. When one looks closely at the world, however, we live in great abundance, and thriving seems to be inherent to life and is based on regenerative systems that live in equilibrium.
If it feels difficult to take an omnipartial perspective, you can cultivate it with practices like metta (loving-kindness) meditation. (Learn more about metta here.) It also helps to remember that omnipartiality includes you, so forgiving yourself for the natural tendency to be self-centered is part of it. Be kind to yourself. Once the value is integrated into your heart and mind you can invite others to consider it in their decisions.
My conflict transformation colleagues and I have all sorts of clever tricks to inspire and support folk to take an omnipartial approach to life and develop the practical skills to bring it into reality. In conflict resolution work we make omnipartiality practical by focusing on an interest-based approach to conflict. This approach shifts attention away from the positions people take and strategies they are fighting about, and puts the focus on uncovering and illuminating the underlying interests and needs of the people who are involved in a conflict. When we are omnipartial and consider how to address the basic human needs of the people in a conflict, we find that myriad solutions become readily apparent. Here is a list of universal human needs (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). Conflicts are about positions and strategies, but needs and interests are things that we can understand and recognize in one another. When people realize that we all want the same things, omnipartiality becomes much easier.
Here is a graphic showing the relationship between strategies/positions and needs and demonstrating the interest-based approach to conflict resolution.
There are many ways to take an interest-based approach to resolving disagreements. I'm part of the Democracy Politics and Conflict Engagement Initiative with Mediators Beyond Borders International, and we have compiled a Conflict Literacy Framework that unpacks many of the interest-based approaches that one can take in in the face of political and social issues. (Here's a place in the framework that explains interest-based approaches to conflict.)
There is an elegance and simplicity is approaching life with a priority to figure out what works best for everyone involved. Whether it is your home, neighborhood, workplace, country or the world as a whole, I encourage you to start thinking about what it would look like to be in favor of everyone’s success. I’d love to hear how it feels to try this idea on, to consider the challenges that it presents, and to notice the possibilities it evokes.
I’m committed to spreading this message:
“An omnipartial world is not only ideal, it is already possible.”
I’d love to talk to you if you want to do the same.
If you want to bring omnipartiality to your company, workplace, team, or clients in the form of training or facilitation check out my work as Spoke & Wheel.
If you want to bring omnipartiality and conflict literacy to your political group or social change organization, check out my work with the Democracy, Politics and Conflict Engagement (DPACE) Initiative of Mediators Beyond Borders. Here is our Conflict Literacy Framework.
If you want to bring an omnipartial vision in the form of a talk at your next event or want to get some one-on-one coaching, you can work with me individually as Omnipartial Consulting.
For any of this you can schedule a call with me here. I really look forward to talking to you.
