My reply to William Kaplan’s comment on the previous post about conflict being fun, living, and natural spilled over into several paragraphs, so I’ll post it here as a separate entry.

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Eileen always said people who enjoy fomenting conflict make the best mediators ….And she would linger long and deliciously over the word f o m e n t.

But back to the disputing parties, most rarely think they’re having fun or appreciating experiencing LIFE at its most natural…. Are you saying that mediators can retain a sense of relaxed perspective on other people’s conflicts if they treat it as a natural & lively drama?

I like using the conflict-is-a-drama theme when I teach — describing negotiation/mediation as a choreographed moment when the parties come together on the stage, interacting for the edification or amusement of a larger (if invisible) audience.

I’m inclined to talk about this later in the “culture” section. Dramatic presentations of conflict and the process of resolution are are used to claim and define identity. “Can you believe that he did X?” “Professionals don’t behave like Y.” The conflict is part of a larger group’s “conversations” about how people should fight, what they feel justified in fighting ABOUT, who has a claim, and how disputes are “resolved” (or not). All the stages of conflict, from casual complaints and gossip through shunning or killing are ways a community works out who belongs, how they are different from other groups, who has authority and status, what issues and principles are important. It’s like watching a local soap opera.

It’s useful for mediators to 1) understand that they’re the producers (rather than the directors) of a dramatic moment and disputants will behave with their imagined audiences in mind, and 2) these dramas are culturally and identity-specific, both in terms of the process people expect to follow, and their criteria for proper resolution, and 3) as William and Eileen would suggest, to relish the “aliveness” of the comedy and tragedy being played out around the table rather than being freaked out about whether the mediators can keep a lid on.

Fun stuff. Not sure how much to put in the Handbook.

[*Eileen Stief, co-author]

Longtime colleague William Kaplan called out of the blue yesterday and I joined him at the mostly air-conditioned Lansdowne’s local Regency Cafe. Sipped a vanilla Italian soda for a wide ranging leisurely chat about our work. Ah summer!

I promised to send him the rewritten “understanding conflict” pages and will post the conflict section here so all of you can comment.

Ideally, we’ll condense these to just three pithy pages of text, three of illustration. At the moment it spills over. A few pages on negotiation theory basics will follow this section. Most other info about conflict and resolution belongs either on a more extensive web page, or in another book.

The question is, what do we absolutely need to say about conflict in order to help *mediators* think clearly — their attitude towards the parties, the way they assess the situation?

Note that I haven’t yet created the new handwritten layer for the spiral graphic. As in the previous edition, it will show the “mess”, starting with the self, a escalating outward to interpersonal, group, organization, society.

About Conflict (PDF).

You can read the proposed topics for each chapter by clicking the “Table of Contents” tab on the header above.

The hardest part is deciding what NOT to include… We want to give readers some clue about the many types of mediation practices out there now, and to incorporate good ideas from various models and experiments.

Keeping in mind that many of our readers are

1) students / trainees
2) professionals who mediate informally as part of their job, or have been asked to handle a particular dispute
3) mediators who are looking for useful frameworks and any practical ideas they can glean.

What are topics / approaches / ideas that you recommend including in this new edition?