{"id":538,"date":"2010-04-12T11:46:44","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T15:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/?p=538"},"modified":"2010-04-12T11:46:44","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T15:46:44","slug":"disputes-involving-who-you-are-rather-than-what-you-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/disputes-involving-who-you-are-rather-than-what-you-want\/","title":{"rendered":"Disputes Involving "Who You Are" Rather Than "What You Want""},"content":{"rendered":"

In his keynote address to the Section of Dispute Resolution of the American Bar Association, MIT Professor\u00a0Lawrence Susskind<\/a> urged that it was time for ADR professionals to get involved in the failure of meaningful discourse in American public life, and to assist people to talk to each other about deeply held beliefs.\u00a0 He focused on disputes that arise “when people describe who they are rather than what they want” and outlined an approach to dispute resolution that is\u00a0distinct from the familiar Fisher\/Ury interest-based model.<\/p>\n

The underlying assumptions of interest-based facilitation — that the parties have interests, know their BATNAs, will seek maximum return without unnecessary delay, and will accept an agreement\u00a0whose terms are better than no agreement\u00a0— don’t work when people’s values, or their very\u00a0identities, at at stake.\u00a0 Abortion or same-sex marriage are not interests, or even principles; they define who some\u00a0people are.\u00a0 When these defining values are encroached upon or attacked, what facilitation model applies?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Susskind took elements of\u00a0three “real-world” events and developed them into hypotheticals for his students to work on.\u00a0 The result was a four-part set of principles that chart a new way for professionals to urge disputants toward reconciliation.\u00a0 The three hypotheticals were varients on the conflicts that can arise from equal treatment of homosexuals:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Same-Sex Marriage in the Public School Curriculum<\/em>.\u00a0 A school district\u00a0adopted a curriculum including discussion of same-sex parents at an appropriate level of middle school, and declined a request from some parents to pull their children out of class when that topic is being discussed.\u00a0 The parents\u00a0wished to protect their children from coercive sessions that\u00a0taught that\u00a0same-sex marriage was an acceptable norm,\u00a0and the school could not\u00a0administer a\u00a0protocol whereby all parents are advised of the timing of all discussions on all potentially offensive topics\u00a0so they could\u00a0pull individual children out of class for a short period of time in each instance.\u00a0 The parents lost a court challenge and,\u00a0while appeal is pending, are asked by the court to mediate the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Workplace Respect for Diversity<\/em>:\u00a0 An employer launched a diversity communications initiative featuring a series of posters with pictures of employees and legends such as “I’m female and I work at XYZ” or “I’m African American and I work at XYZ.”\u00a0 One poster\u00a0placed on the outside wall of an employee’s cubicle read “I’m gay and I work at XYZ.”\u00a0 The employee posted biblical citations condemning homosexual conduct on the inside wall of his cubicle, and refused to take them down when requested.\u00a0\u00a0The employer seeks to mediate the problem.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Public Demonstrations\u00a0Advocating, or Opposing,\u00a0Gay Rights<\/em>.\u00a0 A city granted a permit to a gay rights organization whose public festivities attracted loud and boisterous opponents of gay rights.\u00a0 The ghay rights organization countered by blowing whstles to drown out the opposing group’s bullhorns, surrounding the opponents so their signs cannot be read, and\u00a0otherwise interfering with their assembly.\u00a0 The city now seeks to discuss the terms of future permits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In none of the\u00a0“real” cases from\u00a0which these hypotheticals were drawn did mediation actually take place, said Susskind.\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 Because all parties presumed that the other side would not soften its demands, and because\u00a0certain national advocacy organizations intervened, funded the continuation of the conflicts,\u00a0and converted each of them into a\u00a0cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre.\u00a0 The matters went to court because the advocates funding the causes sought to obtain a “right\/wrong, yes\/no” outcome of neatly framed issues of identified social value.\u00a0\u00a0This procedure was, to the advocacy groups (and presumably to the local participants) logical.<\/p>\n

What if, Susskind, asked, there were a different brand of “logic” applied?\u00a0 He proposed a four-part approach that might have more salutory personal and social results, as follows:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Separate Interests From Values and Deal With the Interests First<\/em>.\u00a0 One of the children of the advocating parents began to be picked on and bullied by her peers as a result of the dispute.\u00a0\u00a0 This is an event in which all parties have a clear shared interest, independent of the values over which they disagreed.\u00a0 Classic problem-solving skills could be brought to bear on at least this part, and the first steps at coordinated action can take place.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Facilitate Dialogue and Build Relationships Without Promising to “Resolve” Anything<\/em>.\u00a0 Provoke a change in how the parties are treating each other, without tying that activity to any expectation of “settling” the dispute.\u00a0 That particular\u00a0poster could be located somewhere other than that particular employee’s cubicle.\u00a0 A poster could be created stating “I’m an Evangelical Christian and I work at XYZ.”\u00a0 Help the parties to develop new ways to deal with people who hold values different from their own.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Appeal to Over-Arching, Shared\u00a0Values<\/em>.\u00a0 Both the gay rights group and the opposing organization ascribe to nonviolence.\u00a0 Both believe in equal rights to be heard in public fora.\u00a0 Work around the “presenting” value that divides them, and identify other values that are shared.\u00a0 Because both believe in free speech, they might be interested in collaborating to create guidelines that assure the persistence of that value.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Confront Core Value Differences Directly<\/em>.\u00a0 All people hold values, but not all values are immutable in every context.\u00a0 Seeking reconciliation is not the same as seeking settlement or compromise; it is seeking ways to honestly recognize our differences and continue to live with each other.<\/p>\n

This last\u00a0concept was inspiring.\u00a0 Susskind is urging us to depart from reliance upon interest-based models when the nature of the conflict calls for us to do so.\u00a0 And, to him, current heated conflicts surrounding health care, climate change, abortion and other immediate social challenges urgently call for it.\u00a0 Value differences can be “resolved” only by parties’ agreeing to reconcile — not agreeing to to compromise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conversations leading to\u00a0reconciliation can be mediated, and indeed\u00a0often are mediated, and perhaps need to be mediated.\u00a0 But the mediators who engage in such a process must embrace a different model and guide participants toward a different outcome than those with which we may be familiar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Susskind has outlined an approach to resolution of conflicting values rather than interests, that is entirely distinct from established approaches, and urges that it is time for the ADR community to become engaged in helping people talk to each other about their deeply-held but conflicting beliefs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,34],"tags":[12,15,31],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-resolution","category-mediation","category-united-states","tag-culture","tag-mediation","tag-negotiation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}