CONFLICT RESOLUTION & RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT...

… Appropriate Resolutions™ for home, work, community, and everywhere in between.

© 1998-2008 Joseph Ravick  and Appropriate Resolutions™

    You’ve just heard words and recognized reactions which signal that you’re now in conflict with another. Critically, your next decision is that your relationship with them is important to you. So what do you do next to overcome this challenging ‘speed-bump’? 

    Explore to discover (uncover) the MOTIVATORS (the interests & values) within any POSITIONAL STATEMENT YOU HEAR. Such indicators will give you a greater understanding of what people feel about the differences between you. Their answers will also clarify what’s really important to them. If you don’t know (and I don’t mean assume), you will be flying blind.

      Reflect on which of the 'needs' below (or others) are important to you...and to those with whom you are negotiating:

REMAINING CURIOUS

is critical for an effective resolution process.

REMAIN CURIOUS… even when you want to 'judge'.

    When people perceive that their 'needs'/values are being threatened …they become positional. They argue their position, their  preferred solution, trying to  satisfy their own interests. In that moment of heightened tension and stress, people often forget that the more than their own needs are at stake. Fight or flight, engage or avoid are the choices. And more often than not, people prefer to avoid altogether.       

     When you are on track towards resolution, feelings will not be ignored, and will serve as a potential 'entry points' to break patterns of escalation.  Once feelings and needs are acknowledged sincerely, people usually begin actually resolving differences by listening and empathizing.  This is the functional process which, when applied effectively and mindfully, works for individuals, organizations, companies and governments.  The results of such 'relationship focussed' techniques is to build bridges between disputants and to channel human and financial resources and energies into collaborative conflict resolution, not destructive (relational) adversarial contests.

 

To resolve, you need to uncover the real interests (needs) behind the differences, then explore ways those needs can be acknowledged, validated, and accommodated.

Your own and others’.

But only if you’re trying to negotiate a resolution which ‘relatively’ satisfies all involved.