The Alchemy of Confrontation
We live in an aggressive world. The newspapers are filled with stories of shootings, ethnic warfare, religious conflict and domestic violence. By all accounts, civility is in decline in business, political and even personal settings.
So in what sense can it be true that we need more confrontation in our lives?
Since moving to Montana from Chicago, where I enjoyed an active mediation practice for twenty-five years, it soon became apparent that most Montana- style mediators do their best to avoid any form of confrontation. A typical mediation session begins and ends with the parties sequestered in different rooms and the mediator carrying messages back and forth like Henry Kissinger shuttling between Cairo and Jerusalem.
When there is a threat of actual violence, this approach makes sense. But in most cases, separating the parties is a form of conflict avoidance that makes the process last longer and reduces the chance of success. In my experience, the fastest and most effective way to reach resolution is for the parties to face each other directly and say (respectfully) what is on their minds.
Here is why it works……
Negotiation is like poker. Even in the most arms-length cases involving bargaining over money (such as certain business transactions or a personal injury lawsuit) it is essential to “see the whites of their eyes” when making offers and demands. The underlying question in most cases is what the other party’s bottom line is—how much will he/she pay or settle for in order to end the dispute.
That’s hard to know when a mediator is conveying each party’s position. We all know from the childhood game of Telephone that information gets distorted when it is interpreted and re-transmitted by another. So even when there is no emotional history between the parties, it’s important to communicate offers and demands directly. That way you can read the other side’s body language, assess the strength of their hand, and decide whether to hold ‘em or fold ’em.
In these cases, the mediator’s job is to create space for the parties to adjust their positions based on what they just heard without losing face. Once they have stated their offer and demand, it is usually helpful to separate them—to provide and opportunity to think about the next move before coming back for the next series of offers and demands. Without a ‘timeout’, most non-mediated negotiations simply come to an abrupt end. A mediator’s job is to keep the process moving and the parties talking.
Breaking the emotional log jam.
But many cases, especially those involving divorce, employment and partnership disputes, are characterized by feelings of betrayal, loss and anger. The presence of strong feelings often drives mediators to try to cool things off by insulating the parties from each other. That is exactly the wrong approach.
Think about it. When we feel wronged by another, what is it we really want? In most cases, some form of accountability. Even better, an apology. Distance makes it easy to maintain defensiveness or self-righteousness. Distance is required to hold onto grudges, feelings of victimization and negative judgments. Faced with the suffering of the others, even of our adversaries, the mirror neurons in our brains cause us to feel empathy. Empathy often leads to accountability and accountability often brings forgiveness.
While recently mediating a custody dispute, I learned that the parties hadn’t had a face-to-face conversation since their divorce some four years before, despite having attempted mediation three times with three different professionals.
Once we got the lawyers and the current spouses out of the room, the parties were able to resolve virtually all their differences within thirty minutes. How? Because the mother was able to admit that she had obstructed the father’s parenting as a way to punish him for leaving her and the father was able to to admit that he had treated her badly by disappearing during her pregnancy. Brushing away the tears, they agreed to start a fresh page in the story of their relationship. Working out a new parenting schedule was easy once the old baggage was emptied.
The Code of Confrontation
As I describe in my 1996 book, The Heart of Conflict, there is a “high road” of confrontation. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were masters of this strategy. Boiled down to the essentials, productive confrontation involves: (1) treating the other with respect; (2) having the courage to speak your truth—firmly, but kindly; and (3) being patient, because timing is everything.
Practiced this way, confrontation has the power to turn lead into gold, just as the ancient alchemists promised.
Brian Muldoon has been at the forefront of alternative dispute resolution since the early 1980’s when he co-founded one of the first mediation firms in the country. Based in Chicago, RESOLVE Dispute Management pioneered the use of mediation across the country—from family law and divorce to construction, medical malpractice and environmental matters. Brian served on the management team of the Common Enterprise, a project of the Rockefeller Foundation and was head of the facilitation team at the 1993 Parliament of the World Religions. In 1996 Putnam published Brian’s book, The Heart of Conflict, which is used in training and conflict resolution graduate programs. His personality profiling instrument, the HeartWorks Archetype Assessment Tool (or HAAT), is utilized by mediators and therapists to help clients identify their strengths and weaknesses in dealing with conflict.
