By Diana Mosonyi

A friend of mine came up with the term “ombuds tourist” when I was telling her about my attempt to visit as many ombuds offices in the US as I could. Between November 2017 and February 2018, I took up the quest to find an answer to a seemingly simple question: Why is working in an office where people bring their anger, frustration, despair, bitterness, and tears so attractive? I’d like to share my journey with readers of The Independent Voice, as I believe they might find it interesting and useful as they consider their work as ombuds or paths to the profession. 

By Jim Huegerich, Senior Ombuds, Town of Chapel Hill

We all possess power in two key areas: questions and stories.

Questions are often asked to confirm an assumption, to challenge, or to convince. Imagine if we asked questions to truly learn about one another, particularly about those with whom we disagree or those very different from us? Questions, and the ways in which they are asked, have the potential to transform our interactions and inform how we approach, view, and engage people — particularly those with whom we deeply disagree. Through genuine curiosity we can learn to harness the power of questions to invite understanding and make connections between the asked and the asker. We can learn to:

• discover questions that bridge the gap between differences and help us better understand the situation from differing perspectives
• craft questions in a way that genuinely invites others to respond and elicits fresh, productive responses, particularly in stuck or divided conversations
• avoid questions that close down a conversation during disagreement
• foster awareness of the effects of questions on our perceptions, emotions, and relationships
• create space for people to be real and to own their feelings in fresh ways that help them relate to themselves and others, surfacing possibilities unimagined by people stuck in disagreement
  
  

Stories are important for relationships. We all have a story to tell. The power of story connects us as real people, valued for who we are and where we are in life. Unfortunately, we often feel like we know others — what their stories are, and why they do what they do.  Or even worse, we do not care to know their stories. The challenge is to be willing to create the safety and the opportunity to elicit, then listen to, the story of another person. Allowing others to tell their stories is a gift we give to them.

By Mary Conger, Doctoral Candidate, University of Pennsylvania; Founder, The American Dialogue Project
Chair, IOA Communications Committee

Last week, I went to see my doctor. In the course of discussing my minor malady she briefly mentioned an experience she’d had as a patient herself. It was a casual, entirely appropriate remark. She didn’t “overshare” or project her experience onto me. Her anecdote took all of 10 seconds to relay, but it has stayed with me for days.

I like my doctor. She is knowledgeable, experienced, well-regarded. Her academic pedigree is top-notch and her online reviews uniformly superb. Her wry but warm bedside manner is exactly my speed. If you had asked me two weeks ago, “How’s your doctor?” I would have answered, “She’s perfect!”

But this week, I find her even perfect-er. In conveying that she knew what it felt like to be vulnerable and under another’s care, she created a deeper trust between us. That is the incredible power of evinced empathy—it closes gaps that you didn’t even know were there.

By Roy Baroff, CO-OP®, MA, JD
Faculty & Staff Ombuds, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

It was the title that caught my eye. How can you resolve a conflict with someone else without actually engaging that person? That’s what I was thinking when I signed up for this pre-conference workshop at the International Ombudsman Association Annual Conference in Minneapolis. I was also intrigued by the presenter, Nicole Gravagna, Ph.D., who has a background in neuroscience and the venture capital world. (She wrote Venture Capital for Dummies.)

So, what’s this all about and how can it help me in my work as the NC State faculty & staff ombuds?  I will not provide all the details of the session, yet it is worth mentioning that we started out by shaping Playdoh© into parts of the brain with a focus on the ACC  – Anterior Cingulate Cortex.

Can you identify these parts of the brain?

By Dave Carver, PhD, Student Ombudsperson, University of Nebraska Medical Center
IOA Board Member
[email protected]

In higher education the start of the fall semester is a time to welcome new and returning students while also taking a fresh look at traditional perspectives. It is in that spirit that I offer a few thoughts on the future of organizational ombudsing.

First, I think we can all agree that our IOA version of the ombuds role is unique, valuable, and worth preserving. There’s nothing quite like it.  I would also point out that at least in academia, the ombuds role was practiced effectively long before the IOA and the Standards of Practice (SOP) ever existed. I first came in contact with a university ombudsman as an undergraduate student at Northern Illinois University in the early 1970s. Although the SOP were still unwritten at the time, our campus ombudsman was indeed confidential, impartial, independent, and informal–pretty much as we use those terms today. Was that just a coincidence? I don’t think so because the role was being replicated on campuses across the country.

Those early academic ombuds pioneers fulfilled previously unmet campus needs for informal dispute resolution and fair process advocacy in a somewhat magical, behind the scenes manner. Although I’m not as familiar with the evolution of ombudsing in the corporate world and other organizational sectors, I think the role emerged in a similar way. The original organizational ombuds all came from a multitude of professional disciplines and work backgrounds. There were no sequential degree programs or step-wise career paths required. This was still the case when I became an ombuds in 1996 and remains true today. It is a large part of what makes the ombuds role special to the organizations that we serve.

By Shannon Lynn Burton, Ph.D.
Associate University Ombudsperson, Michigan State University

Through the International Ombudsman Association (IOA), ombuds around the world learn their roles and connect with others in the field through the annual conference, training, and webinars, as well as through the various publications sponsored by IOA. These interactions allow us to network with individuals both in and outside our professional sector. However, for some, the large conferences might seem overwhelming and might not address the particular needs of a sector or issue. To meet these needs, sector-specific or region-specific meetings have emerged. These meetings allow for greater connection within sectors or regions and create a space for deeper conversation about specific issues. These groups, some of which are informally part of the larger IOA umbrella, can be defined as “communities of practice.”  In 1991, theorists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger coined the term “communities of practice” in their work examining legitimate peripheral participation. Legitimate peripheral participation describes the ways in which newcomers to a group become experienced members through low-risk activities whereby they become familiar with the organization, values and language of the group or community. Individuals form “communities of practice” when they engage in collective learning or in a shared human endeavor.

This past June, two such communities of practice met at Michigan State University. The first was the Summer Meeting of Academic Ombuds, a group that has met for the last 15 years to discuss ideas and support networking among those in the academic sector. A smaller group, the Michigan Caucus of Educational Ombuds, met for the third time to examine issues particular to their expanding group, as well as needs particular to those in the State of Michigan. MSU extended their hospitality as the kick-off to the celebration of the 50th year of their ombuds office, but more importantly, to contribute to these particular communities of practice.