What is a Conflict?

00:01 Hi and welcome to analyzing a conflict, going from recognizing a conflict to analyzing the conflict and reflecting on what is happening.

00:12 In this lecture, you will get an understanding of what is conflict analysis. You will receive two approaches to help you undertake a thorough conflict analysis, and you will receive several tools in a step by step approach to conflict analysis. Conflict analysis at its core is a systemic approach. It is a process of gathering information from all sides and verifying some of our assumptions about the conflict, helping us to determine the limits to our knowledge, and helping us to focus right in on the action needed.

00:54 I'm going to present two tools for you.

00:57 One is a level of analysis called the Conflict Triangle, which I have introduced in other lectures, and the other one is the four step approach.

01:09 As I have said in previous lectures, the conflict triangle allows for change.

01:16 It helps us to understand the signals of dissatisfaction on three different levels the people, the problem and the process. Understanding the conflict through the conflict triangle helps us to focus on the three levels independently.

01:35 The problem level focuses solely on substantive issues in the conflict and raises issues such as how many options are there really? And from these options, how do I evaluate them? Which one is the best among all the options? What is a win win formula to help us get out of the conflict? And how can I sustain the outcomes once they are done? In understanding the conflict triangle, we want to also focus on the people and what kind of relational conflicts we have. Sometimes good proposals are rejected immediately because the relationship is not very good.

02:20 The person feels insulted or somehow the person just shuts down when he sees or she sees the other side.

02:30 Understanding the link between assumption and conflict escalation will help us to understand what kind of de-escalation is needed.

02:38 We ask ourselves, Why do parties say no to an option that seems reasonable and actually might be a win win solution? The basis of emotion and misunderstandings are essential aspect of this lens.

02:54 How do we understand assumptions about the options and what is the nature of the conflict spiral? In the third lens, we look at process and process problems.

03:06 Focus on how people actually interact with each other in what order and at what level.

03:12 Designing interventions.

03:14 What kind of format? Who speaks first? What should come next? Who should be involved? Making sure that the people involved have the right decision making authority comparable to the other side? Within the process lens.

03:33 We have a couple of challenges.

03:35 First of all, how do you know what is a step by step approach to the conflict? How do we get the right people at the table? How do we keep an overview of the whole process? And how do we resist the temptation to taking a shortcut and trying to make the process shorter? Now, in other lectures, I have mentioned that there is a case study which you can download here in this course called the Regional Council on Tourism.

04:06 I'm not going to go through the specifics of it, but basically there are two colleagues at work in conflict who are arguing over recognition status, project management.

04:19 One is younger, one is older, one is new, one is old, one is more career oriented, one is more family oriented.

04:28 It sounds very stereotypical, but if cooler heads would prevail, we would see that they have actually common interests. Let's look at the conflict triangle one more time through the case study.

04:43 Under problem, we could see that the issues would be things like resource management, best practices in the tourist industry.

04:52 How do we manage time in a team? Through the people lens, we would understand that these two colleagues have different styles of negotiating, different assumptions about the world.

05:05 They both are looking for respect and validation.

05:11 Now, if we add the third lens, we look at how our decisions made. Who decides who is involved in the project? What information is being shared, and how is communication structured to solve the conflict? I'd like to turn now to a step by step approach to going deeper into the conflict analysis.

05:33 I want you to imagine a circle.

05:36 And this circle has a horizontal line right through the middle. This division represents, on the one hand, the reality of having our feet firmly placed on the ground and living conflict in its total reality and some of our more metal level thinking about why things happen and what could be.

06:02 Within this circle, I want you to imagine a vertical line. And this vertical line divides between the past. And the future.

06:15 What happened to us or what happened to somebody else and what could happen by the end of the conflict resolution process.

06:24 So we have this circle.

06:28 With a horizontal line and a vertical line, and it divides the circle into four quadrants.

06:36 In the first quadrant.

06:38 We think about the problem.

06:40 In the second quadrant, we think about the reflections of why and what caused it.

06:47 In the third quadrant, we think about approaches, possible approaches, and in the last quadrant, we think about actions. If we take the conflict triangle and we place it right in the first quadrant, we begin to develop information about facts, triggers, history of the conflict, perceptions.

07:13 It is an information gathering process.

07:17 The quadrant itself does nothing more than gather information. Now, one of the biggest challenges that we have in the problem quadrant is separating facts from assumptions.

07:34 Assumptions are things we think about or believe to be true, but we have no basis for it.

07:42 We've never experienced it ourselves.

07:45 We tend to ignore or block out information or facts on the ground that contradict our fundamental assumptions about the world.

07:57 Here's a tool that you can use to help you assess some of the assumptions within a conflict. There are six basic questions that you can ask yourselves, and I'd like to use the example that we are using in this lecture to illustrate how it works.

08:13 In the first quadrant on the left hand side, you have the question What does Party A assume about party B? In this particular case, Mrs.

08:24 Smith feels Ms. Gonzalez discriminates because of her age.

08:29 If you continue to the next quadrant on the right, you will see that the question is what does Party B assume about party A? Ms. Gonzalez feels Mrs.

08:40 Smith does not respect her because of her age, so they both feel either discriminated or disrespected due to their age.

08:50 In the next set of questions, we look at the basis of these assumptions. On the left side of the quadrant, we ask ourselves, what is the basis of parties A's assumptions? Well, Mrs. Smith looks around and she sees everyone's under 30.

09:09 On the other hand, Mrs.

09:11 Smith often criticizes proposals in front of the team.

09:16 So we can see already the assumptions are being impacted by the experiences the two are having within the conflict.

09:26 And the last set of questions we ask ourselves what information contradicts these assumptions and can we think about a new assumption? Well, we know that most of the projects were misconceived. Dallas is the leader.

09:41 Every single team member has recently finished a training on the use of modern technology and modern problem solving.

09:52 On the other hand, Mrs.

09:53 Smith has actually intervened to help Mrs.

09:56 Gonzalez with the director on a project that she felt strongly about. So what can we conclude about these assumptions? Is there a new assumption that we can create? Well, there are two.

10:10 One is that Ms.

10:11 Gonzalez values, new and fresh thinking.

10:14 And the other is that once Mrs.

10:17 Smith is a convinced supporter of a project, she gives herself fully to the project.

10:25 So in quadrant one, we are firmly on the ground.

10:30 We've looked at our facts.

10:31 We checked our assumptions and our perceptions.

10:34 We have all the triggers and dynamics all ready to go.

10:38 Now we have to do is we have to shoot up into the theoretical world and we have to think a little bit about what are the causes of the conflict.

10:47 And we want to make sure to separate symptoms of the of the conflict from causes of the conflict.

10:56 One way to do that is to think about what are some of the interests involved? What are some of the needs people have on the screen? You see a tool that we can use to help us separate the different interests of the different parties within a conflict.

11:13 It is helpful within the table to divide the interest assessment between what are the positions, what are the individual interests behind those positions? And then to go one level deeper of analysis, what are group interests? Group interests could be professional general reflections within a professional group, a social group, an ethnic community, a linguistic community, even a managerial community.

11:45 All of them have group interests.

11:48 Once we've done positions, interests and group interests, we can think a little bit about what are the common interests.

11:58 For example, in the case of Mrs.

12:00 Gonzalez and Mrs. Smith, success, reputation and project acquisition are going to be the way forward.

12:10 Now, staying on the theoretical world, but moving over from quadrant two to quadrant three, we want to think about theoretical approaches to solving the conflict.

12:23 One helpful way of doing that is to do what we call the options tool. You list the issues on the left hand side of the screen and you then decide to do option one, option two, option three. And we then look at the priorities of the different options.

12:42 We want to identify at least two options because we know that if there are two people involved, they're going to be two ideas on how to solve the problem.

12:51 But then we're going to look at whether we can merge some options or develop new options.

12:57 Once we have looked at, identify and prioritizing the issues, we can begin to create a possible agenda for action.

13:07 Before we move to the next quadrant, we want to think about one more thing.

13:12 What alternatives to people have to the actual conflict? Can they stay in the conflict or do they have better alternatives? One question to ask ourselves in the alternatives tool is What will the party do if the negotiations collapse? What will they do to get ready to implement this alternative, and what consequences will there be if the alternative comes to fruition? Now, this has to be done for both sides, not just one side.

13:45 The reality is most people never think about what if the conflict itself just collapses? And finally, we come to quadrant four after we have identified the problem reflected on the causes of the problem and identified some approaches.

14:05 We try to move forward on pinpointing what concrete actions are needed.

14:12 Now on the screen, you see a simple tool for action planning.

14:16 If the parties have not met, some of the actions might be, for example, a facilitated negotiation.

14:25 They might need mediation, or they might need communication training.

14:30 However, in this particular case, both Mrs.

14:34 Gonzalez and Mrs.

14:35 Smith have actually agreed on a couple of specific options.

14:40 So using the tool which is broken down into actions, responsible people, time frame support and needed resources, we can see that they have agreed to information exchange.

14:58 Led by Mrs. Gonzalez once a month involving the team leader and no added resources are needed.

15:06 We can also see that they've agreed that there would be a course on the use of modern technologies.

15:13 Mr. Smith would attend in the next quarter.

15:16 The IT department would support her and they would need some funding and some time off to make sure Mrs.

15:22 Smith can do this.

15:24 And lastly, they've agreed to improving their communication by starting with some written communication.

15:32 Both sides agree to update each other weekly and both are responsible and no added resources are needed.

15:40 And lastly, no action plan will be implemented if the parties do not trust each other in terms of competence, integrity, predictability, reciprocity and well-being.

15:53 We see from the example on the screen that the two colleagues have actually levels of trust between low and medium in the five categories.

16:04 Some suggested activity to build trust, for example, in the area of competence is to set tasks in specific projects in terms of integrity, to set deadlines and evaluations, in terms of predictability, to ensure that regular meetings happen and in terms of reciprocity, to take turns organising the meeting if all of these suggested activities take place.

16:30 For sure, the level of trust in terms of well-being and the wishing of well-being towards each other will increase at the end.

16:40 And finally, one of the things that we have to keep in mind when we're doing the Circle Chart is that most people are very good at understanding the problem and understanding what they want done about it.

16:53 They're not very good at taking the time out to think about the causes, the assumptions and the problems involved in developing an approach. They are not always keen on opening themselves up to the possibility that there might be other ways of seeing the conflict.

17:12 Even if Mrs. Smith would be willing to entertain more modern ideas about project management.

17:18 She would not be less vigorous in her evaluation of those meetings.

17:24 Even if Mrs. Gonzalez could understand that there is a value in traditional methods. It would not change her tendency to work at a higher speed environment.

17:35 Conflict is much more complicated than that.

17:38 The question is to understand both sides and see if there are some areas where their interests might overlap to generate cooperation. I hope in this lecture you have been able to understand what is conflict analysis.

17:56 What are the approaches to conflict analysis and what tools you can use step by step to ensure a thorough analysis of the conflict? I wish you well in your next conflict analysis.