Reaching Resolution Background The following concepts and skills can be addressed and practiced easily when individual students or classrooms are in the process of making decisions. Conflict Management Styles Every individual has the ability to choose a conflict management style when confronted with a conflict situation. Some individuals rely on their favorite conflict management style to react to most conflicts. Other individuals analyze the conflict and make a conscious decision about what conflict management style to use for the specific conflict. The key to effectively preventing, managing and resolving conflict is the ability to respond appropriately to the situation. Five conflict management styles have been identified by researchers: accommodating, avoiding, cooperative problem-solving (also referred to as collaborating or consensus building) compromising, and competing. All five of these styles are appropriate at times and all five styles are inappropriate at times. Individuals must learn to choose the style that is appropriate for the conflict situation. An individual's choice of style in a conflict situation will vary depending a variety of factors such as, the relationship between the disputants and the importance of the subject of the conflict to each individual. Position VS . Interests The distinction between positional negotiation and interest-based negotiation was brought into the mainstream by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their book Getting To Yes. Simply stated, a positions is what you want and an interest is why you want it. Fisher and Ury illustrate the meaning of position and interest by telling of "...the proverbial children who quarreled over an orange. After they finally agreed to divide the orange in half, the first child took one half, ate the fruit, and threw away the peel, while the other threw away the fruit and used the peel from the second half in baking a cake. Too many negotiators end up with half an orange for each side instead of the whole fruit for one and the whole peel for the other. Why?" Getting To Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In Roger Fisher and William Ury, 1981 When conflicting parties become stuck in their negotiating positions, the final solutions rarely satisfy all parties, and as a result relationships suffer. Suppose that you and a friend agree to go for a walk. Your friend wants to walk to the mall and you want to walk to the park. If you only look at position, it appears that either you or your friend will "win" and the other will "lose" because you must pick either the mall or the park. However, if you look at interests you might both discover that one of you wants peace and quiet (or at least to avoid the hassles of a mall) and the other one needs to pick something up at a store. Having shared this information you may both decide to walk to a corner store in the neighborhood so that you can both satisfy your interests of some peace and quiet and shopping. Understanding your interests makes it possible to find a solution to accomplish them for both of you. Sharing interests does not always guarantee a win-win or fair-fair solution. For example, if in the illustration above you wanted to go to the park to bird watch and your friend needed to go to a specific store in the mall to pick up a birthday present for a party that night, you may both decide not to do something together and to go your separate ways for the day. This solution can also be considered a win-win solution because you have each shared interests, evaluated options and mutually decided to do your own thing for the day. Sharing interests helps to maintain and possibly strengthen the relationship that you and your friend have because you understand each other's interest and don't mistake your parting as a personal attack. Many middle school friendships have been damaged or ended because students mistake differing interests as a personal insult. For example, if Jerome and Juan sit together everyday for lunch, but today Jerome sits with Michael, Juan may think that Jerome is snubbing him and begin to ignore Jerome or even begin to spread rumors about him. When Jerome realizes that Juan is snubbing him or spreading rumors about him, Jerome may begin doing the same thing. Often, in these situations, Jerome is not snubbing Juan, but instead is sitting with Michael who is his partner in art class. Jerome would rather sit with Juan, but he has to sit with Michael to talk about their art project that is due the next day. However, because Jerome and Juan do not talk about why Jerome is sitting with Michael their friendship may be lost. You can help students understand the concept of positions and interests by asking two questions - what do you want? and why do you want it? Brainstorming After individuals have shared their interests, they still need to decide what to do to reach a mutually satisfying solution. The goal of brainstorming is to identify as many solutions as possible for resolving a problem. Brainstorming should include a few rules such as be creative, list all ideas without judging them and suggest as many ideas as possible that start with the words "I" or "we". This process helps students to see that there are many possible solutions for a problem and that working together cooperatively they can discover them. Evaluating Options / Predicting Consequences After students have generated a list of possible solutions, they need to decide which ones will be part of the final agreement. This can be done by asking the students to talk about what each of them likes or dislikes about each option. The options that the students dislike can be crossed out. Then the students can be asked to predict the consequences that might follow upon choosing each option and cross out those whose consequences may be undesirable. The options that both students can agree to become part of their final solution. Reaching Resolution Lessons Brainstorming CURRICULUM INDEX
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