Page 9 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills
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Unit 1: Conflict




          regulatory system), relevant NGOs (environmental, worker’s rights, human rights, etc.), and  Notes
          more.  Effective  leaders  today  must  develop  the skills  for turning  these  differences  into
          opportunities – or they simply won’t succeed.
          Leaders who can traverse divisive boundaries have always been vital to civilization, but today
          the need for this leadership capacity is even more urgent and widespread. Leading as if the
          world stops at the edge of one’s tribe, religion, nation, or corporation has become impractical,
          and often impossible. We simply cannot manage a whole company, a whole community and
          certainly not a whole planet – with leaders who identify only with one part. Instead, more often
          than ever before, we need boundary- crossing leaders who can help the parts work together to
          strengthen the whole.
          “Leading through conflict” involves facing differences honestly and creatively, understanding
          their full complexity and scope, and enabling those involved to move towards original solutions.
          Such leadership requires going beyond the powerful, primordial responses to difference that
          result in an  “us vs them” mentality. It requires capacities that such bear  both personal and
          professional skills that turn serious conflicts into rewarding opportunities for collaboration and
          innovation.
          Following are the vital tools of the mediator:
          1.   Integral vision: committing ourselves to hold all sides of the conflict, in all their complexity,
               in our minds – and in our hearts.

          2.   System thinking: identifying all (or as many as possible) of the significant elements related
               to the conflict situation and understanding the relationships between these elements.
          3.   Presence: applying all our mental, emotional, and spiritual resources to witnessing the
               conflict of which we are now a part.
          4.   Inquiry: asking questions that elicit essential information about the conflict that is necessary
               for its transformation.
          5.   Conscious conversation: becoming aware of our full range of choices about how we speak
               and listen.
          6.   Dialogue: communicating in  order to catalyze the  human capacity  for bridging  and
               innovation.
          7.   Bridging:  building  partnerships and  alliances that  cross  the  borders  that divide  an
               organization or a community.

          8.   Innovation: fostering social or entrepreneurial breakthroughs that create new options for
               moving through conflicts.
          Through interviews with scores of leaders around the world, it is established how they have
          transformed – not just managed, settled, contained, or resolved – some of the most challenging,
          intractable conflicts of our time. Transformation means that the conflict is neither superficially
          ‘settled’ with a quick compromise nor temporarily “fixed.” It means that the stakeholders go
          through a process of change that raises the dynamics of the conflict to another level.
          Transformation requires us to “wake up” out of vengeance and numbness. It challenges us to
          stand up and defend these life-affirming values – not to hurt but to heal; not for victory but for
          justice; not for our rights but for the rights of all; not just for our “side” but for the whole of
          which we are only a small and fragile part.
          As our world grows smaller, opportunities for conflict multiply. Ethnic, religious, political and
          personal differences drive people apart in organizations and institutions of all kinds – with
          potentially disastrous consequences. It’s the task of effective leaders with mediator skills to
          bring people together again.



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