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

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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.

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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 Mayer
Kingsville, 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 One
The 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.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!