After the Strike: Seeing the Relational Field and Choosing Repair

At a recent coffee meeting, someone asked me how my Relational Intelligence Framework™ (RIF) would apply in a unionized workplace after a strike. This is such an excellent example to write about because a post-strike environment brings so many relational dynamics into view at the same time and embodies the exact complexity that the RIF was created for.

A collective agreement may resolve the formal dispute. People return to work, new terms are in place and the organization has a basis for moving forward. Yet the relationships within the organization have also been shaped by everything that happened before and during the strike. People bring those experiences back with them. The relational field has memory.

The field is a medium through which we relate, and what happens between us leaves relational deposits. Trust, distrust, respect, disappointment, solidarity, resentment and connection can accumulate over time. An agreement changes the formal conditions under which people are working together. It does not erase what has already been deposited in the field.

This creates an important distinction between resolution and repair. Resolution addresses the dispute. Repair addresses what has happened within the relationships.

The RIF gives us a way to understand what we are working with before deciding how to move forward.

Seeing what is actually there.

The first step is to step back from our immediate position and observe the field, including ourselves. The five domains of the RIF give us a way to do that. We can consider Self, Other, Relationship, System and Contextand notice what each is contributing to our understanding.

Self includes what I am bringing into the situation: my experience, emotions, assumptions, values and capacity. Other asks me to consider what the people around me are experiencing and what their position allows them to see. Relationship brings attention to what has developed between us and what has been deposited there. System brings the organizational structures, roles, responsibilities and power relationships into view. Context situates everything in the present moment and within the trajectory that brought us here.

The point is not to choose one perspective. An employee's experience of the strike is part of the field. So is the union's experience. So is senior leadership's experience. So is the experience of the manager who was responsible for keeping things moving. These perspectives may conflict, but they can all exist within the same field. This is one of the things I find particularly useful about the RIF: we can observe what is present without immediately turning difference into judgment. That includes observing ourselves. When I can recognize my own position, my own history and my own response, I have more information available to me. I can notice where my interpretation may be influenced by what I have experienced and consider what else may be shaping the situation.

The integrating forces help us go deeper.

Load and Capacity can help explain why people return from prolonged conflict with different abilities to engage. Time and Trajectory remind us that the current relationship has been shaped over time and will continue to develop from here. History and Pattern helps us recognize what existed before the strike and what may have been reinforced or exposed through it. Power and Position helps us understand the different authority, responsibilities and constraints held by the people involved.

The middle manager illustrates how these forces can intersect. They may be identified as management while maintaining close relationships with employees. They may be responsible for implementing decisions they did not make and communicating decisions they did not control. They may understand the concerns of their employees while also carrying responsibilities to senior leadership. Their own experience of the strike may sit alongside all of this. Their relational position is shaped by responsibility, authority, history, capacity and relationships. Understanding that position does not resolve the tension. It allows us to see it accurately.

What do we want to create from here?

This is where Values and Ethics become especially important. Once we step back and see the field, we have to decide how we want to participate in it.

The RIF identifies values including Whole-Person Dignity, Respect for Lived Expertise, Genuine Partnership, Transparency and Honesty, Equity, System Responsibility and Accountability. These values provide a foundation for deciding how we want to relate as we move forward.

A post-strike environment gives us an opportunity to ask what those values look like in practice:

• What would it mean to treat employees' experiences as lived expertise rather than something that belongs to the past?

• What would genuine partnership look like between people who have recently been on opposing sides of a dispute?

• What does transparency require when trust has been damaged?

• What does equity look like when people have experienced the same organizational events differently?

• Where does system responsibility sit when the conditions affecting a relationship were created elsewhere?

• What does accountability look like for each person and at each level of the organization?

These questions move the focus from getting back to normal to deciding what kind of relationships the organization wants to build.

That is where repair becomes meaningful. Repair is not a single conversation or a statement that everyone should move forward. It is a process of restoring or rebuilding the conditions needed for relationships to function well. Sometimes that involves acknowledgment. Sometimes it involves changed behaviour over time. Sometimes it requires addressing a pattern. Sometimes it requires organizational action because the source of the problem sits within the system.

The RIF helps us distinguish among those possibilities. A middle manager may be able to repair trust with an employee through how they listen, communicate, follow through and acknowledge what has happened. They may also recognize that they cannot repair a systemic issue through that relationship alone. If their team lacks resources, if decision-making authority is unclear or if a recurring organizational pattern continues to create strain, the appropriate action may need to happen elsewhere.

That is part of relational intelligence too: knowing where our responsibility begins and ends.

Choosing how to relate.

The RIF's central questions bring this together:

• How am I relating right now?

• What is shaping that?

• What possibilities for relating are available?

• How will my relating shape what becomes possible?

These questions shift our attention toward our participation in the field.

From there, SEE, HOLD, ACT provides a way forward.

SEE the field as it is, including ourselves, others, relationships, systems, context and the forces shaping them.

HOLD what we see with enough openness to recognize different experiences and perspectives while remaining grounded in our values and responsibilities.

ACT in ways that contribute to the relationships and conditions we want to create. That may mean repairing a relationship, addressing a pattern, changing a process, raising a systemic concern, setting a boundary or taking responsibility for something that belongs to us.

The important question is not simply, "How do we move on after the strike?"

It is, "How do we want to relate to one another now?"

The answer will be different for different relationships and different parts of the organization. There may be things that cannot be repaired quickly, and there may be things that require action beyond the people directly involved.

But the opportunity is there to recognize that returning to work is the beginning of another part of the trajectory.

The agreement provides the foundation for that next phase.

The relational field carries the history.

Values help us decide what we want to create from here.

And repair is one way of turning that intention into practice.