4.4 Book Review
Choose a book on conflict resolution, conflict management, or negotiation, and write a review of the book. The book can be selected from the list of additional recommended resources or you can find your own book. If you select a book not on the list of additional recommended resources, please get it approved by the instructor beforehand.
- Recommended List of Books Recommended List of Books – Alternative Formats
Your book review should include three topics:
- a concise overview or summary of the author’s content;
- a critical assessment of the book’s content (i.e., how valuable is the material in the book, how could the material be strengthened or improved, how the material complemented or differed from other readings in the course, etc.);
- a recommendation as to whether other class members would appreciate the book or find it useful.
You should give the bibliographic information in APA format at the top of the book review. Your paper should be double-spaced and two (2) pages in content with a title and reference page.
https://download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0000/5881/40/L-G-0000588140-0002384980
Cloke ftoc.te
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Cloke f01.tex V2 – 03/22/2011 10:25am Page 1
R E S O L V I N G
C O N F L I C T S
A T W O R K
Cloke f01.tex V2 – 03/22/2011 10:25am Page 2
Also by Kenneth Cloke
Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice
and Terrorism
The Crossroads of Conflict: A Journey into the Heart
of Dispute Resolution
Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict
Resolution
Mediation: Revenge and the Magic of Forgiveness
Also by Joan Goldsmith (with Warren Bennis)
Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a
Leader
Also by Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith
The Art of Waking People Up: Cultivating
Awareness and Authenticity at Work
The End of Management and the Rise of
Organizational Democracy
Resolving Personal and Organizational Conflicts:
Stories of Transformation and Forgiveness
Resolving Conflicts at Work: A Complete Guide for
Everyone on the Job
Thank God It’s Monday: 14 Values We Need to
Humanize the Way We Work
Cloke f01.tex V2 – 03/22/2011 10:25am Page 3
T H I R D E D I T I O N
R E S O L V I N G
C O N F L I C T S
A T W O R K
T E N S T R A T E G I E S
F O R E V E R Y O N E O N T H E J O B
K E N N E T H C L O K E • J O A N G O L D S M I T H
F o r e w o r d b y W a r r e n B e n n i s
Cloke f01.tex V2 – 03/22/2011 10:25am Page 4
Copyright 2000, 2005, 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Imprint
989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 — www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the
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Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for
further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was
written and when it is read.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used
their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties
with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and
specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives
or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be
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Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other
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Credits appear after the Index.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cloke, Kenneth, date.
Resolving conflicts at work : ten strategies for everyone on the job / Kenneth
Cloke, Joan Goldsmith ; foreword by Warren Bennis. – Third edition.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-92224-8 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-01062-4 (ebk.);
ISBN 978-1-118-01081-5 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-01082-2 (ebk.)
1. Conflict management. 2. Interpersonal relations. 3. Personnel
management–Psychological aspects. 4. Psychology, Industrial. I. Goldsmith, Joan,
date. II. Title.
HD42.C56 2011
650.1′3–dc22
2010048701
Printed in the United States of America
third edition
PB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
http://www.josseybass.com
http://www.copyright.com
http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions
Cloke ftoc.tex V2 – 03/23/2011 2:01pm Page v
C O N T E N T S
Foreword Conflict: An Opportunity for Leadership
By Warren Bennis vii
Acknowledgments
xi
ii
Introduction Ten Strategies for Everyone on the Job xv
STRATEGY 1 Understand the Culture and Dynamics
of Conflict 1
STRATEGY 2 Listen Empathetically and Responsively 29
STRATEGY 3 Search Beneath the Surface for Hidden
Meanings 63
STRATEGY 4 Acknowledge and Reframe Emotions 93
STRATEGY 5 Separate What Matters from What Gets in
the Way 131
STRATEGY 6 Solve Problems Paradoxically and Creatively 169
STRATEGY 7 Learn from Difficult Behaviors 203
STRATEGY 8 Lead and Coach for Transformation 241
STRATEGY 9 Explore Resistance and Negotiate
Collaboratively 273
STRATEGY 10 Mediate and Design Systems for Prevention 301
The Authors 333
Index 335
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F O R E W O R D
C O N F L I C T:
A N O P P O R T U N I T Y
F O R L E A D E R S H I P
In the midst of the recent financial crisis, it is clear that leadership
has never mattered more. We are in dire need of leaders who can
courageously confront and resolve the many conflicts that plague
our organizations and threaten our well-being, who can address and
resolve the conflicts that damage the very fabric of society, and who
can openly and skillfully resolve conflicts that have an adverse impact
on our daily lives.
We need organizational leaders who can release us from unrelenting
conflicts and do not merely paper over disagreements and disputes.
We have to resist the temptation to follow leaders with perverse
agendas that undermine or distort the authentic resolution of recurring
conflicts. Instead, we need to develop organizational leaders who
are skilled in resolving conflicts, who seek solutions that address
underlying causes, and who serve the interests of all involved.
If we look to one of the leaders of our early Republic, Abigail
Adams, we see that she had it right when she counseled her son
John Quincy that hard times are the crucible in which character and
leadership are forged. ‘‘It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of
a pacific station that great characters are formed,’’ she wrote to him in
1780. ‘‘The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with
difficulty. Great necessities call out great virtues.’’ The spirit of this
wife and mother of two founding presidents inspires us to consider our
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foreword
own era as a time when leaders can imaginatively create environments
in which conflict resolution strategies generate a viable, collaborative
new future. This future will be created by leaders who can cope
with rapid, uncertain change and address social strains, psychological
tensions, and chronic conflicts in cultures that foster collaboration,
open and honest communication, and conflict resolution.
The first skill of these leaders is a capacity to exercise good judgment
by making the right decisions in the midst of confusing and frightening
conflicts based on knowledge, wisdom, and an ability to remain true
to overriding values.
A second skill of these leaders is the ability to enlist others and
motivate them to seek resolution to seemingly insurmountable con-
flicts. This skill flows from what the psychologist Daniel Goleman calls
‘‘emotional intelligence,’’ the capacity to understand and connect with
the hopes and fears of those who are in conflict and to find common
ground in the values they share.
A third skill of these leaders is respect. Respect to those in conflict
signifies that they have been seen and valued for who they are;
disrespect signifies that they are invisible and do not matter. People
in conflict often engage in destructive habits in order to gain respect.
The debilitating dispute that seems unbearable and never-ending can
evaporate when a leader affords respect to all involved and enables
each person to experience being valued and included.
This new breed of leader creates respectful, ethical, innovative,
and productive work environments where everyone is encouraged
to invent solutions to ongoing conflicts. The characteristics of these
leaders include widespread alignment based on a commitment to deal
with conflict in a straightforward manner; empowerment of all parties
to identify and resolve the conflicts they encounter; and transparency
that allows conflict to be viewed openly and honestly so that inquiry,
integrity, and reflection are generated and prized.
Alignment
Leaders align those who work on all levels of their organizations
to perceive and accept common understandings of the causes of
organizational conflicts. They inspire a commitment to resolve disputes
by articulating shared values and goals. This alignment has a great
deal to do with spirit and a team atmosphere. A shared understanding
of the sources of conflict in the everyday organizational life aligns
viii
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foreword
everyone to achieve a higher purpose and uplifts and harmonizes their
aspirations. Each person is then able to view conflict as an opportunity
to learn and one that can lead to improvement in work, in products,
and in a shared future.
Empowerment
Empowerment means that everyone believes they are at the center of
the organization rather than at the periphery, and they make a differ-
ence to the success of the overall effort. Empowered individuals take
the risk of acknowledging the conflicts they generate or encounter.
They know that what they do has significance and they take responsi-
bility for surfacing conflicts, learning from them, and achieving lasting
resolutions. They exercise discretion and responsibility and create a
culture of respect in which everyone is encouraged to openly confront
disputes and disagreements and to develop methods to resolve them,
without having to check through five levels of the hierarchy for per-
mission to take on contentious issues. Leaders who empower their
organizations generate and sustain trust and encourage systemwide
effective communication.
Transparency
When inquiry-based reflection and transparency are at the heart of
organizational culture, learning opportunities and useful information
flow unhampered. In these cultures people are open to problem finding,
not merely problem solving. In these adaptive, values-based learning
organizations, staff on all levels find, identify, and resolve conflicts
before they generate crises. Leaders encourage the free discovery of
ideas and the sharing of information to solve problems. They are
not afraid to test their ideas, even if full disclosure threatens to
reveal deeper conflicts. A learning and inquiring organization, in
which transparent exchanges of information are a matter of course,
allows everyone to reflect on and honestly evaluate their actions and
decisions.
Thus, postbureaucratic organizations generate leaders who value
meaningful interactions, healthy conflicts, and active dissent; who are
not averse to risk taking; who support learning from their mistakes,
rather than blaming others for them. They develop informal leader-
ship in cross-functional teams and they actively listen to the ideas of
ix
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foreword
colleagues and support the talents of others. They create organiza-
tions that are decentralized into autonomous units in which decision
making is shared. They demand self-discipline and emphasize individ-
ual responsibility, collaborative relationships, widespread ethics, and
open communication that resolves conflicts when they emerge.
This subtle yet profound and perceptible change taking place in our
philosophy of leadership creates organizational cultures that encourage
the honest expression of conflict and candid discussion of differences.
These changes include
• A new concept of humanity, based on an increased
understanding of our complex and shifting needs, that is
replacing an oversimplified, mechanical idea of who we are
• A new concept of power, based on collaboration, reason, and
synergy, that is replacing a failed model of power based on
coercion and threats
• A new concept of values, based on humanistic-democratic
ideals, that is replacing a rigid bureaucratic system that regards
property and rules as more important than people and
relationships
I now add a fourth change reflected in the central argument that
Cloke and Goldsmith make in the pages that follow:
• A new concept of conflict, based on personal leadership and
organizational learning, creative problem solving, collaborative
negotiation, satisfaction of interests, and a view of conflict that
can promote personal and organizational transformation. This
creative model is replacing a limited approach to conflict that
seeks to suppress, avoid, or compromise issues rather than
resolve the underlying reasons that gave rise to them.
With this book, the authors offer wisdom, food for thought, and
tools for those of us who seek to improve our abilities to address
conflict and to create organizational cultures in which conflicts are
openly and candidly addressed. Cloke and Goldsmith provide multiple
strategies for addressing, resolving, transforming, and learning from
conflicts. They challenge us to learn to live with ambiguity, to commu-
nicate more openly, to participate in conflicts with integrity, making
x
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foreword
a virtue of contingency, and finding unity in the issues that divide us.
In doing so, they make a significant contribution to creating healthy
organizations by providing methods for resolving the destructive con-
flicts to be found in this contentious era. I welcome the sound advice
that follows.
Warren Bennis
Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
University of Southern California
xi
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This book is dedicated with love
to our grandchildren,
Orrin, Thacher, and Tallulah,
in hopes they will gain
wisdom from the lessons their conflicts
can teach them.
Cloke f04.tex V2 – 03/22/2011 10:26am Page xiii
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Every effort to reach out to those with whom we disagree brings us
all closer together, and this book could not have been written without
the extraordinary courage and dedication of mediators and conflict
resolvers who have joined us for over thirty years in improving
our understanding of how to move from impasse to resolution in
deeply entrenched conflicts, and how to create successful workplace
collaborations.
We thank all of you for your unfailing support, your honest feed-
back, and your deep understanding.
We also thank the many courageous leaders who have joined us
in experimenting, discovering, implementing, and improving the ideas
we present here. It is only because of their courage and willingness to
try something new that we were able to ‘‘field-test’’ our ideas, learn
from our mistakes, and tell you their stories.
We especially want to acknowledge the many members and lead-
ers of Mediators Beyond Borders (www.mediatorsbeyondborders.org)
whose unflagging commitment to promoting peace and reconciliation
around the world encourages hope and inspiration.
A special thanks goes to Warren Bennis for believing in us and
supporting this book, and to our children and grandchildren, who have
been our greatest teachers. We thank our editors, Alan Rinzler and
Seth Schwartz, our talented indexer and friend, Carolyn Thibault,
and our extraordinary assistant, Solange Raro.
Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith
Center for Dispute Resolution, Santa Monica, California
Cloke f05.tex V2 – 03/22/2011 10:26am Page xiv
We have thought of peace as passive
and war as the active way of living.
The opposite is true.
War is not the most strenuous life.
It is a kind of rest cure compared
to the task of reconciling our differences.
From War to Peace is not from the strenuous
to the easy existence.
It is from the futile to the effective,
from the stagnant to the active,
from the destructive to the creative way of life.
The world will be regenerated by the people
who rise above these passive ways
and heroically seek by whatever hardship,
by whatever toil
the methods by which people can agree.
— Mary Parker Follett
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
T E N S T R AT E G I E S F O R
E V E RY O N E O N T H E J O B
The rules of the game: learn everything, read everything, inquire
into everything. . . . When two texts, or two assertions, or
perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile
them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two
different facets, or two successive stages of the same reality, a
reality convincingly human just because it is complex.
— Marguerite Yourcenar
It is nearly impossible to grow up in a family, live in a neighborhood,
attend a school, work on a job, have an intimate relationship, raise
children, or actively participate as a citizen in the world without
experiencing a wide variety of disagreements, arguments, disputes,
hostilities, and conflicts.
Much of our childhood is spent in conflict with those we love, with
our parents, siblings, and playmates, who teach us the first and most
difficult lessons of life, including how to respond to intense emotions
and handle behaviors we find difficult to understand or accept. Our
schools teach us hard lessons about rejection and compromise, about
how to succeed and fail in a hierarchy, how to manage disputes with
teachers and peers, and how to overcome shame, rage, and fear.
As adults, our most intimate family relationships are immersed
in and deeply influenced by conflict. We learn how to respond to
conflicts at work; in interactions with government agencies, schools,
and companies; and in the neighborhoods and communities where
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introduction
we live. We learn different skills in response to conflicts with our
spouses, partners, children, neighbors, and coworkers over miscom-
munications, false expectations and assumptions, unclear roles and
responsibilities, disagreements and rejections, changes and losses.
Our diverse societies and multiethnic, religious, and social cultures
seem saturated with conflicts that scream at us from headlines, ads, and
movies that, in their intensity, subtly shape our psyches and percep-
tions. Our communities have been deeply divided by racial prejudice,
hatred of dissenters and those who are different, and conflicts over
competition regarding the use of scarce resources to satisfy disparate
needs and expectations.
Our workplaces and organizations are profoundly shaped by con-
flicts between workers and supervisors, unions and management,
competing departments, and stressed coworkers. Our competitive
economy, status-conscious society, and politicized government agen-
cies reverberate with chronic disputes between ins and outs, haves and
have-nots, us and them, powerful and powerless — all battling over
the distribution of power, status, goods, and resources.
When we lack effective skills, our first response is often to avoid
or suppress conflict, or try to make it go away, causing us to miss its
underlying meaning. As a result, we cheat ourselves, our opponents,
and our organizations out of learning, making it impossible to correct
what led to the problem in the first place, prevent future conflicts, and
discover how to improve our overall ability to resolve and transcend
our disputes.
Yet, the pain, loss, and irretrievable damage that are suffered by
individuals, families, organizations, and communities in conflict can
also create miracles of transformation when people find new solutions,
are moved to forgiveness and reconciliation, and are able to reclaim
peaceful lives, relationships, and organizations. These are the two
faces of conflict, the destructive and the creative, the stagnant and
the active, the aggressive and the transformative. Between them lies a
set of strategies, techniques, and approaches for turning one into the
other. It is these strategies that are the subject matter of this book.
Everyone is capable of seeing both these faces, though most of us,
when we are in conflict, focus on the first rather than on the second.
We have all learned how to fight and how to collaborate, how to run
away and how to stand up for what we believe in, how to hide what
we think and how to say what we really mean, how to resist change
and how to embrace it, how to live as though no one else mattered and
how to collaborate closely with others, how to get stuck in impasse
xvi
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introduction
and how to improve our lives and our relationships with those we love
or respect.
In short, each of us has learned destructive as well as creative ways
of responding to conflict. Yet in order to shift from the destructive to
the creative, from the stagnant to the active, from aggression to trans-
formation, we need to search within ourselves for the true meaning of
our conflicts, and for the skills we need to turn one into the other. If
we can become more aware of what we are contributing to our con-
flicts and start to listen and learn from our opponents, we can work
together to improve the organizational structures, systems, processes,
and relationships that generate chronic conflicts, and overcome the
tendency to slip into negative or destructive responses.
Conflicts at Work
Most executives, managers, and employees face conflicts on a daily
or weekly basis, spending from 20 percent to as much as 80 percent
of their working hours trying to resolve or contain them. If we
simply quantify the time spent by the average executive, manager, and
employee on unresolved conflict and multiply it times their salary,
the result would far exceed the cost of in-depth training in conflict
resolution skills.
Yet, with the right approach, most of these conflicts are entirely
avoidable, unnecessary, or easily resolvable. Many workplace disputes
arise from simple miscommunications, misunderstandings, seemingly
irrelevant differences, poor choices of language, ineffective manage-
ment styles, unclear roles and responsibilities, false expectations, and
poor leadership that can easily be corrected through listening, informal
problem solving, dialogue, collaborative negotiation, and mediation.
Unfortunately, few of us have been trained in how to resolve
the many conflicts that come our way. Few schools teach it, and
few corporations, nonprofits, or government agencies offer conflict
prevention programs. They rarely train managers and supervisors in
dispute resolution, or orient employees to collaborative negotiation,
creative problem solving, peer-based mediation, and other conflict
resolution methodologies.
When organizations do try to train their executives, managers, and
employees in conflict resolution techniques, these classes are often far
too brief and oriented toward elementary skills, or toward suppressing
or merely settling conflicts and trying to make them go away. They
rarely take the approach that conflicts point to issues, problems, or
xvii
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introduction
difficulties that can provide unique learning opportunities and lead to
significant improvements.
Thus, we pay a heavy price for conflict — not only individually
and relationally, but organizationally and socially — through litiga-
tion, strikes, reduced productivity, poor morale, wasted time and
resources, unnecessary resignations and terminations, lost customers,
dysfunctional relationships with colleagues, destructive battles with
competing departments, stifling rules and regulations, gossip and
rumors, and reduced opportunities for teamwork, synergy, learning,
and change.
Chronic Conflicts at Work
The deeper sources of conflict at work are chronic disputes that
repeat themselves in various guises, but never fully disappear. The
causes of these disputes often have little or nothing to do with
the petty, superficial issues people commonly fight over, but go much
deeper into the structures, systems, processes, and relationships in the
workplace; the nature of conflict, the culture of conflict within orga-
nizations; and the ways work is organized, compensated, processed,
and acknowledged.
Chronic conflicts can often be distinguished by the repetitiveness
of their allegations, issues, and accusations; by their acceptance and
tolerance for disrespectful and adversarial behaviors; by their low
level of resolution, reescalation and renewal of hostilities; and by the
seeming irrationality and incongruity between high levels of emotion
and the apparently trivial issues over which people are fighting. For
this reason, chronic conflicts are commonly mistaken for miscommu-
nications, personality clashes, or accidental misunderstandings, yet on
analysis reveal strong underlying similarities.
Simply defined, chronic conflicts are those that nations, societies,
organizations, families, or individuals
1. Have not fully resolved
2. Need to resolve in order to grow and evolve
3. Are capable of resolving
4. Can only resolve by abandoning old approaches and adopting
new ones
5. Are resistant to resolving because they are frightened,
dissatisfied, insecure, uncertain, angry, or unwilling to change
xviii
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introduction
How, then, do we resolve chronic conflicts at work? We can
begin by recognizing that every chronic conflict contains at least two
fundamental truths: the truth of impasse, that people are stuck with
a problem from which they would like to escape and cannot; and the
truth of resolution, that it is possible for them to become unstuck and
move to a higher order of resolution or relationship. They can do this
by understanding, at a deep level, that whatever it was that caused
them to get stuck in the first place can also enable them, when they use
the right skills, to transform the way they think, feel, and act about it.
We can also recognize that every organization, whether it is a cor-
poration, school, nonprofit, or government agency, generates chronic
conflicts. Each of these conflicts poses a challenge to the organization
that it has not faced directly or in its entirety. Each chronic conflict
thereby reveals a paradigm that has begun to shift, a problem that has
yet to be solved, or an opportunity for improvement that has not been
understood, seized upon, or implemented.
Indeed, every chronic conflict presents us with a unique opportunity
to significantly enhance our personal lives, deepen our relationships,
improve our processes, expand the effectiveness of our organizations,
increase our work satisfaction, and release us from impasse. To reach
these transformational outcomes, it is necessary to understand how
and why we get stuck, and develop the strategies and skills that make
resolution and transformation possible.
The Dark Side of Emotion in Conflict
When we are in conflict, we say things we do not mean and mean things
we do not say. Only rarely do we communicate at a deep level what we
really, honestly think and feel, or do so in ways that are empathetic.
We seldom speak from our hearts or expose our vulnerability in ways
our opponent can hear. Why do we fall into these traps? Why is it so
difficult to do what we know is right?
Our conflicts have the capacity to confuse and hypnotize us, to make
us genuinely believe there is no way out other than through combat.
Conflict possesses dark, hypnotic, destructive powers: the power of
attachment when it is time to leave, the power of demonization when
it is time to forgive, the power of articulate speech when it is time
to listen. Conflict alternately strokes and crushes our egos, fuels and
exhausts our will, energizes and freezes us in fear. It speaks to a
deep, ancient part of our soul that thirsts for power and delights in
revenge.
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introduction
When we are engaged in conflict, our emotions seem enormously
powerful and overwhelming. When we are in the grip of strong emo-
tions, they feel limitless and unstoppable, irresistible and all defining.
Part of the seduction of strong emotions is that they allow us to
present who we are and what we want in absolute terms. They force
us to identify with the seemingly infinite power of our feelings and to
surrender control to something larger than ourselves.
We have all experienced times in our lives when we lacked the
skills we needed to communicate honestly and empathetically with
others. We have all been aggressive, judgmental, and hypercritical,
or passive, apathetic, and defensive. Our efforts at honesty have
been misinterpreted as aggression and our empathy as weakness. We
have not known how to temper our anger with compassion, how
to listen to our opponent’s pain when we were being criticized, how to
discover what caused our opponents to act as they did, or how to take
responsibility for our own miscommunications and conflicts. We have
failed to find ways of working collaboratively with our opponents and
find solutions to our problems. As a result, we have felt trapped in our
conflicts, sensing or believing that there was no exit, no way out.
In addition, we have all resisted apologizing for our behaviors,
acknowledging our miscommunications, or recognizing that our
deepest, most destructive emotions originate inside us, having little
or nothing to do with our opponents. We have become lost in
self-aggrandizement or self-denial, sometimes simply by focusing
exclusively on what our opponent did or said. We have engaged in
conflict because we were unhappy with our lives, needed attention,
felt rejected, lacked the courage to stand up for ourselves, felt
insecure or upset by criticism, were ashamed of our own cowardice or
grief, or did not have the skill to respond effectively to someone else’s
behavior. And our opponents have behaved exactly the same way for
the same reasons.
Instead of facing these internal reasons for being upset and gaining
insight into our deeper motivations, we have become angry with
others and claimed our cause was noble, just, true, and right. We have
described our opponents as evil, unjust, unfair, harassing, aggressive,
dishonest, disloyal, and insane, as opposed to describing our own
pain, or why our relationship with them is important to us, or searching
for the misunderstandings, false expectations, miscommunications,
and petty incidents that we have both blown out of proportion.
In the process, we have missed the truth: that these petty concerns can
be transcended only by expanding our awareness of the deeper reasons
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introduction
that gave rise to them. We can escape them only by being honest with
ourselves, our opponents, and our colleagues about what is really both-
ering us, by genuinely listening to those with whom we disagree, and
by discovering that we have much to learn from them. Once we let go
of our emotional investment in being right, we can begin to collaborate
in the discovery and implementation of creative solutions.
Settlement Versus Resolution
In many organizations, executives, managers, and employees have
learned to sweep conflicts under the rug in hopes that they will go away.
As a result, organizations have developed cultures that encourage
people to avoid discussing difficult issues, not fully communicate what
they really want, and settle for partial solutions or no solution at all.
In doing so, they cheat themselves and others in the workplace out
of learning from their conflicts and discovering more skillful ways of
resolving disputes.
Denying the existence of conflict does not make it disappear, but
simply increases its covert power. Organizations that encourage people
to avoid or suppress disagreements, or reward them for being ‘‘good
employees,’’ inevitably develop systems and cultures that sacrifice
honesty, integrity, creativity, and peace of mind for a superficial,
fragile, temporary, and false facade of agreement and civility.
In many workplaces, employees have learned to accept a level
of humiliation, abuse, superficiality, and unresolved conflict simply in
order to keep their jobs. Consider, for example, how much humiliation,
abuse, and conflict you and others you know have accepted. Here are
some questions to ask yourself and others at work:
• Do people in my organization embrace and try to learn from
conflicts, or do they avoid them and try to sweep them under
the rug?
• What price have my colleagues and I paid as a result?
• What price have I and others in conflict paid for being unable to
resolve our disputes, or for having to dissemble and pretend
they do not exist?
• How often do we carry our conflict with us for years?
• What price has the organization paid for unresolved conflict?
There is an enormous difference between communicating superfi-
cially to settle your conflicts and communicating deeply to resolve
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them, between compromising over issues and transforming your con-
flicts by learning from them. We try to settle our conflicts when we are
uncomfortable with them, feel frightened by them or by what we imag-
ine their resolution will entail, and wish to avoid or suppress them, or
to pacify our opponents. We compromise and try to make them go
away because we experience them as stressful, uncontrollable, violent,
frightening, and irrational, because we lack the skill to handle our
own intense emotions, or because we do not know how to respond
safely to the intense emotions of others. Often, we see our conflicts as
failures, or do not think they are important or useful. Sometimes we
are simply afraid of hurting other people’s feelings by addressing them
directly.
Unfortunately, when we avoid, suppress, or compromise our con-
flicts, we often miss the chance to reveal their underlying sources,
correct them, learn from them, or break through to the other side.
If this is our approach, we will seek settlement for settlement’s sake
and cheat ourselves out of opportunities for resolution, learning, and
transformation.
It may come as a shock to you that we do not advocate peace for
its own sake, or believe that settlement and compromise are always
better than conflict. As we see it, peace without justice soon becomes
oppressive. Superficial settlements often lead to silence, sullen accep-
tance, distrust, and renewed hostilities. By contrast, resolution leads to
learning, change, partnership, community, innovation, increased trust,
and forgiveness. All these positive outcomes are lost when we ‘‘trade
justice for harmony’’ or commit to ‘‘peace at any price.’’ Peace, in this
sense, does not mean the absence of conflict, but the skill and ability
to engage in it collaboratively and constructively.
Into the Eye of the Storm
When we seek resolution, we are drawn toward the center of our
disputes, into ‘‘the eye of the storm.’’ While this may sound irrational
and even dangerous, it is nonetheless true that by moving toward our
adversaries rather than away from them, we more quickly discover
what lies beneath the surface of our disputes, and begin to see how
we can listen empathetically even to those who oppose us. We can
then acknowledge what we have in common, clarify and resolve the
issues that are dividing us, devise creative solutions, collaboratively
negotiate differences, identify and resolve the underlying reasons for
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the dispute, learn from each other and the conflict, and strengthen and
revitalize our relationships.
At the center, heart, or eye of every storm of conflict is a calm,
peaceful place where opposition and antagonism are united, trans-
formed, and transcended, where learning, dialogue, and insight take
place. Journeying into the eye of the storm is, for this reason, a
core, or meta-strategy for moving from impasse to resolution and
transformation.
To move toward the center of our conflicts, we need to change the
way we think about our disagreements, and how we behave in their
presence. We cannot succeed in the long run by avoiding confronta-
tion, or by simply ceasing to communicate with our opponents — these
responses will not resolve anything. Instead, if we recognize that every
conflict contains hidden lessons that can fuel our growth, change,
learning, awareness, intimacy, effectiveness, and successful relation-
ships, we will not be frightened of moving toward their center. As we
do so, we may be able to see, hidden deep in our conflict, signs of
the emergence of a new paradigm, indications of a desire for a better
working relationship, a detailed guide to what is not working for one
or both of us, and an implicit request that we work together to make
things better.
Paradoxically, we may engage in conflict because we do not believe
it is possible to resolve our disputes, and therefore become more
aggressive in order to avoid feeling defeated. Sometimes we fight
because we need to express strong feelings or beliefs about an issue, or
we are trying to remedy an injustice. Perhaps the other side has refused
to listen or negotiate, and conflict seems to offer a welcome antidote to
stagnation and apathy. Being aggressive is sometimes the only way
we believe we can spark communication and honest dialogue — not
because it is right, but because we feel it is the only way we can get
the other person or the organization to listen. Yet hidden in the allure
of our principled opposition is the price we pay for having an enemy.
Lasting change happens when we use higher-level skills to move
through our conflicts to achieve deeper levels of resolution, allowing
us to shift from divergence to convergence, from antagonism to unity,
and from impasse to transcendence. In this way, conflict resolution
is an expression of the highest personal, organizational, social, and
political responsibility. It is an antidote to unfairness and injustice, a
more effective way of bringing about social change, and sometimes
the only way of successfully communicating our opposition to policies
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and practices we do not like. In each of these cases, it is not conflict
that is the problem, but the destructive, adversarial ways we engage
in it.
How Far Apart Are People Who Are in Conflict?
Our greatest sources of inspiration and personal satisfaction come
from love rather than hate, from moments of connection rather than
moments of aggression and hostility. Yet even while we are searching
for insight and transformation or trying to rise above the fray, we find
ourselves mired in petty squabbles that make our efforts to avoid or
ignore them seem almost laughable.
Every conflict we face in life is rich with positive and negative
potential. Every dispute can be a source of inspiration, enlighten-
ment, learning, transformation, and growth — or of rage, fear, shame,
impasse, and resistance. The choice is fundamentally not up to our
opponents, but to us, and depends on our willingness to face them
by engaging directly, constructively, and collaboratively with our
opponents.
For example, consider this question: How far apart are people who
are in conflict? We believe there are three correct answers:
1. They are an infinite distance apart because they cannot
communicate at all.
2. They are no distance whatsoever because their conflict makes
them inseparable.
3. They are exactly one step apart because either of them can reach
out and touch the other at any moment.
If these answers are correct, where are these conflicts actually
located? Again, there are three correct answers:
1. They are located in the mind and heart of each party because
their perceptions, attitudes, ideas, emotions, and intentions are
indispensable to the continuation of the dispute.
2. They are located between them because every conflict is a
relationship.
3. They are located in the surrounding context because all conflicts
take place within a system, culture, or environment that
influences how they are conducted.
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The third location is especially important in workplace conflicts,
which are always located at least partly in the organizational sys-
tems, structures, processes, and cultures that inform everyone’s choices
about how to respond.
The answers to these questions suggest that you can improve your
ability to resolve conflicts not only by taking the one step that separates
you from your opponent, but also by changing the way you think and
act in their presence, by working to improve your relationship with
them, and by redesigning and shifting the organizational systems,
structures, processes, and cultures in the workplace in which they
occur.
The German philosopher Nietzsche wrote, ‘‘When you look into
the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’’ Looking into your conflicts
means surrendering your illusions, no longer seeing yourself as a
powerless victim, or your opponents as evil enemies. It means giving
up your fear of engaging in honest communication with someone you
may distrust or even dislike, and taking responsibility for the attitudes
and behaviors that you bring to the conflict.
The Transformational Power of Conflict
When we choose to face the dark side of our participation in con-
flict, we begin to recognize its extraordinary capacity to transform our
lives by shifting the way we understand ourselves, experience others,
conduct our relationships, relate to our organizations, and learn and
grow. This hidden, transformative power of each and every conflict
lies in the potential for its resolution in a way that leads to a discovery
of a better way of being, working, and living simultaneously.
If this proposition seems surprising to you, think of a time when your
life shifted dramatically and your relationship to the world around
you was transformed. Was your transformation connected in any
way to a conflict? Did you achieve a flash of realization while in the
midst of a dispute? Did you change as a result of loss, confrontation,
criticism, divorce, or the death of someone you loved? Did it occur as
a result of negative feedback, discipline, or termination? Before you
achieved clarity, did you feel torn between conflicting alternatives?
If so, you are not alone. As you consider these questions, we invite
you to begin your own transformation by consciously and skillfully
engaging in your conflicts, experiencing them completely, turning them
into learning experiences and opportunities to practice new skills, and
working to reach genuine closure.
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By transformation, we mean significant, all-encompassing, lasting
change. Transformation is not minor, incremental, small-scale, linear,
temporary, or transitory. It is a change in the form of the conflict that
leaves it, us, and them different from the way we were before. It alters
our sense of reality, of identity, and of possibility. Transformation
occurs when we let go of what happened and allow what is stuck
in the past to die so our present and future can live. It occurs when
we discover that what we most needed to resolve in our conflict was
inside us all the time.
By using the strategies we describe in this book, we hope you will be
able to find or create a new sense of yourself and your organization, a
new direction in your life, a new understanding of any opponent,
and a new approach to resolving future miscommunications, misun-
derstandings, and conflicts. We hope you will be able to redirect the
energy, focus, and time that constitute your personal investment in
conflict to fuel your personal and organizational growth, learning, and
effectiveness. These transformational opportunities are open to each
of us at every moment in every conflict.
Surprisingly, large-scale transformations often take place through
very simple actions, such as listening, asking questions, and making
commitments. To achieve transformational results in your conflicts,
we ask you to make two commitments. First, we ask that you pay
attention to the way you are when you are in conflict, and that
you choose to listen and learn — both internally to your own voice
and sense of truth, and externally to the voice of your adversary
or opponent. Second, we ask that you alter the way you act, by
exploring options without biases, separating problems from peo-
ple and interests from positions, exploring the reasons for your
own resistance, and that you decide to be a leader in your own
conflicts and do so, as best you can, with courage and commit-
ment.
Within these twin spheres of being and acting, there are innumer-
able techniques, methods, approaches, questions, interventions, and
processes that can give birth to transformation. Each of these will
be different for each person, organization, and situation. Not every
method will work for every person, every conflict, or at all times.
What matters is that you search for what works best for you, one
opponent and one conflict at a time. The strategies we offer are not
magic wands. The magic arises from your ability to select the right
approach at the right time with the right person.
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About This Book
Philosophers have written that the universe can be found in a single
grain of sand. This book is our effort to describe the universe we
have found in the sands of conflict, which we have studied, sifted,
and shaped professionally over the last thirty years. In the process, we
have helped thousands of people in workplaces in the United States
and around the world resolve their disputes.
We wrote this book to assist everyone who works — employees, lead-
ers, managers, teachers, principals, union representatives, and workers
in corporations, nonprofits, schools, and government agencies — in
learning from their conflicts. Everyone can increase their skills, not
merely in making conflicts disappear, but in discovering their deeper
underlying truths, resolving the reasons that gave rise to them, pre-
venting future conflicts, and seeing them as drivers to personal and
organizational transformation.
To assist you in discovering these truths for yourself, we present ten
strategies for resolution. These strategies are a diverse set of tools you
can use to improve your skills and resolve your conflicts — not just
hammers and wrenches, but mirrors and scalpels, and meta-tools that
will help you design your own special tools for each new situation.
The mirrors are to help you reflect on what you are doing to sustain
or encourage the conflict. The scalpels are to assist you in eliminating
unproductive, destructive, and unwanted behavior patterns and free
you to approach your conflicts in a more constructive, collaborative,
and strategic manner. The meta-tools are to help you when the other
tools don’t seem to work. Our object in offering them is not to tell
you what to do or how to do it, but to provide you with insights that
will lead you to your own useful methods and important truths, as we
have been led to ours.
The Ten Strategies
Each of the ten chapters that follow offers a core strategy that can
lead you from impasse to resolution, and possibly to personal and
organizational transformation. By working with each strategy, you
will be able to improve your ability to confront, embrace, struggle
with, and resolve disputes in your own way. As you investigate each
strategy, we provide you with detailed suggestions on how to think
about, practice, and redesign it to meet your needs.
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While you may prefer a simple step-by-step guide guaranteed to
help you navigate life’s difficulties, we have found the recipe approach
to dispute resolution hopelessly inadequate. Simplistic approaches to
conflict cannot anticipate the unexpected, respond to complex issues
and emotions, or account for individual or organizational uniqueness.
They cannot appreciate the wholeness of conflict, which cannot be
recognized by slicing it into smaller pieces. Instead, we offer a series of
somewhat circular, iterative, intersecting strategies that will lead you
to the center of your disputes and reveal their hidden transformational
potential.
We refer to ‘‘strategies’’ in order to differentiate a strategic approach
to conflict resolution from the more common tactical one that consists
of a series of linear steps leading closer and closer to resolution. In
our experience, transformation requires the introduction of something
new, which requires more than tactical thinking, and resolution is
rarely a linear process.
Rather, the search for resolution and transformation reflects a state
of mind, an intention that cannot be located by following a previously
crafted blueprint or map, but must be discovered for yourself. There
is no guaranteed technique or tactic that can lead you there, yet every
conflict resolution technique has the potential to open your eyes to
hidden truths and reveal a path forward. In fact, it is likely that you
already know the value of every strategy we suggest, and understand
deep inside that successfully implementing any strategy requires you
to first look inward to find the place where you get stuck.
The word strategy implies planning, but it also suggests a journey
to a place that is, to some extent, unimaginable and indescribable
before you arrive. For this reason, we ask you to adopt an attitude
of openness, possibility, adventure, and curiosity, and to bring a
commitment and desire for resolution to the process. We know from
experience that if you pursue any of these strategies, opportunities for
transformation will automatically begin to open for you. We invite
you to take this exciting journey with us.
Here is a brief explanation of the strategies we explore in each
chapter:
Strategy 1: Understand the Culture and Dynamics of Conflict.
Every conflict is significantly influenced by the culture and
dynamics in which it takes place. Understanding these elements
will help you discover the hidden meaning of your conflicts,
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