Welcome To Conflict Revolution

What We Need, What We Offer: A Practice for Accountable Space

by Julie Hrdlicka

 

Over the years, I’ve sat in, facilitated, and designed more gatherings than I can count workshops, meetings or courses. Most of them began the same way: with a space-setting practice intended to foster connection and ground the group in shared expectations. Whether we called it ground rules, community agreements, safe space, or brave space, the goal was always the same: to create a space where people felt seen, heard, and respected.

And while those intentions are important, I’ve come to see the limits of how we often go about it.

Too often, facilitators show up with a pre-written list of expectations and ask the group to nod along in agreement. And sure, most people do sometimes with sincerity, sometimes just to move things along. But when expectations are handed down rather than built together, they tend to become performative instead of lived. Words like “respect” or “active listening” sound good on paper, but without relational grounding, they risk becoming hollow.

When a facilitator sets the rules, subtle but important shifts happen in the space. Power gets centralized. The facilitator becomes the one responsible for maintaining the environment, managing behavior, and enforcing agreements. That can work until conflict shows up. Then, the facilitator often becomes more of a referee than a guide, and the space can tighten, lose trust, or shut down entirely.

So where do we go from here?

If safe space prioritizes protection, and brave space asks us to take risks, then maybe the next evolution is accountable space, a space that’s rooted in mutual responsibility, transparency, and care. A space we build together, not just agree to. A space where everyone is responsible for how we are together.

A Relational Approach: Needs and Offerings

One practice I’ve found transformative in creating accountable space is the Needs and Offerings exercise.

I first experienced this approach during a training with the Community Justice Initiative in Kitchener-Waterloo, and it’s stayed with me ever since. It’s simple but powerful. Whether we’re gathered for a two-hour meeting or a multi-day workshop, we start by asking two questions:
What do you need to show up well in this space?
What can you offer to support others doing the same?

Everyone is invited to reflect, share (if they choose), and together we co-create a living document, a reflection of the humans in the room and how we want to relate to one another.

Some examples that have come up include:

  • Listening with empathy

  • Doodling to stay focused

  • Naming when I feel activated

  • Offering humour and gentleness

  • Moving from judgment to curiosity

  • Asking for breaks

  • Practicing humility—“I only know what I know”

  • Being open to seeing what’s behind the veil

  • Confidentiality: stories stay, lessons leave

  • Safe space doesn’t mean same views

It’s not a checklist. It’s an invitation. And when we start here, a few things begin to shift:

The Group Leads, Not Just the Facilitator

This is one of the most immediate and important shifts. The facilitator doesn’t hold the container for the group, they hold it with the group. That shared responsibility changes the dynamic. People feel more invested, more engaged, and more accountable to one another.

Needs Are Named Alongside Contributions

In dominant culture, we’re often taught to focus on what we can give and to downplay what we need. But in real relationships and especially in spaces with power dynamics or historical harm, it’s essential that people feel safe to name their needs. When someone says, “I need to take breaks to stay grounded,” or “I need us to slow down if conflict arises,” it opens a door to empathy, not judgment.

Marginalized Voices Become More Visible

Dominant culture often assumes neutrality and universality, but that doesn’t hold up when lived experiences differ dramatically. When people from marginalized backgrounds get to name what they need in the space and those needs are honored, it shifts the whole culture of the conversation. It creates room for real accountability, not just performative inclusion.

Each Group Shapes Something Unique

There’s no universal formula here. That’s the point. Each set of Needs and Offerings reflects the specific people in the room  and their identities, experiences, nervous systems, and values. It’s relational, not rigid. And that’s what makes it real.

Final Thoughts

Facilitating isn’t about controlling people, it’s about creating the conditions for clarity, connection, and transformation. When we co-create space with intention, we move beyond checklists and into relationship. And that’s where real dialogue, learning, and healing can begin.

When we start with Needs and Offerings, we say to each other:
You matter. Your needs matter. And this space belongs to all of us.

Conflict Is Relational: Reclaiming Connection in a Transactional World

By Julie Hrdlicka

In today’s dominant culture, we’ve been taught to treat conflict like a problem to be solved. Get to agreement. Reach a compromise. Find a solution. And quickly, please.

But what if this outcome-obsessed view is actually making conflict harder, not easier? What if it’s narrowing our possibilities, stifling our creativity, and cutting us off from the deeper purpose of conflict altogether?

The truth is: conflict is not just about resolution—it’s about relationship.
 And remembering this truth requires us to unlearn the colonial lens we've inherited and reconnect with more relational, grounded ways of being with each other.

The Colonial Frame: Control, Transaction, and “Resolution”

Much of the Western approach to conflict is rooted in colonialist values—efficiency, control, and individual gain. Conflict, in this view, becomes a negotiation for power: who’s right, who gets what, and how fast can we “move on.”

But that’s not neutral. In spaces where dominant culture shapes the process—whether in workplaces, governance, or mediation—this often means that those in power write the script and win in the end. Their logic, language, and goals become the standard, while other ways of knowing and relating are pushed to the margins.

We see this clearly in the historical (and ongoing) treaty process in Canada.

“The written text expresses only the government of Canada’s view of the treaty relationship: it does not embody the negotiated agreement.”
 —Sharon H. Venne, Understanding Treaty 6: An Indigenous Perspective

Treaties were never meant to be contracts. For Indigenous nations, they were relational agreements—rooted in kinship, reciprocity, and care for the land. They were about shared responsibility, not land ownership. But colonial forces imposed a transactional framework, distorting treaties into tools of dispossession and control.

“As Indigenous peoples, we understand that each time we take from the land, we give back to the land… Treaties were never about buying and selling land. Rather, they were about kinship.”
 —Carlie Kane, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Module 3: Honouring Truth

When We Lose Relationship, We Lose Ourselves

Colonialism didn’t just rewrite treaties—it reshaped how we see ourselves and each other. It stripped away practices that helped people reflect, relate, and stay human together.

Practices like sweat lodges and tipis were not just “cultural expressions”—they were relational spaces. Places where communities gathered to listen, debate, grieve, and make meaning of conflict. These were sites of emotional regulation, deep reflection, and shared understanding. When those were banned or erased, so too were the relational technologies that allowed people to be with conflict in healthy and connected ways.

And what replaced them? Courtrooms. Boardrooms. Treaties as contracts. Mediation as negotiation. Solutions measured by how much each individual can “get” out of the deal.

It’s no wonder so many of us struggle in conflict today. We’ve been socialized to view it as something to win or avoid, not something to be with. We've lost our collective muscle for sitting in the discomfort of difference, listening deeply, and staying in relationship even when it's hard.

Conflict as a Path Back to Relationship

We need to return to the wisdom that conflict is not a detour from relationship—it is part of relationship. It’s where growth happens. Where people are seen more fully. Where we learn, stretch, and build trust—not just through agreement, but through honest engagement.

Relational conflict recognizes that:

  • We are interconnected—to each other, to land, to story, and to history.

  • Conflict doesn’t need to be “solved” to be meaningful. It can be held, explored, and witnessed.

  • True dialogue isn’t about finding the middle; it’s about understanding and honoring difference.

  • Healing conflict isn’t about quick fixes. It’s about repairing connection and restoring dignity.

What This Means for Our Practice

If we want to do conflict differently—whether as facilitators, leaders, educators, or simply as humans—then we need to reorient ourselves away from solutions and toward relationship.

That means asking different questions:

  • Not “How do we resolve this?” but “What is this conflict asking of us?”

  • Not “What’s the compromise?” but “What is the quality of our relationship?”

  • Not “How do we move on?” but “How do we stay human together through this?”

It also means making space for the practices that dominant systems have devalued or erased: story, ceremony, slowness, collective reflection, and connection to land. These aren’t “extras”—they’re essential.

A Final Word: Remembering What We Already Know

Conflict doesn’t need to be feared or rushed. It can be a place of possibility, where new relationships, insights, and ways of being emerge.

When we treat conflict as relational—not just transactional—we honor the fullness of what it means to be human. We honor the wisdom of Indigenous and community-rooted cultures who’ve never lost sight of this truth.

And we remember that conflict is not the opposite of connection—it is one of its most powerful expressions.

© 2024 Conflict Revolution
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