Third and Final Installment on Conflict Management!!!!!!!!

The Conflict-Triangle

Developing our understanding of conflict further from the “Iceberg-Model”, one can draw a triangle, where all aspects playing a role in a conflict fit in: Behaviour statements, offences, insults, attacks, etc. visible I n v i s i b l e

                                                                Behaviour - statements, offences, insults, attacks, etc.

         

Attitude - prejudices, believes, perceptions, feelings                                        Context - political, cultural, economical, historical background

               

This ABC (Attitude-Behaviour-Context) – Conflict Triangle was first developed by Prof. Johan Galtung and provides an excellent basic concept for the analysis of even very complex conflict situations:

A First, there are the Attitudes (A) of the conflicting parties, which tend to become more defensive or even hostile as the conflict escalates. In order to finally reach settlement of the conflict, the parties must first become aware of their attitudes and perceptions towards each other.

B Attitude in conflict situations not only influences one’s own Behaviour (B), but is very much affected by the Behaviour of others. Insults or provocations make it more difficult to see the mutual benefit of ending a conflict. Therefore it is essential to find ways of tackling the negative behaviour in order to defuse the situation.

C Finally, we need to consider the Context (C) within which the conflict is being waged. Context is the ‘objective’ reality to which the conflict relates and the environment in which it takes place. If we ignore the influence of the context, all changes in attitudes and behaviour will be in vain. Various factors in the context can either fuel or block a positive and transformative development of a conflict.

Introduction to Mediation

Three Basic Principles:

1) Conflicting parties are the ones to solve their own conflicts! Mediator helps through the process!

2) Conflicting parties attack problem not persons! Mediator guides to respectful behaviour!

3) Conflicting parties decide on contents and agreement! Mediator provides constructive framework and continuous support!

Mediation – Four Phases

Introduction Phase: In the welcoming and during the introduction, the parties are introduced to one another and the mediation process is explained. Here the mediators create a friendly and constructive atmosphere. They attune to the parties, clarify ground rules and general regulations, and allow for questions.

CHARACTERISTICS	POSSIBLE QUESTIONS
Phase I: Defining the conflict
Identify those directly and those indirectly involved. Identify context, e.g. social	What happened? What did you experience? Where do you see the problems? What is the context of the conflict?
Phase II: Background, Barriers, Emotions
Description of difficulties Expression of feelings	How do you feel? Which negative experiences did you have? What did the conflict do to you? Which feelings came up? Did you have positive experiences?
Phase III: Create Options / Best possible outcome?
Encourage visions and dreams Generate wishes and options Envision a positive future	What is going to happen now? What do you wish for now? What would be the most suitable solution? What kind of relationship do you envisage for the future?
Phase IV: Agreement Stage
Work on priorities Develop course of action Envision a positive future	What can you do in reality? What do you expect from the other? What can you put into practice? (realistic) What are you both prepared to do? How will you do it and who will do what?
Final Phase: Follow-up & Implementation
Days, weeks or months later…	How did it work out? What was good? What improvements are still necessary?

Some Ground Rules for a Mediation Process:

1.       No offences or insults

2.       Clarify Issue of Confidentiality

3.       Parties agree to respect each other

4.       Treat each others’ emotions with respect

5.       Try to listen (even) without (inner) judgment

6.       No interruptions when the other party is speaking

7.       Parties speak only for themselves, if possible using I-messages.

8.       Everybody takes full responsibility of his/her own words & actions!

Ethics for Mediators:

o Respect for individuals and their biography. Consider their own speed of learning and that their individual learning steps will be different from yours. Acknowledge and deal with parties’ different cultures, religions, genders, traditions, values, education etc.

o Consciousness of own role in intervention into conflict. What gives me the right or obligation to mediate? Is it an institutional, moral, family, hierarchical, professional, competence etc. position? Did the parties or someone else choose you as mediator?

Checklist:

Before you bring the parties together, have preparatory meetings with the individual parties, where you:

• Explain mediation process

• Explain possible benefits of mediation

• Explore initial unrealistic positions/expectations and sensitive issues

Set date & time for the mediation meeting, and invite conflicting parties, according to the correct legal procedures!

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is a very important tool you can use, especially as a mediator. It means to restate what another person has said, in your own words, with emphasis on what is said ‘between the lines’, This way you can show the other party that you connect, or understand the other person’s feelings.

Paraphrasing is a powerful tool:

1.       For showing that you understand the other person or party

2.       For moving the conversation to deeper levels: Paraphrasing often brings more reflective responses from the other party.

3.       For slowing down the conversation between parties if needed

4.       For speeding up the process if needed, by making long and complicated sentences comprehensible for yourself and others.

5.       It can defuse defensive or insulting statements while retaining the facts.

How to paraphrase:

1.       Focus on the speaker: “You felt…” , “You’re saying…”, “You believe…” NOT: “I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been in situations like that myself.”

2.       A paraphrase can have three components:

a)         Restate fact: “Your wife locked you out of the house.”

b)         Reflect feelings: “(And) you feel discouraged about things getting any better.”

c)          Reflect intention: “(But) you really like to sort things out with her.”

3.       A paraphrase focuses on what was really said and contains no judgement or evaluation, but describes empathically.  “So you believe very strongly that…”, “You were very unhappy when…”, “You felt quite angry with your neighbour in that situation…”, “The way you see it…”, “If I’m understanding you correctly, you…”, NOT: “What you are trying to say, is…”

There are two critical qualities of an emotion or feeling:

o What feeling is it ?

o How intense is this feeling ?

4.       Act like a mirror not a parrot! Paraphrase reflects the meaning of the speaker’s words but does not merely parrot the speaker, e.g.:

Speaker: “I resent it deeply when I found out they had gone behind my back to the boss. Why can’t they come and talk with me, and give me a chance to sort things out with them?”

Paraphrase: “You were quite hurt that they didn’t come directly to you to resolve things.”

NOT: “You resented it deeply that they went behind your back to the boss. You wish they had given you a chance to sort things out with them.”

5.       A paraphrase should always be shorter than the speaker’s own statement!

Conflict Management and Dealing with Emotions.

Escalation of Conflict – Nine Stages

We, as human-beings have a special relationship to the law of gravity. When something seems difficult we feel heavy and it literally pulls us to the ground. The uninterrupted escalation of a conflict can pull us down as into quicksand, and if there is no turning point, we will end up in the abyss. At every stage, the dynamic of a conflict can escalate further when there is no conscious caucusing or moment of awareness and reflection.

Once you recognize the characteristics of the different stages of a conflict, you are able to act: You can either prevent the conflict from escalating even further or you can consciously let the conflict escalate further. Sometimes the latter is useful to make a conflict more visible to stakeholders and the social environment.

Once you have identified the stage a conflict is in, you can use this opportunity to find constructive solutions on your own, or you see that it is necessary to ask an outsider for assistance in finding a solution. Sometimes problems are just too big to be dealt with alone.

Always ask yourself: “Do I have a problem or does the problem have me?”

The Nine Stages of Conflict Escalation were developed in the 1980s by Austrian Professor Friedrich Glasl and in detail described in his book: “Conflict Management - A Handbook for Executives and counselors”, Germany, 2002.

Conflict Intervention Strategies

1)      Negotiation: Parties meet (usually without the help of 3rd party) to resolve differences.

2)      Facilitation: Neutral or professional 3rd party helps to improve communication between parties, usually in a meeting.

3)    Conciliation: 3rd party acts as “go-between” for parties to meet and resolve differences or disputes.

4)      Mediation: Neutral 3rd party helps parties to resolve differences themselves, improving relationship between parties.

5)    Arbitration: Neutral 3rd party hears both points of view and then imposes a decision.

6)      Adjudication / Litigation: Judge/magistrate imposes decision after hearing legal argument from both sides according to complex legal procedures.

7)      Force: Power or violence is used in a dominant manner to impose a decision or to force a ‘solution’.

Dealing with Emotions & Anger

In every conflict between human beings, our emotions play a critic role, either consciously or unconsciously. Especially anger can be very disturbing, as it can hinder us to enter dialogue and eventually resolve the conflict that we are having. Any conflict can be compared to an iceberg…….nearly 90% lies invisibly under the surface.

In most cases it is our behaviour and our statements and positions that are visible to all the others.

Invisible aspects of a conflict are the parties’ individual or collective backgrounds, attitudes, expectations, dreams, wishes, hurts, fears, needs, feelings, emotions, hidden plans and strategies.

The following texts may help to understand and deal with emotions constructively:

Emotions should not be judged or repressed!

Emotions are a vital part of you as a human being, and they need to be respected, accepted and expressed. You can look upon your emotions as your children, who need your attention and respect, and your guidance.

Emotions are your children!

The parallels between ‘being emotional’ and ‘being as a child’ are striking, as there is an impressive resemblance between the way you deal with your own emotions and the way you deal with (real) children. A child is honest and spontaneous in his emotions, and he does not hide or repress them until adults encourage him to do so. The fact that children spontaneously express their emotions does, however, not mean that the child experiences his emotions in a balanced way. Everyone knows that a child can be carried away by his emotions (rage, fear or sadness) and is often unable to put a stop to it. In such a situation, the child can almost drown in his emotions and that makes him unbalanced, i.e. out-of-centre. An emotion can best be viewed as an energy that comes to you for healing. Therefore, it is important to not be completely swept away by the emotion, but to remain able to look at it from a neutral stance. It is important to stay conscious.

One might put it like this:

You should not repress an emotion, but you should not drown in it either. For when you drown in it, when you identify with it completely, the child in you becomes a tyrant that will lead you astray!

The most important thing you can do with an emotion is to allow it in, to feel all aspects of it, while not losing your consciousness. Take for instance anger. You can invite anger to be fully present, experiencing it in your body at several places, while you are at the same time neutrally observing it. Such a type of conscious behaviour is healing. What happens in this instance is that you embrace the emotion, which is essentially a form of misunderstanding, with understanding.

Dealing with Emotions - Example:

Your daughter has bumped her knee on the table and it really hurts. She is upset, screaming with pain, and she kicks the table for she is angry with it. She considers the table to be the source of her pain.

Emotional guidance at this moment means that the parent first helps the child name her experience. “You are angry, aren’t you – you are in pain, right?” Naming it is essential. You transfer the root of the problem from the table to the child herself. It’s not in the table, it is you who are hurt, and it is you who is angry. And yes, I understand your emotion!

The parent embraces the emotion of the child with understanding, with love. The moment the child feels understood and recognized, her anger will gradually fade away. The physical pain may still be present. But her resistance to the pain, the anger around it, can dissolve. The child reads compassion and understanding in your eyes, and this relaxes and soothes her emotions. The table, the cause of the emotions, is not relevant anymore.

In embracing an emotion with understanding and compassion, you shift the focus of the child’s attention from outside to inside, and you teach the child to take responsibility for the emotion. You are showing her that her reaction to an outside trigger is not a given, but that it is a matter of choice. You can choose misunderstanding or understanding. You can choose to fight or to accept. You can choose.

Again Happy Vijayadashmi and more coming up shortly.

Dussehra - Good Vs Evil - Conflict Management and its Understanding

“Violence is not an action, but a motivation or an attitude itself. Sometimes a smile can be very violent.” XIV. Dalai Lama.

What is Conflict? 
Conflict, like change, will always occur given the dynamics of human interactions. It will occur between family members, workers, colleagues, supervisors, boards of management in our work or play environments, between organizations and within organizations. Why is this? Because we all have different interests, goals, perceptions, viewpoints, values and experiences. 
The paradox of conflict is that it is both the force that can tear relationships apart and the force that binds them together, meaning that they can be either healthy (constructive) or unhealthy (destructive). This dual nature of conflict makes it an important concept to study and understand.
It is normal for people to live and work well together to have conflicts from time to time. We disagree with each other because we each see the world differently, and we have different ideas about what we want and how to do things. Our individual and collective backgrounds and experiences, e.g. in cultural, spiritual, political and economical aspects, are different. Each and every one of us has a very different and unique personality.


As human beings we don’t have a choice about whether conflict will happen in our lives……but we do have a choice about how we will deal with it!!!


Five Basic Styles in Conflict Situations 
Giving In / Accommodating - LOSE / WIN - “I satisfy my needs at your expense.”
Competition - WIN / LOSE -“I satisfy your needs at my expense.” 
Compromise - BOTH WIN A BIT / BOTH LOSE A BIT – “I give up some of my needs to satisfy you and you give up some of your needs to satisfy me.”
Avoidance - LOSE / LOSE - “Neither you nor I satisfy our needs.”
Co-operation - WIN / WIN - “We discover new and creative ways to satisfy both of our very important needs.”


Different Behaviours in Conflict Handling:
Avoidance - Party A does not value either his/her own or Party B’s interests and needs very highly, and/or denies that there is a conflict.
Giving in / Accommodate - Party A does not value his/her own ideas and interests very highly, but places a high value on those of Party B (or the common goal).
Competition - Party A places a very high value on his/her own opinions and desires, and very little on those of Party B.
Compromise - The basic premise is that the parties differences cannot be reconciled and must therefore be traded off.
Co-operation - Full value is placed on both parties’ interests, views and desires. Both parties appreciate each both and strive for consensus, i.e. agreement on the chosen course of action. In this way both parties feel satisfied, because their needs are met and the relationship is strengthened.
Some useful Definitions 
Conflict - An issue between two or more parties who have (or think they have) incompatible goals or ideas. Conflicts may involve deep-rooted moral or value differences, high-stakes distributional questions, or can be about who dominates whom. 
Dispute - Short-term disagreements that are visible on the surface and relatively easy to resolve, because they involve interests that are negotiable. Disputes often exist within a larger, longer and more deep-rooted conflict. 
Conflict Prevention - To prevent a conflict from escalating violently or to take action before a violent outbreak of a conflict emerges. 
Conflict Settlement - The imposition of a settlement by a third party, for example through a Judge or an Arbitrator.
Conflict Management - To regulate a conflict and to reduce its negative effects.
Conflict Resolution - To address the underlying issues of a conflict and to focus on the relationship and communication between the parties.
Conflict Transformation - To overcome the root and structural causes of conflict and to strengthen conflict solving capacities in individuals, communities and society.

Coming up more on the Conflict management and resolution! Happy Dussehra!!!!!

Tips for Self Motivation

Motivation is a psychological feature that arouses an organism to act towards a desired goal and elicits, controls, and sustains certain goal-directed behaviors. It can be considered a driving force; a psychological one that compels or reinforces an action toward a desired goal. For example, hunger is a motivation that elicits a desire to eat. Motivation is the purpose or psychological cause of an action.

Motivation has been shown to have roots in physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and social areas. Motivation may be rooted in a basic impulse to optimize well-being, minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure. It can also originate from specific physical needs such as eating, sleeping or resting, and sex.

Motivation is an inner drive to behave or act in a certain manner. "It's the difference between waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and lazing around the house all day.” These inner conditions such as wishes, desires, goals, activate to move in a particular direction in behavior.

Reasons We Lose Motivation:

There are 3 primary reasons we lose motivation.

·         Lack of confidence – If you don’t believe you can succeed, what’s the point in trying?

·         Lack of focus – If you don’t know what you want, do you really want anything?

·         Lack of direction – If you don’t know what to do, how can you be motivated to do it?

So here are a number of self motivation tips.

1. Follow your Dreams: Choose an activity in which you are interested and you value as being worthy. When you follow your passion your energy will be joyfully focused on the task at hand. You will reach peak performances in activities that you enjoy doing.

2. Seek out new hobbies: Continuously exploring new activities will demand stretching out your capabilities and learning of new skills. You will have lifetime enjoyment and vitality.

3. It is further noted that activities that challenge our competencies support motivation. However, the challenge has to be perceived as reachable. Too difficult challenges can kill the enthusiasm. Exceptionally, for some people the bigger the challenge, the more motivated they are. Find out for yourself as to where you belong.

4. Seek out environments where you have support and move away from environments that do not support you. When you set your own goals, direction, pace and evaluation, you are more creative and engaged. This enhances your performance and builds your self-esteem. Take control of your time.

The last of these self motivation tips is...

5. Faith in life: Self motivation also comes from a person’s perception, meaning whether a person has faith in life or sees life as being unfair, difficult or distorted. A person who believes in the positive outcome by abiding to a certain number of rules will be self-motivated. A person, who cannot make the relationship between his/her own behavior and the outcomes, will not be self motivated. You can choose to be either optimistic or a pessimist. At the end of the day it is your choice. Again I would like to emphasize on taking control of all the situations in your life.

Happy Holiday!!!!!