Strategies for Successful Conflict Resolution: Listening Without Judgment

The first step in working with parties to resolve their conflicts is to listen to each party’s side of the story.  And even when the problem has been framed as something quite serious, like a lawsuit or claim of discrimination or the custody of a child, that problem often has roots in what can sound to you like minor details.  As the parties vent to these seemingly minor transgressions, it is all too tempting to start to judge and dismiss the parties’ concerns as trivial.  This is a trap that a successful conflict resolver must learn to avoid.

Whether you are a professional mediator, a manager dealing with employees or a teacher handling schoolyard conflict, jumping immediately to this type of judgement can prove to be counterproductive, even disastrous. When you decide that something is too small to be this big of a deal, or too silly to merit such emotional responses, you effectively put up a wall between you and the people you are trying to work with.  This wall prevents you from fully hearing them out, and that keeps you from helping them formulate a successful resolution to the issues at hand.

By listening without judgment, a few things happen that help pave the path towards resolution.  First, every party that comes to you feels heard, and this is an important first step.  That feeling of being heard is a key element to the trust that needs to get built between you and the parties in order to help resolve their issues.  Furthermore, listening without judgment is a critical element of the active listening necessary to get all the information needed to best fashion a resolution.  If you have your judgements in the way, you may miss the key thing that leads you to help break through the impasse and get the parties focused on solutions.

I know all too well how tempting it is as a mediator to sometimes want to hold up my hands and say, “Are you serious?  This is what you’re upset about?”  But I always remind myself that is not my role.  After all, I haven’t been the one living with these concerns for days, weeks, months or even years.  I lack the information and perspective to fully judge what’s being told to me, or how serious it really is.  That information can only come from the parties, and only by letting them explain everything they need to, can I then work with everyone to move things forward and find a resolution.  And working with people to find those solutions is precisely my role. 

The next time you find yourself in the middle of parties in conflict, or perhaps in conflict yourself, try to listen to what is being told to you without any judgement as to whether you think it’s a big deal or not.  It’s a big deal to the person you are dealing with, and that means that it needs to be addressed in some way before you can move forward.

Workplace Lessons from Arts Mediation: The Importance of a Shared Sense of Purpose and Employee Engagement

One of the most critical issues facing workplaces is how to create, support and increase employee engagement.  As the Gallup organization’s polls show, for over the past five years, employee engagement in the United States has failed to rise above 34%, with as much as 17% of employees saying they were actively disengaged at work.  Low levels of employee engagement lead to a host of problems in the workplace, including an increase in conflict and a decrease in productivity and functionality.

Numerous studies have been performed, and are continuing to be conducted, to learn about all the factors that affect employee engagement.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, one key element to establishing employee engagement has repeatedly been identified: working for a purpose-driven company.  A whopping 73% of employees who are engaged say they work for purpose driven companies.  Understanding and feeling invested in your organization’s purpose greatly contributes to an employee’s sense of engagement, and can work to reduce conflict when it arises.  A recent arts mediation I conducted beautifully illustrates the role engagement and a shared sense of purpose can play in conflict resolution .

Because of my background in the performing and creative arts, along with my legal and mediation skills and training, I am sometimes asked to mediate in a most interesting type of workplace setting: one of artistic collaborations.  This includes workplaces like galleries, film sets, and theater companies where artists have come together to collaborate on a creative product.  Just like all other workplaces, artistic collaborations are subject to all the same factors that lead to workplace conflict, and mediation is an excellent tool to find resolution and keep the project moving forward. 

I recently mediated a dispute for a play in production. An issue had arisen between the stage manager and one of the performers.  In speaking to them both, one thing quickly became clear: both people were deeply committed to creating the best show they could.  Once this became clear, their shared purpose became the central theme of the mediation, and I could focus on supporting them as artistic collaborators.  By reminding them that each one was making the decisions he or she felt was necessary to create the best show possible, both parties could better understand the others’ previously inscrutable motivations.  Once that understanding was established, we could then look more clearly at the dispute, which, like so many workplace conflicts, was rooted in a misunderstanding based on poor communication.  Once the misunderstanding was addressed, the company could return to the work of telling a compelling story to an appreciative audience.

By steering the parties back to their shared purpose, I watched how their engagement played a key role in finding a resolution to their dispute and moving everyone forward.  This is a key lesson to take to all workplaces.  Just like an artistic collaboration or project, all organizations are formed in order to fulfill some purpose, whether it be to develop a popular consumer product or to deliver a critical government service.  As employees, and certainly as engaged ones, we all combine our efforts towards a common goal.  When conflicts arise, taking the time to establish that sense of shared purpose can go a long way towards creating opportunities for understanding, resolution and creative problem solving.