44,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Find the roadmap to the heart of the conflict The Conflict Paradox is a guide to taking conflict to a more productive place. Written by one of the founders of the professional conflict management field and co-published with the American Bar Association, this book outlines seven major dilemmas that conflict practitioners face every day. Readers will find expert guidance toward getting to the heart of the conflict and will be challenged to adopt a new way to think about the choices disputants face,. They will also be offered practical tools and techniques for more successful intervention. Using stories, experiences, and reflective exercises to bring these concepts to life, the author provides actionable advice for overcoming roadblocks to effective conflict work. Disputants and interveners alike are often stymied by what appear to be unacceptable alternatives,. The Conflict Paradox offers a new way of understanding and working with these so that they become not obstacles but opportunities for helping people move through conflict successfully.. * Examine the contradictions at the center of almost all conflicts * Learn how to bring competition and cooperation, avoidance and engagement, optimism and realism together to make for more power conflict intervention * Deal effectively with the tensions between emotions, and logic, principles and compromise, neutrality and advocacy, community and autonomy * Discover the tools and techniques that make conflicts less of a hurdle to overcome and more of an opportunity to pursue Conflict is everywhere, and conflict intervention skills are valuable far beyond the professional and legal realms. With insight and creativity, solutions are almost always possible. For conflict interveners and disputants looking for an effective and creative approach to understanding and working with conflict , The Conflict Paradox provides a powerful and important roadmap for conflict intervention.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 490
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter One: The Art of Conflict
What We Bring to the Table and What the Table Brings to Us
How Contradictions Make Us Who We Are
A Developmental Perspective
How Conflict Promotes Less Complex Thinking—and Simpler Thinking Promotes Conflict
How We Promote More Complex Thinking
Reflections from Practice
Chapter Two: Competition and Cooperation
Influential Approaches to Cooperation and Competition
The Evolution of Cooperation
Evolutionary Lessons from the Prisoner's Dilemma
Limits of the Prisoner's Dilemma
A New Approach to Cooperation and Competition
Reflections for Practice
Chapter Three: Optimism and Realism
The Faces of Optimism and Realism
Optimism and Realism: The Emotional Dimension
Embracing Uncertainty: Realistic Thoughts, Optimistic Attitudes
The Ethics of Optimism and Realism
Integrating Optimism and Realism, Clarity and Doubt
Further Reflections from Practice
Chapter Four: Avoidance and Engagement
The Dimensions of Avoidance and Engagement
Behavioral Elements of Avoidance and Engagement
Emotional Elements of Avoidance and Engagement
Attitudinal Aspects of Avoidance and Engagement
Avoiding and Preventing, Engaging and Escalating
The Ethical Challenge
The Conflict Specialist's Challenge
Reflections from Practice
Chapter Five: Principle and Compromise
Principle Without Compromise Is Seldom Principled
Principles Are Pragmatic
The Power of Principle and Compromise
Values, Interests, and Resources
Compromising with Evil
Reflections from Practice
Chapter Six: Emotions and Logic
The Response of Conflict Specialists to the Emotion–Logic Paradox
Emotions, Logic, and Decision Making
Emotions and Logic in Conflict Work
What We Feel, How We Think
Gender and Culture, Emotions and Logic
Reflections from Practice
Chapter Seven: Neutrality and Advocacy
What We Mean by Neutrality
The Dimensions of Advocacy
The Advocate's Skills
Susskind and Stulberg: A Classic Debate on Neutrality and Advocacy
The Advocate Neutral
(Further) Reflections from Practice and Life
Chapter Eight: Community and Autonomy
Identity, Community, Autonomy
Integrating Community and Autonomy: The Challenge for Conflict Interveners
Reflections from Practice (and Life)
Chapter Nine: The Conflict Dialectic: Better Paradoxes, Better Conflict
Paradox as a Method
Other Paradoxes
Overlaps and Synergies
Society's Essential Paradoxes
Final Reflections (and a Final Paradox)
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Pages
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xv
xvi
xvii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Preface
Begin Reading
List of Illustrations
Figure 2.1
The Conflict Paradox
Seven Dilemmas at the Core of Disputes
Bernard S. Mayer
Cover design by Wiley
Cover image: Gordian Knot © Mircea Maties/Shutterstock
Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Brand
One Montgomery Street, Suite 1000, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594— www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.
Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mayer, Bernard S., date-
The conflict paradox: seven dilemmas at the core of disputes / Bernard S. Mayer.—First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-85291-0 (hardback)
1. Conflict (Psychology) 2. Interpersonal conflict. 3. Conflict management. 4. Negotiation. I. Title.
BF637.I48M387 2015
303.6′9—dc23
2014032312
First Edition
To Hopey Who handles life's paradoxes with honesty, kindness, and wisdom
Preface
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
Niels Bohr, Niels Bohr: The Man, His Science, and the World They Changed
The most important, difficult, and complicated challenges we face in conflict are also the simplest and most straightforward. How do we guide destructive interactions in a more positive direction? How do we change a hostile, competitive relationship into a partnership for change? How do we find a way through seemingly intractable differences about values or resources? Although there are no easy answers to these challenges, there are simple ones. For example:
When communication breaks down, adversaries need to listen more and argue less.
When disputants are locked into a negative and competitive interchange, they should each try to identify possible avenues for cooperation.
When stuck in opposing positions, disputants should explore underlying interests and concerns and look for integrative options.
When two people are enraged at each other but depend on each other, they need to examine the source of their anger and find ways of being a bit less dependent.
When opponents are sure they are right and the other side is wrong, they should entertain doubt.
The very simplicity of the answers to so many of conflict's challenges makes this kind of advice almost banal. But if the advice is simple, what is necessary to implement it is very difficult indeed. Much of the best wisdom about conflict offers practical advice about how to approach conflict differently, how to communicate better, or how to problem solve more effectively. But conflict takes place in the chaotic world of human society, fraught with intense emotions, complex interactional systems, long histories, and troubling power dynamics. So while the answers may seem simple, the path to them is very complex. To make our way down this path, we need new ways to understand conflict and the choices it presents. Whether we are trying to work our own way through a difficult dispute or help others to do so, the biggest challenge we face is finding new ways to think about conflict that open up new and practical approaches to engaging in it in the messy, unpredictable, complex world in which we live.
I present seven paradoxes in this book—all seeming contradictions that frame how we make sense of conflict. Each poses an essential dilemma for how we approach conflict, how we think about it, and how we can move forward in a productive way. In each, we seem to face a difficult choice between two alternatives, neither of which is entirely acceptable.
Competition and cooperation
Optimism and realism
Avoidance and engagement
Principle and compromise
Emotions and logic
Neutrality and advocacy
Community and autonomy
We grow in our ability to handle conflict, and we help others to grow as well, when we realize that we do not have to choose between these stark alternatives. They are not mutually exclusive; each element of each polarity implies and indeed requires the other. We mature in our capacity to engage and intervene in conflict by developing a deeper understanding and comfort with these paradoxes—both by working on them for ourselves and honing our ability to help others. We may not do this consciously or intentionally, but this challenge is so essential to effective conflict work that is natural for us to grapple with it.
This book describes these paradoxes and discusses how we tend to pose them as intractable dilemmas or opposites—that is, as contradictions requiring a difficult choice—and argues that they are not contradictions at all, but codependent realities. I discuss these paradoxes always with an eye to both the conceptual and practical challenges we face: how do we understand this, and what does this mean for practice?
We can view each of these paradoxes independently, and some no doubt will resonate more with individual readers than others. But taken together, they present a powerful way of understanding the challenges presented by conflict.
The Conflict Paradox builds on previous works but also departs from them in significant ways. As with earlier writings, I try here to deepen our understanding of our role and purpose in conflict work and the conceptual frameworks that guide us. But I go a step further in this book by examining and challenging the fundamental way we think about conflict itself—and in particular the polarized, bifurcated view we tend to take of it. I came to this by reflecting on what appeared to be at the core of my own conflict work and my thinking about conflict, but also by considering what seemed to me to be at the heart of some of the most influential contributions to conflict theory and conflict intervention by leading scholars and practitioners. I hope that this book will contribute to a better understanding of how we can engage and intervene in conflict more effectively and that it will challenge readers to reflect on what they actually do that makes a difference in conflict.
I have addressed this book to conflict specialists such as mediators, advocates, coaches, facilitators, and collaborative practitioners, but also to conflict participants. I have used examples throughout from both perspectives, and each of the chapters can be viewed through the lenses of conflict engagement and conflict intervention. Readers of my previous books will not be surprised that I have avoided focusing on conflict resolution, because I believe that is only one part of our purpose in conflict—and concentrating on this often leads us away from the more important work we have to do. Instead, our goal as interveners and as participants in conflict is to promote more constructive approaches to conflict engagement.
I also have not focused on the professional role of the third party, although many of my examples come from situations in which I participated as such. While the work of mediators, facilitators, fact finders, and others who function as “third siders” is important, other conflict intervention roles are also crucial to constructive conflict engagement. Advocates, coaches, system designers, strategic advisers, substantive experts, and many others who are not in an ostensibly neutral role also fulfill essential functions, and this book is also addressed to them. I directly address this in chapter 7, “Neutrality and Advocacy.”
I have been privileged to work across a wide range of disputes, and this has shaped my understanding of conflict. If a dynamic seems significant across multiple arenas of conflict, it seems likely that it reflects a fundamental truth about conflict. The seven paradoxes that I describe apply across all arenas of conflict, and I provide examples of how they operate from widely different contexts. I use family, organizational, interpersonal, small and large group, community, societal, and international disputes throughout as illustrations of the paradoxes in operation.
Some of the examples are drawn from specific conflicts that I have worked on. Some are amalgams of several different but similar disputes, and a few describe from a new perspective disputes presented in previous works. Some are public conflicts; others are confidential. In a few of them, I was a disputant, observer, or consultant and not an intervener. Unless a conflict was public, I have changed the facts to protect confidentiality but have tried to maintain the interactional dynamics. And where I report direct dialogue, this is reconstructed from memory.
This book is also more personal than my earlier works. I have included throughout descriptions of my own path and struggles in developing a constructive approach to conflict. Additionally, each chapter ends with a section containing personal and professional reflections in which I focus on how I developed the ideas described in the chapter and how I have applied these to my work and my life. These sections are intended to share my own ongoing efforts to be a reflective practitioner. I hope that they will help readers to engage in their own reflections about their approach to conflict.
November 2014
Bernie MayerKingsville, Ontario
Acknowledgments
My first exposure to conflict intervention as a field of practice was serendipitous. In 1977, I was encouraged to attend a workshop on nonviolent social change conducted by Chris Moore. This was a life-changing experience for three reasons. First, because the underlying wisdom of nonviolence (which I had been previously exposed to in my days as a civil rights activist) has guided my understanding of conflict, social change, and life ever since. Second, because the training was grounded in the relationship among values, theory, and practice—and that, too, has been a guiding principle in my professional work. Finally, and probably most importantly, because of Chris Moore himself, who became my lifelong friend, mentor, and partner at CDR Associates. His interest in conflict work was infectious, and I followed him right along as he became interested in mediation and dispute systems design. Chris was the catalyst who brought together Susan Wildau, Mary Margaret Golten, and the two of us to form the four original partners at CDR Associates. Our partnership started in the late 1970s, and ever since, Chris, Mary Margaret, and Susan have been my constant supporters, teachers, and friends. Other partners and staff at CDR have also been important to my personal and professional development, especially Jonathan Bartsch, Suzanne Ghais, Louise Smart, Peter Woodrow, Judy Mares-Dixon, Mike Harty, Mike Hughes, Paula Taylor-Howlett, and Joan Sabott.
For the past nine years I have been a professor at the Werner Institute at Creighton University. Werner has provided a creative and nurturing atmosphere that has fostered my writing and thinking. My colleagues there have offered useful, indeed critical, input on the ideas in this book. Jackie Font-Guzmán, Noam Ebner, Bryan Hanson, Mary Lee Brock, Theresa Thurin, Jessica Miller, and Pat Borchers have provided a collegial atmosphere, both honest and kind (perhaps another paradox to address!). I also want to acknowledge the kindness of many on the Creighton faculty, particularly Ron Volkmer and Marianne Culhane, for their long-term support of both the Werner Institute and of me. Theresa Thurin assisted with checking references and resources. Mitchell Brazell, my graduate assistant at Werner, not only provided invaluable help with references but also offered important lessons in philosophy as well.
Along the path that led to this book, I had many formative discussions that helped me develop my own thinking. I am particularly grateful to Richard McGuigan, Arnie Shienvold, John Manwaring, Sylvia McMechan, Karen Largent, Don Loney, David Hoffman, Fiona Hollier, Larissa Fast, Don Selcer, Howard Cohen, and Anne Sutherland-Kelly (to name just a few). My wonderful students at Werner and at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame were subject to some of the earliest iterations of these concepts and provided much encouragement and feedback.
I am especially appreciative of those who reviewed and commented on my manuscript. My editors at Jossey-Bass, Christine Moore and Kathe Sweeney, as well as Noam Ebner, Julie Macfarlane, Mark Mayer, and Jackie Font-Guzmán. This book is being co-published by Jossey-Bass and the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar Association—a first. I want to thank both partners for their willingness to take the plunge into a cooperative venture with this book, and particularly Kathe Sweeney and Rob Brandt at Wiley and Daniel Bowling and Richard Paszkiet at the ABA.
My most powerful teachers have always been the many disputants who have been willing to let me into their lives and who have provided me the crucial insights and feedback that have informed my thinking and my personal and professional growth.
Most importantly I want to appreciate the wonderful support I have received from my family throughout my entire professional life. You know who are. I especially want to thank my son Mark Mayer, who took time out from writing his own book to review, critique, challenge, and encourage me throughout this project. My most powerful critic, supporter, and editor is my wife, Julie Macfarlane. She helped me develop the ideas in this book; she encouraged me when I was feeling uncertain; she told me boldly, clearly, and always with love when she thought I was off base; and she took care of business while I hid out in various corners of our house working on this project. Without her, this book would not have happened.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my remarkable stepdaughter, Hopey Moon, who will turn sixteen at about the time this book will be published. Hopey has been a wonderful presence in my life since she was three. She is a wise, courageous, good-hearted, and passionate soul (and a first-rate photographer). She embodies the values of good conflict work.
Chapter OneThe Art of Conflict
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up
When we intervene in conflict, whatever our role, we inevitably address how people think about their disputes. We may believe that we are trying to hammer out an agreement, change the way people communicate, or help them through a healing and recovery process. However, we do not really change the dynamics of a conflict unless we change how those involved see the challenges before them, the people they are in conflict with, or the way in which the conflict has arisen and developed.
This is also true for ourselves. Unless we change how we make sense of our own conflicts, we are unlikely to change the fundamental way in which we approach them. These changes may be minor or transformative; they may be conscious or unrecognized; and it may never be clear to anyone, including ourselves, just what happened to alter these narratives. But unless disputants understand and experience their situation in an altered way, they are unlikely to improve their approach significantly, and the impact of our intervention will not only be ineffective but will probably be unrecognized.
Although changing how people think may seem like a daunting task, it lies at the heart of how we repeatedly make a difference in conflict. Conflict professionals, as a field of practice, have equated our impact on conflict with the intervention roles we play (mediation, facilitation, arbitration, advocacy, systems design, coaching), the tactics we use (reframing, active listening, looking for agreements in principle, identifying underlying interests, empowering participants), the forums we employ and create (negotiations, policy dialogues, consensus decision-making processes, restorative justice programs, settlement conferences), or the purposes we bring (resolution, transformation, healing, peace building, communication, decision making, engagement). All of these are important defining principles for how we approach our work in conflict, but none really gets at the heart of how we make a difference. Though important tactics, processes, and roles, exactly how do they move a conflict forward in a more productive direction?
In Dynamics of Conflict (2012), I discuss five essential elements that we bring to the table as conflict interveners that make a difference in the way people interact. In essence, we
Create a new structure of interaction
Bring a set of skills that help promote more constructive interchanges
Introduce a specific approach to intervention
Bring our values
Incorporate our personal qualities
Each of these helps frame the way we work on conflict and is an important avenue for making a difference. But just how do they make a difference?
I suggest in this book that the core of what we do is to help disputants change their approach to seven fundamental paradoxes about the nature of conflict. We can understand each of these as a dilemma, polarity, contradiction, duality, or paradox that frames how people view conflict and that limits their ability to be flexible and creative. Everyone involved in a dispute, including conflict professionals, tends to stumble over these polarities or tries to find easy ways to rectify the very real contradictions they represent. The more people succumb to dualistic thinking in response to these polarities, the more they become trapped in a conflict. And the more we as interveners buy into these dualities, the less effective we are in helping others find a constructive way to move forward. However, if we're able to see these polarities as guideposts for finding a way through conflict—and that each element of them is an essential part of the larger truth that conflict presents—we can achieve profound and meaningful intervention.
We can view these polarities collectively as the conflict paradox—the inevitable and defining contradictions that we face when deciding how to approach a conflictual interaction. In essence, the conflict paradox is about the intellectual and emotional maturity that we bring to conflict. The higher the stakes, the greater our tendency to view these polarities in a more primitive or immature way—to believe that we must choose between one side or the other and to see one element as right and the other as wrong. For example, we may view the situation as either hopeless or as very resolvable. We may feel that we cannot trust the other side or that we should fully trust them. We may decide to engage fully in conflict or to avoid it entirely. We may believe that we take either a thoroughly cooperative stance or we zealously compete. In this way, conflict induces a dualistic and simplistic way of thinking. But effective conflict work requires a more sophisticated, nuanced, and complex approach that recognizes that in most instances, both sides of these polarities must be embraced, and we have to get past understanding them as contradictions. The central premise of this book is that these polarities are genuine paradoxes. They appear to offer either-or choices or divergent realities, but the higher truth is the one that embraces the unity of both elements.
This does not mean that we necessarily accept in a nondiscriminatory manner the truth or the validity of all approaches to conflict. We may continue to believe that one side has the moral high ground, the more reasonable approach, the greater need, or the more persuasive argument. But it doesn't serve us well to allow this belief to lead us into a primitive view of the conflict or the potential approaches that can be taken to it. And it is our job as interveners to help disputants see the situation they are in and choices they face in a more sophisticated way.
We do this by working on seven essential dilemmas that disputants face in approaching a conflict. Each of these is generally experienced as a polarity or dualism—a pair of opposites that require a decisive choice between them. The challenge we face is to help others—and ourselves—move to a more nuanced, more complex, and less bifurcated view. Of course, disputants seldom understand it in these terms. As a result, they often fail to recognize the process of choosing how to view a conflict or even the fact that we are choosing a view at all. However, in conflicts large and small, intense or mild, we must find a way of working with these dualities. The way we do this determines to a large extent how we think about conflict and therefore how we react to it.
We will discuss each of these conflicts in a separate chapter. Taken together, they constitute the conflict paradox:
Competition and cooperation
We view these as opposite strategies that disputants must choose between. A more nuanced view may suggest a mixed strategy, combining cooperative and competitive moves, but it's even harder to grasp that competition requires cooperation, and without competition the motivation to cooperate is absent. Almost every move we make in conflict involves both cooperative and competitive elements; without one, we really cannot have the other.
Optimism and realism
Optimism without realism is not meaningful; realism without optimism is a dead end. A constructive approach to conflict can occur only when both are at play—when we are motivated by optimism and guided by realism.
Avoidance and engagement
We cannot avoid or address all conflict. In addition, all conflict moves involve a mixture of conscious and unconscious decisions about how and what to engage and avoid. The decision to address one conflict inevitably involves a decision to avoid another.
Principle and compromise
People tend to act as if compromising on important issues is unprincipled or cowardly. We believe we must decide whether to carry on a conflict in a principled manner (i.e., in accordance with our most important values or beliefs) or to compromise on something essential to us; yet we never want to forgo our essential principles, because they are the guideposts that help us through all of our decisions in conflict. But without compromise, we can do nothing to advance them.
Emotions and logic
We frequently hear that the key to dealing with conflict or being effective in negotiations is to be rational and to hold our emotions at bay. However, emotions are an important source of power and an essential tool for moving through conflict constructively.
Neutrality and advocacy
The line between these approaches to conflict is much thinner than we may think. Conflict interveners have to be effective advocates for disputing parties and for the process while bringing an impartial perspective.
Community and autonomy
The dynamic tension between our need for community (interdependence with others in our lives) and autonomy (independence) infuses our thinking and action throughout conflict.
All disputants have to deal with these polarities, and all interveners have to find a way of helping parties find their way through them. Together, they define the conflict paradox; simultaneously, they are our greatest challenge as interveners and offer us the greatest potential to make a genuine difference. We can see every move that someone makes during conflict as an expression of at least a momentary choice about how to handle these dilemmas, and every intervention by a conflict specialist as an effort to help people approach them in a more nuanced and sophisticated way.
What We Bring to the Table and What the Table Brings to Us
As in all professional endeavors, what we as interveners think we are all about and what is important to us are not always the same as what our clients want or what the circumstances allow. For example, conflict professionals tend to believe that the purpose of our intervention is to find an outcome that meets everyone's needs as much as possible—a fair, reasonable, balanced way forward through a conflict. But this is often not even close to what disputants want or to what a decision-making structure may allow. Consider the following scenario:
Pauline had worked for HZD Industries for three years. She had filed several grievances during this time, mostly against her immediate supervisor, Luis. None of these had led to a favorable finding for Pauline, who felt exploited and misunderstood by “the system.” After a couple of unsatisfactory performance appraisals (both of which Pauline dismissed as yet another example of Luis's determination to “get her”), HZD's management terminated Pauline. Again she grieved, and came to mediation requesting reinstatement, a pay raise, and an apology from the company.
In a circumstance such as this, it may be that the company wants to agree on a reasonable severance package and that Pauline's most important goal is to receive guidance and financial assistance while moving on to a new job. If that is the case, there is at least some overlap between each party's goals and the purpose of the interveners. But it may also be that while management feels obligated to go through mediation, they also believe that they have already given all they can or “put up with enough” from Pauline. And perhaps Pauline is simply determined to give them a piece of her mind and to find a way to “publicly shame them.” In that case, our goal as interveners may well be at cross-purposes with those of the parties. We may realize while working through these competing goals that this case has no business being mediated—or it may cause us to redefine our objectives in some way.
Every intervention poses this dilemma, in a sense, because interveners and disputants inevitably have different goals or needs. Where an intervener may want to lower the level of conflict or end it altogether, a disputant may want to have her say and to get her way as much as possible. And while interveners see the necessity of giving everyone involved a voice at the table and an opportunity to promote their legitimate interests, disputants are usually more interested in making sure their own voices are heard and their own concerns addressed. They do not necessarily care whether other parties are satisfied or have had a significant voice in the outcome.
These differences are not signs of poor faith, but they are important. They reflect the different roles that disputants and interveners play in conflict and the necessarily different values and goals that accompany them. One result of these differences is that disputants and interveners often come down on different sides of a paradox. Our response as interveners often is to try to balance an overemphasis on one element by promoting the opposite. Unfortunately, if we merely seek balance—instead of trying to move beyond the polarity—we may evoke resistance and can actually create a more entrenched view of the choices that people face. For example, consider the following possible approaches that interveners might take in Pauline's case:
Pauline and HZD see themselves in a competitive relationship and feel the need to compete effectively. In response, interveners may want to urge them to cooperate and look for integrative outcomes.
Pauline and HZD feel pretty hopeless about coming to any agreement, and as a result interveners feel that they should be encouraging and optimistic.
Pauline and HZD view this as a matter of principle, whereas interveners try to encourage compromise.
Pauline and HZD want to assert their independence (autonomy) from each other by denying that they are in any way dependent or vulnerable to the other, whereas interveners may want to encourage them to look at their interdependence (community) by focusing on potential areas of mutual interest.
Because of the difference between what we bring to the table as interveners and what the disputants want—or what the structure of the interaction demands—interveners are always negotiating our way through these polarities. This is the heart of our challenge. We do not meet this challenge, however, by asserting only one side of the polarity—usually in opposition to the element that we believe is perpetuating a conflict. We meet it by embracing both aspects—in Pauline's case, the need for her to compete effectively if cooperation has any chance to succeed. We must seek the truth that encompasses both sides of these polarities (remember that genuine optimism must be realistic). When we truly grasp that what we perceive to be polarities and mutually contradictory choices are not that at all—but are, in fact, paradoxically, essential aspects of the same reality—then we can begin to make a difference in how we approach a conflict.
How Contradictions Make Us Who We Are
Why is it that conflicts or disputes are the defining characteristic of our field? These terms are the central concept in the names of most major professional organizations in the United States (for example the Association of Dispute Resolution, the Dispute Resolution Section of the ABA, the International Association for Conflict Management) and elsewhere (for example, LEADR Association of Dispute Resolvers in Australia and New Zealand; Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution [CEDR] in the UK; the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes [ACCORD] in South Africa). Most graduate programs also organize their names around the concept of conflict or dispute intervention. The major alternative is to invoke a role (mediation—International Academy of Mediators) or a type of conflict (Association of Family and Conciliation Courts) that references, conflict by implication. We have become so accustomed to this that we don't question it, but it is not completely obvious that we should be organizing ourselves around conflict as our defining focus. We could define ourselves in terms of communication, decision making, peace building, negotiation, or problem solving. However, though we often use these terms as secondary descriptors for our work, they are not usually at the forefront of our primary professional identification. Instead, we focus on conflict—which I think is a good thing.
The entire human experience is defined by conflict. We evolved through conflict. Conflict is a principle force governing the growth of social and communal organization; it is a driving force in our maturation and development. Our economy is driven by conflict, as is our political process. We organize entertainment, sports, and recreation around conflict, and we learn through conflict. Conflict in this sense does not necessarily mean violence, animosity, or destructive behavior (although that, of course, is often part of the picture). Rather, it refers to the interplay of opposing forces and competing interests. The central role of conflict in our individual, familial, communal, and societal lives is why it is such a powerful phenomenon to wrap our professional identity around, and why our work brings us so close to the heart of the human experience and in so many different arenas—from international conflicts to family disputes, from grievances to large-scale environmental struggles. It is why the lessons learned in one area or level of conflict can shed light on the dynamics in very different arenas. It is why it makes sense for us to think of our field of practice as extending beyond the specific substantive types of conflicts we may be involved with and beyond our particular approach to conflict.
There is something about the nature of conflict itself that informs our understanding and our intervention no matter what our practice, which lends a depth to our frameworks and a significant collective meaning to our work. This does not imply that if we are experienced in one arena of practice, we are automatically qualified to work in others. A divorce mediator is not necessarily skilled at addressing complex environmental conflicts; an organizational conflict specialist is not automatically qualified to work on issues of elder care. But there is a common thread to all these approaches, and we are more powerful practitioners if we are open to learning and applying lessons gained from widely different areas of practice. As important as it is to develop the specific skills and obtain the particular knowledge that any one area of conflict intervention requires, it is also imperative that we continue to delve into the nature of the underlying unifying concept that ties the different strands of conflict work together. One of the universal thrusts of all approaches to conflict and of work in all arenas of our practice is the need for interveners to deal with the conflict paradox in some way. Although they can appear in broadly different forms, the seven key polarities are almost always present when we deal with conflict.
In fact, paradoxes and dualities are part of every element of our lives—and they provide the foundation for some of our most powerful intellectual traditions. Virtually the entire course of philosophical investigation into the nature or our existence is organized around the interplay of ostensibly conflicting or contradictory ideas, forces, or concepts. For example, Plato and Aristotle differed on whether the world of appearance (the realm of senses) or the world of forms (the realm of essence) should be the primary focus of philosophical investigation (Copleston 1985). The creative tension between these two philosophical approaches can be viewed as the foundational tension for the entire course of Western philosophy. We can see it in the contending theologies of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine (Kenny 1994; Burnell 2005) in the centuries-long debate about the distinction between the soul and the physical self (Crane and Patterson 2000), and in the argument between Descartes and Spinoza over whether there is a genuine distinction between the immaterial mind and the material body (Spinoza 1985; Descartes 2008). Current research in neuroscience has revisited and reframed the debate between Descartes and Spinoza about the interconnection between feelings and thinking (Damasio 2003). The central role of contradictions and their resolution into higher order of contradictions is at the foundation of both the Hegelian and Marxist concept of dialectics, where one historical reality breeds a contradictory reality, in turn leading to a higher-order reality that combines elements of each (Hegel 2004; Marx and Engels 1972).
Paradoxes and contradictions are central to modern science as well. The bulk of twentieth-century theoretical physics was dominated by the struggle between relativity and quantum mechanics. Both theories have addressed a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon—the behavior of light in particular as both a particle and a wave and of the duality of matter and energy more generally. The tensions among these apparently contradictory insights continue to be an essential creative driving force of modern physics (Lindley 2007). (For a discussion about how the wave particle dichotomy in physics parallels challenges faced by negotiators, read Ran Kuttner's “The Wave/Particle Tension in Negotiation” ({). The theory of evolution deals extensively with the interplay between competition and cooperation in the struggle for species survival. We will return to this in the next chapter when we consider that particular paradox.
A Developmental Perspective
Developmental psychology provides important insights into how we respond to conflict. Most developmental psychologists argue that we proceed through developmental stages by resolving, in ever more sophisticated ways, basic conflicts between our individual needs and the demands of our environment. For example, Jean Piaget (2001) describes two fundamental mechanisms by which infants and children develop an awareness and the capacity to make sense of the world around them: assimilation and accommodation. He describes assimilation as involving the incorporation of new information within our existing way of thinking; in accommodation, we change our thinking to account for new information. Throughout life, there is ongoing interaction and struggle between these two approaches that is essential to our cognitive development. As we mature, we develop more complex and therefore adaptive methods of making sense of the world, but these two approaches are continually in play.
Piaget's work has been modified and adapted by others, most notably by Lawrence Kohlberg (1981), who focuses on the child's moral development; Carol Gilligan (1982), who has brought in the perspective of feminist theory; and Robert Kegan (1994), who has incorporated a cultural and environmental perspective. Kegan suggests that as we reach more advanced developmental levels, we increase our ability to handle complexity, and he makes particular reference to our capacity to deal with paradox, contradiction, and dialectical processes.
Conflict provides us with both an opportunity to grow and a vehicle to regress. As disputes escalate, we are more likely to resort to ways of thinking and behaving that are characteristic of earlier stages of development. Our challenge in working on conflict is therefore to help promote more complex thinking that accepts ambiguity, the truth in seemingly contradictory realities, and the truth in the contradiction or paradoxes themselves.
There is a well-known fable about two Jews in conflict who consult their rabbi, who in traditional village culture was not only a religious leader but an arbiter of conflicts as well. One version of this parable relates the tale of a married couple who have been fighting furiously and are considering a divorce. The woman goes to the rabbi and complains about her husband's poor record as a provider, father, and partner. After listening carefully, the rabbi replies that he understands her point of view and that, indeed, she is right. Then he speaks to the man, who says that no matter how hard he tries, how much he contributes, and how patient he is, all he gets from his wife is criticism, rejection, complaints, and anger. The rabbi again listens carefully, appreciates his point of view, and tells him that he is, indeed, right. After the man leaves, the rabbi's wife, who has heard all of this from the next room, confronts her husband, saying that they presented conflicting stories and can't both be right. After due consideration, the rabbi turns to her and says, “I understand what you are saying. You are right.”
In a sense, this is what all effective conflict intervention is about—developing a greater capacity to accept the truth in seemingly contradictory realities, needs, and points of view. There is not only truth in each side of a polarity, but the polarity itself conveys a truth. A key intervention challenge, therefore, is to help people approach situations that are likely to induce more primitive ways of thinking with instead a more complex and sophisticated mindset.
How Conflict Promotes Less Complex Thinking—and Simpler Thinking Promotes Conflict
As clashes escalate, disputants are more likely to see their choices in simpler and starker terms, and they are more likely to cast the conflict as a matter of right or wrong. As a result, they tend to latch on to one side of a polarity and to assume that their adversaries are doing the same (although not necessarily the same side). Rubin, Pruitt, and Kim (1994) suggest that escalated conflict is characterized by a switch to more aggressive tactics; a tendency to see the conflict as more all-encompassing in terms of issues, people, and consequences; and an increase in zero sum thinking (i.e., a win for one equals a loss for the other). They also suggest that as people become more embroiled in a conflict, they are likely to change their desired outcome from “doing well,” to “doing better than others,” to “wanting to hurt” those with whom they are in conflict. In other words, our thinking becomes more dualistic as conflict escalates.
All of us tend to look for explanations of what is happening in conflict that reinforce the positions we have taken or the actions we have engaged in. One of our reactions to feeling affronted or mistreated is to create a narrative that justifies our behavior and emotions—and one way we do this is to use what I have described elsewhere (Mayer 2012a) as explanatory “crutches.” We ascribe others' actions to their being “stupid, crazy, or evil.” Though there may well be stupidity, irrationality, or maliciousness involved in conflict, these “crutches” are very simplistic ways of understanding what has gone on, and they tend to justify our own behavior, even if it, too, could be viewed as “stupid, crazy or evil.”
Another approach is to consider how we explain behavior that we experience as injurious. Are we likely to blame an action that we do not like on someone's character or on circumstances (“dispositional” versus “situational” attributions, to use the language of attribution theory [Allred 2000])? For example, if you have promised to meet me at a restaurant and you do not show up—do I ascribe that to your being irresponsible, flaky, self-centered, or unreliable or to your being held up in traffic, under a different assumption as to where or when we were to meet, in an accident, or unwell? In reality, all behavior is a combination of personal and situational factors; but the more serious the impact an event has or the greater our emotional reaction to it, the more likely we are to narrow our thinking about the causes of it—and the more likely we are to ascribe dispositional attributions. Consider an example from a significant international dispute: When Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014, popular explanations of this centered around the devious and authoritarian personality of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and criticisms of the American response focused on the personal failings of President Obama. While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize leaders for their approach to conflict, international disputes are rooted in a much broader set of factors, and it is important to understand these if we are to craft an intelligent response.
Conflict also narrows our view of the choices we have. We are more likely, for example, to believe we must either stand firm or capitulate (to “blink first” or not), to accede to someone else's needs or to protect our own, to behave in a principled way or to compromise, to exert power or to be passive. In fact, we can look at each of the polarities discussed in this book with this lens. The more serious the conflict, the more likely we are to believe we have to choose one side of a polarity, to view the other as coming entirely from one side, or to believe that one element of a polarity is a better way to be in conflict. For example, we may view ourselves as cooperative, principled, rational, objective, and out for the greater good of the community (or family, or country, or organization). We therefore see those we are in conflict with as competitive, irrational, emotional, unrealistic, and out for themselves alone. And the more a conflict escalates, the more we are likely to see things this way. So the more we see things in these polarized terms, the more we contribute to conflict escalation—even when we don't want to. We tend to assume that the side of the polarity we have chosen is the wiser or more moral element and that the approach of those we are in conflict with is not as good as ours (we are realistic, they are naive; we are principled, they are not; we are committed to the greater good, they are out for themselves). The value we put on our approach to a polarity, coupled with our tendency to dismiss the approach of others, deepens the conflict.
How We Promote More Complex Thinking
Our first challenge as conflict professionals is to make sure we are not swept into a more primitive and polarized way of thinking ourselves. We can start by simply identifying the polarities and the framing of these polarities that is occurring. For example, Pauline—from the case described earlier in the chapter—may be defining her situation as a “matter of principle.” Perhaps the company defines it similarly, and therefore suggests that compromise would be “unprincipled.” As discussed in chapter 5, this is a very potent but unhelpful duality. Our first step is simply to recognize this dualistic approach to the conflict paradoxes. A dualistic approach to one paradox reinforces a similar approach to others, and it is helpful to recognize this as well. For example, the more the disputants believe that they have to choose between principle and compromise, the more they are apt to feel they also have to choose between cooperation and competition. They may also believe that they can't be both impartial (objective) and effective in advocating for their convictions.
But we may find in any conflict that some polarities are less cogent or operative than others, and this may offer an opportunity to promote a more sophisticated approach. For example, Pauline may not be naive about her chances of prevailing; by embracing the reality of her alternatives, she finds cause for being optimistic about the ultimate impact of standing up for herself. She may also be able to embrace the roles of emotions and logic in reinforcing each other in this situation. That provides the intervener, or those negotiating with her, with some purchase in changing the overall way in which this conflict is understood.
If we can identify which polarities parties are buying into—and be aware of our own tendency to fall into some of these—we take an important first step in working toward a more complex understanding of a dispute. But simply achieving awareness isn't enough. We must then seek ways to challenge disputants (and ourselves) to move beyond a polarized or dualistic view of the choices we have in conflict—and, in particular, to take a more integrative approach to each of the seven dilemmas discussed in the following chapters.
There is no cookbook formula for how we do this. We get at it by posing new questions, framing the conflict differently, discussing the choices people face in a less dichotomized way, and helping people change the narratives with which they explain conflict. But the most important way we do this is by adopting a more integrative view ourselves. Interveners continually struggle to counter the pull of a more primitive, dualistic view of conflict and to promote a more complex, mature view. New incidents, re-stimulated emotions, the need to maintain in-group cohesion, and painful histories of conflict often reinforce simplification. Virtually every intervention conflict interveners undertake is in some way intended to make disputants' thinking (but not necessarily the issues themselves) more complex. As interveners or participants, we are torn by these forces as much as anyone else. The paradox here is that the more we engage in a conflict, the stronger the pull to polarize our understanding. The more we want to move in a constructive direction, the more important it is to see beyond the polarities.
Though this is the biggest challenge, paradoxically this also offers the biggest opportunity we have to make a significant impact. We can choose to take a more sophisticated view of conflict, and by so doing, we can make a difference in how others view it as well. And we don't have to ask anyone to give up his or her passion, commitment, power, or goals to do so. Instead, by reinforcing a complex view of conflict, we offer disputants a more effective way of understanding how to pursue their own interests. The chapters that follow present numerous examples of how this challenge arises in conflict and the ways both interveners and disputants have met it. Some of these efforts have been intentional; most have been natural responses to unproductive polarities. Not all have been successful.
Reflections from Practice
The most moving moments I have experienced as a conflict intervener have occurred when the parties involved begin to view each other differently—when they are finally able to move beyond their own stereotypes of each other and understand their choices differently. To employ a term that is overused in our field, these have been “transformative” moments on occasion; however, they have not always been large or dramatic transformations. Almost always, such transformations result from small changes in perception or understanding. Over time, the cumulative impact of these changes enables people to alter their view of a conflict and therefore to approach it differently. Sometimes, this has been very dramatic; at other times, these changes have been hardly noticeable. Seldom have these occurred because I have intentionally pushed for them; but by consistently working to create a more differentiated and complex view of conflict, I have inevitably had a part to play in these developments.
One of the most interesting changes occurred in a labor management conflict—when through a fairly amusing set of developments, the head of a bargaining team had to confront his own attribution biases.
Alex was a long-term union activist, a skilled negotiator, and the chair of the negotiating team for a very large industrial union. Negotiations had broken down during the previous round of collective bargaining and a strike ensued—hurting not only the company and its workers, but also the economy of the region in which the industry was located. As a result, the union and management leadership, including each of their negotiating teams, agreed to attend a weeklong training on conflict and negotiation for which I was one of three trainers.
We decided to do an exercise based on the “Prisoner's Dilemma” (which I discuss further in chapter 2), in which participants were divided into teams that engaged with each other in a series of interchanges. In each exchange, the teams had to choose whether to deliver a competitive or cooperative message. If both cooperated, they would each receive a good score for that round; if both competed, they would each receive a poor score. However, if one cooperated and one competed, the competing team would score extremely well and the cooperating team extremely poorly.
The exercise involved ten rounds of exchanges. Before the final round (which was worth ten times the score of previous rounds), each team could select a representative to negotiate a deal with the other team. This team member would then have to take the deal back to their entire team before making the actual exchange. By coincidence, one team's representative—Tyrone—was the actual head of the negotiating team for management. Alex represented the other team. They agreed to exchange cooperative messages during their negotiation, and Alex's team did exactly that. But Tyrone's team reneged on the agreement and submitted a competitive message, thereby scoring a great point gain at the other team's expense. Alex was furious—even though this was just a game. He insisted that this was exactly how management always behaved, that it demonstrated why they could not be trusted, and that it was clear evidence for why the union had to take a hard line.
However, it turned out not to be that straightforward. The teams in the training were intentionally mixed, so that each had members from both management and the union. Alex's closest associate in the union was the union's second lead negotiator, Robert. During this exercise, Robert was on Tyrone's team. When Tyrone returned from the negotiation before the tenth round, he advocated for his group to abide by the deal he had reached. Robert, however, urged him to renege, saying it would be “fun” and that Alex would appreciate the move and have a sense of humor about it. Tyrone reluctantly agreed to go along with this.
When this came out in the post-exercise debrief, the whole mood in the room changed. Robert owned up to his role somewhat sheepishly, and Alex experienced some very distinct cognitive dissonance. His friend and ally had been the cause of the behavior that he had ascribed to management—and had condemned. Fortunately, Alex was also able to see the humor of the situation by this point—and he accepted that he was acting on stereotypes and had overreacted. Throughout the rest of the training (which was part dialogue, part negotiation, and all conflict intervention), this experience—which occurred at the very beginning of the workshop—served to mitigate the otherwise strong tendency of all sides to see any conflict in polarized terms.
This was a dramatic, powerful, and amusing interchange that exhibited both the strength of the polarization and some very interesting ways in which polarization can be broken down. For example, the venue for interaction was changed, diverse players were involved, the embers of empathy and insight were fanned, and we made shameless use of cognitive dissonance. But in very small ways, conflict interveners take similar action all the time. Consider this much more modest example—where I was the one who was engaging in dualistic thinking.
