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Welcome to Module 8 Return to dashboard
Module 8.1
Module 8.2
Module 8.3
Welcome back for the eighth module. This module will give you practice using the win-win method that was introduced in the last module.
As people first learn about win-win conflict resolution, they are understandably uncertain about how successful it can be. The world news every day is full of stories of win-lose conflict. But increasingly, small groups of people trained in conflict resolution are changing that. One example of the larger scale use of win-win conflict resolution is SearchNet. SearchNet is an organisation that supports and runs 2 l/2 day “Future Search” conferences, where 60-70 representatives from whole organisations, or whole communities meet together to reach agreement and plan co-operative futures.
Its methods were first developed from a British industrial crisis in 1960. Two large British aircraft firms (Armstrong-Siddeley and Bristol Aero) were combined by law. The two former competitors had incompatible organisational structures and were contemptuous of each other. Yet over the days of the Search Conference, they developed a totally unexpected cooperative plan for the new company, and even initiated the design of a new and highly successful aircraft, the BA 146.
SearchNet has worked with such diverse organisations as Alcan Smelters, AT&T, the School District of Philadelphia, the Inuit homeland Nunavut which runs 1/5 the land in Canada, The National Conservation Strategy of Pakistan, and with hospitals, universities and government agencies. Imagine the apparent complexity of this task.
Rita Schweitz, for example, was the co-ordinator of a 1991 search conference on the use and quality of water from the upper Colorado river basin. This issue concerned local, municipal, state and national government organisations, water provider companies, agricultural and industrial water user companies, conservationists, indigenous American organisations and recreational user groups. Decades of bitter argument lay behind the issue. The issue was so hot that no one group could even be seen to be organising the conference. State agencies were involved in taking private firms to court over their use of water at the time. Eventually, one group planned the conference, another footed the bill, another hosted it, and so on.
Enormous care needed to be taken to build rapport safely and set groundrules on the first day of the conference, when several members arrived with their lawyers in tow! Rita Schweitz and the other organisers were very careful to structure the process so that arguments didn’t erupt and get out of hand at the meeting of 48 people. On the second day, when each “stakeholder group” presented its own perspective and the others listened, only reflective listening and clarifying questions were permitted. The atmosphere in the first part of the conference process was described by the organisers as one of pessimism and challenge. It takes a certain amount of faith in the possibilities of win-win methods to keep going at such times. Developing that is one aim of this module.
Especially when you begin using the win-win process, it is important to convey to the other person that you want to create a solution that will work for them as well as for you.
Dr Dudley Weeks has worked with conflicting parties in over 60 countries including Rwanda and Bosnia. He emphasises the importance of viewing conflict as one part of a relationship, a part that sheds light on the rest of the relationship, and that can best be resolved by bearing in mind the resources of the rest of the relationship. Weeks says the initial opening comments have a lot to do with setting the “frame” or atmosphere within which conflict resolution occurs. While opening comments need to be short enough not to sound like a monologue, and naturally phrased, Weeks suggests that these comments can:
- establish partnership “I believe we are in this together, and need each other to work it out”
- refer to the whole relationship “This is only one aspect of our relationship.”
- affirm possibilities “I’m sure together we can generate many options for solving this.”
- accept disagreement “Disagreeing doesn’t mean we can’t remember things we agree on.”
- acknowledge specific difficulties “I know in the past we’ve had trouble due to our tendency to…. This time lets experiment by…” .
To practice these skills I suggest you choose a friend or someone you trust and want to use the win-win method with for the first time. Think through how you would set the stage and convey these five “preframes” in a way that would make sense to that person. Discuss with your friend how realistic this introduction was to them.
Reflective listening and I messages help you to take the next step of defining the conflict in terms of needs or basic outcomes, instead of precise solutions. In a sense, thinking in terms of needs means asking yourself what the person wanted to get as a result of the specific actions that they took or that they wanted to take.
There are a couple of Win-win exercises in your workbook that I would like you to do now. These exercises will give you practice with the first two steps of the win-win process – Setting the Stage and Defining Needs. Think of as many needs that the persons in the conflict could have. Remember, you’re just guessing, so you can think up more needs than the actual people had. This will give you a good idea of how this thinking process works. You could ask yourself: “Why did this person want what they wanted?”. To avoid superficial or critical answers, you could ask yourself: “What would they say they needed or basically were trying to get?”
Once you have the needs of the persons listed, think of as many solutions which would meet both sets of needs. Check that the needs seem genuinely to be the needs of those people, described non-blamefully, and that the solutions are aimed at meeting both sets of needs.
In order for you to practice this even further, I suggest you get together with your friend again, the one you’ve been practicing the other skills with, and do a roleplay. You will use the Transforming Communication skills, and your friend will respond just as they imagine the person they are roleplaying would. Both of you will get the benefit of experiencing win-win conflict resolution.
Get the scenario for this activity here. I’d like to encourage you to do this activity because this way you will experience resolving a conflict. Experiential learning is the most powerful learning there is.