Moving Forward
How Humanitarian Teams Learn from and Resolve Their Differences

All groups experience differences of opinion, but individuals in NGOs must be particularly adept at dealing with these differences, because they care so deeply about their lives, their work and their relationships. Other differences arise over the fact that the resources of the earth are limited. We each have deeply felt wants, needs and preferences, and we each perceive our own realities to be the correct ones. Intercultural issues raise some of the thornier differences.

Running complex organizations means that managers have to handle those differences so that everyone can collectively reach agreement. This course teaches participants a set of techniques and skills that allow them to identify what their differences are, to accept them as a natural part of the human experience and to work through them in a way that strengthens their relationships and accomplishes their purposes.

People who benefit most from this course are professional and managerial people who: regularly compete for budgets and personnel; are pressured to meet deadlines when they are dependent on others for input; need to produce results and agreements through a variety of informal partnerships and consortia; or have a mission and assignments that are ambiguous and/or poorly defined.


What's Covered

1. The nature of conflict: Participants learn why conflict arises, how it operates differently between individuals and groups and why it can be potentially destructive. They also learn why conflict has benefits: it stimulates interests, reveals fresh thinking, provides new options and refreshes relationships.
   
   
2. Why most of us are conflict-avoiders rather than conflict-resolvers: Most of us are uncomfortable with conflicts, because they are disruptive and on occasion can be dangerous. Nevertheless, conflicts are normal in human affairs. Participants learn that they must manage the fears and anxieties that the prospect of conflict raises in them, and they learn ways to accomplish that.
   
   
3. Moderate payoff techniques for dealing with differences: Participants begin to learn how to deal with conflicts and differences by examining resolution techniques that most people easily gravitate toward and employ most frequently—despite the fact that they produce very uneven outcomes. The four examined here are all various forms of “settling” or “winning” and include:
   
   
   • Effecting a Compromise
   • Splitting the Difference
   • Searching for Third Parties
   • Win-Lose Power Struggles
     
   
   

   In this part of the course, participants learn what each of these strategies consists of, the skills each requires, the relative price/payoff of each and circumstances where each might be a limited but effective choice.
   
   

4. High payoff techniques: Participants learn three techniques that have much higher payoff in resolving differences when used competently in contemporary organizations.
   
   Conjoint Problem Solving
   The first of these three techniques uses a methodology that defines a difference between people as a problem to be solved rather than a battle to be won or a situation to be manipulated. Participants learn how to partner in producing solutions to the problem that are fair to both parties.
   
   Interest-Based Negotiation
   The second is a interest-based negotiating process developed by Ury & Fisher for surfacing the interests that all parties would like satisfied. Done in an entirely open way, this method uses brainstorming techniques to come up with solutions that attempt to cover as many of the expressed interests as possible, maximizing gain for all parties.
   
   Polarity Management
   The third is a technique developed by Barry Johnson that addresses a class of otherwise “unsolvable” problems, in which the opposite and inseparable sides of life’s most difficult issues (i.e., the “two sides of the same coin” we all have to live with) are seen as polarities to be managed and reconciled rather than problems to be nailed.
   
   People in this course go through extended exercises to determine which of these techniques works best in specific situations, and then, they practice at applying the technique they have chosen.
   
   
5. Persuasion and influence: Participants learn how to advance rationales for any of the models presented above in a way that others find both convincing and involving. In that way, both colleagues and adversaries find reasons to engage in these processes and commit to the outcomes.
   
   
6. Supportive talk: Next, participants discuss what kinds of behaviors that people on either side of an issue have to practice in order to create good outcomes. Whatever method of resolution, the behaviors needed include: the practice of clear, direct speech, active listening, open minds, nurturing behavior and collaborative attitudes.
   
   
7. Conflict prevention: Resolving conflicts is time consuming, draining and a distraction from the main work of any organization. This final session teaches participants how to anticipate potential conflicts, deal directly with the situations that may cause them to erupt and minimize the effects of those that cannot be avoided.

1. Once back on the job, people who have taken this course show far less anxiety in the face of conflict, and they are significantly better prepared to engage with their adversaries and to look for solutions.
   
   
2. Participants learn that, in this life, no one ever gets everything they want, but that it is always possible to get what is fair and what one can live with.
   
   
3. People are less inclined to make quick compromise concessions or split their differences, because they learn that often these solutions end up satisfying no one.
   
   
4. In circumstances where adversaries basically trust each other, they are strongly inclined to engage in the problem solving, interest-based negotiations described above.
   
   
5. Almost immediately, they are more inclined toward collaboration and collegiality, rather than to knockdown dragged-out win-lose power struggles.

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