{"id":862,"date":"2011-06-09T12:44:54","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T16:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/?p=862"},"modified":"2011-06-09T12:44:54","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T16:44:54","slug":"shoes-constraints-and-framing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/shoes-constraints-and-framing\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoes, Constraints and Framing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first of three short films on community\/corporate relationships, on the Ambuklao\/Binga dams <\/a>in Luzon, \u00a0is about to be premiered at the United Nations, in Geneva, on June 16.\u00a0 We are also just about finished the second one, concerning the Tintaya mine <\/a>in Peru.\u00a0 An interesting coincidence has arisen in editing the interviews:\u00a0 In both films, someone talks about shoes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the Philippines, a community member who was displaced and whose rice land was submerged says, “If you were me, if you were in my shoes, I think right now you would also be crying.”\u00a0 And in the Peru film, a corporate manager narrates the leap he made from making sure the company paid taxes and employed people properly to perceiving that the communities’\u00a0very livelihood had been unalterably ruined when the mine was built two decades before, by saying “You have to put yourself in their shoes.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Being reminded of this ancient principle of communication and negotiation prompts a fresh and critical look at some of the practices that parties and mediators engage in.<\/p>\n

An elemental step towards “adult conversations” is moving on from merely stating what you want, and considering as well what the other guy can offer.\u00a0 Examples of crude self-expression of desire would include bumper stickers and my daughter’s screaming when she was two years old.\u00a0 The next step is finding out whether the person you’re screaming at indeed has what you want.<\/p>\n

Expressing your displeasure with the garage owner because he doesn’t have milk is a waste of time and contributes to dysfunctional relationships the next time you need a flat tire fixed.\u00a0 One of the indigenous people said to us in Luzon, “Now we do not simply say what we need.\u00a0 We also consider what it is possible for them to do, what is practical.”<\/p>\n

The immediate follow-on of this insight is the art of\u00a0“framing the problem.”\u00a0 The statement “I need a gallon of milk” does not frame the problem in a helpful way.\u00a0 “I need milk and the store is closed” is a much more interesting “framing” because it states a problem, not just a need.\u00a0 And it invites work on how to remove the obstacles to satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Thus the chagrin upon listening to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s\u00a0May 24, 2011\u00a0speech to\u00a0a Joint Session of the American Congress<\/a>.\u00a0 He framed the problem as follows:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state; it\u2019s always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about.”<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Granting for florid rhetoric and the needs that statesmen have to garner alliances, nevertheless this is a depressingly unsophisticated proposition.\u00a0 It is a bumper sticker — or worse.\u00a0 In light of the thousands of young people killed and the millions upon millions displaced\u00a0over a period of\u00a0generation after generation, to frame the problem in this way displays no acknowledgement of the validity of the counterparty, no perception of the constraints under which other people operate, and therefore evidence whatsoever of problem-solving.<\/p>\n

If we all chipped in and bought the Prime Minister a pair of shoes, perhaps along with a quotation from the Book of Ruth<\/a>, would he get it, I wonder?<\/p>\n

\"And<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recurrent theme of “stepping in the other person’s shoes” prompts questions of how problems are preceived, framed and re-framed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[8,12],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-resolution","category-international","tag-adr","tag-culture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","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=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}