Employing Conflict Dynamics to Resolve Any Dispute

• Author: Victoria Pynchon/Joe Kraynak (With)
• Profession: Mediator, author, speaker, negotiation trainer, consultant, and attorney with 25 years of experience in commercial litigation practice/Professional writer who has contributed to numerous For Dummies books
• Pages: 135-155

Chapter 8

Employing Conflict Dynamics

to Resolve Any Dispute

In This Chapter

▶ Understanding the causes of disputes

▶ Recognizing productive and counterproductive conflict resolution styles

▶ Escalating and de-escalating conflict to resolve disputes

▶ Overcoming stereotypes and cognitive biases that hinder conflict resolution

C

oming up with a solution that’s satisfactory to everyone involved in

a dispute typically requires more than a fair financial settlement. By

exploring conflict dynamics — the underlying causes of conflict and the meth-

ods, both productive and counterproductive, that parties typically engage in

to resolve a dispute — you can often help the parties address the underlying

issues of their conflict more effectively to achieve a more satisfactory and

durable outcome.

This chapter explores the nature of conflict, describes productive and coun-

terproductive conflict resolution styles and strategies, provides guidance

on how to escalate and de-escalate conflict to resolve disputes, and offers

insight on how to deal with cognitive biases that deepen misunderstandings.

Examining the Nature of Conflict

and How Disputes Arise from It

Understanding the nature of conflict and some of the reasons why conflicts

often lead to disputes enables all participants to engage more productively

in conflict resolution and better understand what the dispute is really about,

which may be very different from what it appears to be about. The following

sections shed light on the nature of conflict and explain how to identify and

use the causes of disputes to help solve problems.

136 Part II: Becoming a Master Mediator

Grasping the nature of conflict

Conflict is neither good nor bad. It simply is. How people respond to it is

what matters most. Conflict occurs at the intersection of unresolved prob-

lems and undeveloped skills. At this junction, adversaries have a golden

opportunity to grow and develop a better understanding of each other. With

each problem they solve, they mature and transcend the conflict with new

skills that help them resolve and avoid future conflicts.

Conflict over scarce resources and intangibles such as self-determination,

respect, and self-expression has caused incalculable loss and suffering.

But it has also opened the way for people to stand up for human rights, self-

governance, peaceful dispute resolution, independence, and tolerance of

differences.

If people avoid and suppress conflict, they deprive themselves of opportu-

nities to grow. If they learn how to effectively resolve their disputes, they

become not only more sociable but also more content and productive. If they

use conflict to transform their experience of the world and their value in it,

conflict can open new vistas and enrich their lives. When people transcend

conflict, they can move on to new experiences and new challenges that

enliven and embolden themselves and their fellow human beings.

Identifying and addressing the underlying

causes of conflict and dispute

Conflict exists whenever one person believes that his needs or desires can’t

be satisfied at the same time as other people’s can. For example, say you go

to your local grocery store to buy a watermelon but the store is sold out. You

can’t satisfy your desire for a watermelon, but no conflict exists until you

see someone else with a watermelon in his shopping cart. Now you’ve been

deprived of something that someone else has. That’s a conflict.

As frustrated as you may be, you’re not angry with the guy who bought the

last juicy melon. That’s just how life is. You may be in competition with

others for scarce resources, but nothing wrong or unfair has happened to

you. You have no one to name as the source of your deprivation, no one to

blame for your empty cart, and no one from whom to claim the right to a

watermelon right now. In the absence of name, blame, and claim, conflict may

exist, but dispute doesn’t.

Now, if the store had promised that any customer who shopped there on

such and such a day would receive a watermelon, and you shopped there

on that day, then the store owes you a watermelon. You have a valid claim