NEGOTIATION / FACILITATION / MEDIATION

Costner, L. (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict, pp. 121-149

• "Kant said that every war in which the belligerents do not impose some restrictions in the use of possible means upon one another, necessarily…." 121
• He says that the very act of entering into conflict with an antagonist establishes relations where none into conflict with an antagonist established relations where none may have existed before. Conflict is seen as a binding element between parties that may previously have stood in no relation to each other. In addition, Simmel claims that conflict tends to give rise to regulations and norms governing its conduct and restring the forms in which it is being fought out. Let us examine these assertions in turn. 121
• As, for example, Roman history and the history of modern imperialism amply demonstrate. 122
• Conflict seems to be one means of acquiring knowledge about an initially unknown person, thus establishing a basis for other forms of interaction. 122
• Yet attempts to limit the means of warfare are apparently as old as war itself. 124
• The rules of warfare tend to give rise to the notion of “limited liability,” so that total destruction of vanquished becomes unlikely. 124
• Conflicts may be said to be “productive” in two related ways: (1) they lead to the modification and the creation of law; (2) the application of new rules to leads to the growth of new institutional structures centering on the enforcement of these new rules and laws. 126
• Conflict thus intensifies participation in social life. This very consciousness of the need for rules governing their behavior makes the contenders aware that they belong to the same moral universe. 127
• A flexible society benefits from conflict behavior inasmuch as this behavior, through the creation and modification of norms, assures its continuance under changed conditions. A rigid system, on the other hand, by not permitting conflict, will impede needed adjustments and so maximize the danger of catastrophic breakdown. 128
• If a strongly organized adversely faces a weakly organized one, as in colonial wars or in labor-management relations before the advent of unionism, the strong will not be inclined to promote the unification of the weak. Similarly, in a totalitarian society the concentration of power on top requires the atomization rather than the unification of internal resistance. 129
• Centralized and bureaucratic types of organizations will prefer to deal, both in conflict and in subsequent accommodation, with other bureaucratic organization. 132
• Conflict also calls for a common organizational structure to facilitate the acceptance of common rules and conformity with them. 133
• Since the aim of realistic conflict is to attain specific results, it follows that the contenders have n interest in pursuing it once such results have been attained. Centralization of the internal structure of each contending party assures that once these results are reached, peace can be concluded and maintained effectively as long as the same conditions prevail. 133
• The most effective prerequisite for preventing struggle, the exact knowledge of the comparative strength of the two parties, is very often attainable only by the actual fighting out of the conflict. 133
• To make oneself understood and to get others to listen is not unconnected with possession of power to give force to one’s argument. 134
• “The mediator,” says Simmel, can achieve reconciliation only “if each party believes that the objective situation justifies the reconciliation and makes peace advantageous.” 136
• [E.T. Hiller] “ The strike is a test of economic endurance-a process of attrition-in which the outcome is determined by the relative resources of the contestants.” “Each estimates the limits of his resources as compared with those of his opponent and gauges his own inevitable losses against possible gains.” 136
• Conflict leads to the formation of associations and coalitions between previously unrelated parties. If several parties face a common opponent, a unifying bond is created between them. 140
• Yet, as Max Weber saw so clearly, the American structure “did not constitute a formless sandheap of individuals, but rather a buzzing complex of strictly exclusive, yet voluntary associations.” 141
• Unification is at a minimum level when coalitions are formed for the purpose of defense. Alliance, then, for each particular group reflects the most minimal expression of the desire for self-preservation. 149

Fox, E., and Urwick L. (eds.) (1973) Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follet, London: Pitman.

• Integration involves invention, and the clever thing is to recognize this, and not to let one's thinking stay within the boundaries of two alternatives which are mutually exclusive.  4
• Some people tell me that they like what I have written on integration, but say that I am talking of what ought to be instead of what is. But indeed I am not; I am talking neither of what is, to any great extent, nor of what ought to be merely, but of what perhaps may be. p.5 Compromise does not create, it deals with what already exists; integration creates something new... 6
• As someone has said, "A man is known by the dilemmas he keeps. p.6
• …if we think that integration is more profitable than conquering or compromising, the first step toward this consummation is to bring the differences into the open. p.7
• Integration is often more a spontaneous flowing together of desire than one might think from what I have said; the revaluing of interests on both sides may lead to the interests to fit into each other, so that all find some place in the final solution. p.10
• If the first step is to uncover the real conflict, the next is to take the demands of both sides and break them up into their constituent parts.
• I wish indeed that every controversy be considered a problem. 12
• …perhaps the greatest of all obstacles to integration is our lack of training for it. 19
• There is often the possibility of something better than either of two given alternatives. p.20

Lewicki, R., and Litterer, J. (1980) Negotiation, Homewood, IL: Richard Irwin Co.

• In bargaining, there need not be winners and losers; everyone can be a winner. p.101
• …discussion and mutual exploration will usually suggest win-win alternatives. p.102
• Integrative bargaining is the process of identifying a common, shared, or joint goal and developing a process to achieve it. It is meant to be a collaborative process in which the parties define their "common problem" and pursue strategies to solve it. p.102
• In contrast to contending, an accommodating strategy tries to help the other party meet his/her objectives. p.103
• When the reason are strategic, a negotiator recognizes that he is dependent on the other party and wants to shape the other party's perceptions and behavior in order to affect his own goals. p.104
• In conclusion, these studies show that a collaborative, problem-solving approach to conflict is more likely to occur when parties reduce their level of aspiration for high outcomes, in order to give themselves more leeway to develop mutually acceptable solutions. Thus, the greater the pressure on negotiations to achieve mutually beneficial solutions to the bargaining problem, the more likely problem-solving behavior is to occur. p.105
• In summary, one of the most fundamental problems in integrative negotiation is that negotiating parties fail to recognize (or search for) the integrative potential in a negotiating problem. The primary cause of this failure is the negotiator's approach to conflict, motivated by his desire to satisfy his own concerns without regard to the other's concerns. p.107 ... As a result, negotiators fail to invest the time and the energy to truly explore and search for integrative options.
• Hence the parties must engage in a dialogue in which preferences and priorities are openly shared, rather than disguised and manipulated. 108
• Search for solutions that meet the goals and objectives of both sides. p.108
• Negotiators must attempt to probe below the surface of their opponent's "position" to discover underlying needs. 108
• A common goal, by which all parties share the result equally, each one benefiting in a way that would not be possible if they do not work together. 109
• A shared goal, by which the parties work toward a common end but benefit differently. 109
• The key element of an integrative bargaining situation is the belief that all sides can benefit. Whether each side attains the same outcome, or they achieve different outcomes, all sides believe that they will be better off by working in cooperation than by competing or working independently. p.110
• Parties in negotiation maximize their outcomes when they assume a healthy active self-interest toward achieving their own outcomes, yet also recognizing that they are in a problem solving relationship. 111
• The parties can emphasize that they may have to work together after the negotiations are over - or recognize that they may be able to work together and continue to benefit from the relationship they have created. p.110
• While there is no guarantee that trust will lead to collaboration, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that mistrust inhibits collaboration. 111
• …when people do not trust one another, they are likely to engage in positional bargaining, use threats, and commit themselves to tough positions. 112
• A number of key factors contribute to the development of trust between negotiators. First, we are more likely to trust someone who we perceive as similar to us, or holding a positive attitude toward us. Second, we often trust people who are dependent upon us, since we are in a position to help or hurt the (and they frequently can do the same to us). Third, we are more likely to trust people who initiate cooperative, trusting behavior. Acting in a cooperative, trusting manner serves as an invitation to others, especially if the invitation is repeated despite initially contentious behavior from the opponent. 112
• Given that trust has to be built during the negotiation, opening moves are crucial.  The more cooperative, open, and nonthreatening the opening statements and actions of a party are, the more trust and cooperation is engendered in the other party.   Once a cooperative position is established, it is more likely to persist. If cooperative behavior can be established at the very beginning, there is a tendency for parties to "lock in" to this cycle and make it continue. Finally, these opening moves not only set the tone for the negotiation, but also the momentum. The longer the cycle of trust and cooperation continues, the easier it is to restore should the cycle break down. 112-3
• The next precondition for high quality integrative negotiation is clear and accurate communication. 113
• The purpose of integrative bargaining is not to question or challenge the other's viewpoint, but to incorporate it into the definition of the problem, and to attend to it as the parties search for mutually acceptable solutions. 114
• Often people who know nothing about the past history of the conflict, or even about the issues, can suggest options and possibilities that haven't been considered. Outsiders can provide additional input to the list of alternatives, or can help to orchestrate the process and keep the parties on track. 117
• If negotiators fundamentally commit themselves to a win-win negotiation, bridging solutions are likely to be highly satisfactory to both sides. 119
• …firm flexibility means that the parties must be firm with regard to the ends they want to achieve (i.e., interests), while remaining flexible on the means by which they are achieved. 119

Bacow, L., and Wheeler, M. (1984) Environmental Dispute Resolution, Plenum Press.

• …mediation (a device sometimes used for settling environmental disputes) is basically negotiation that is carried out with the assistance of a third party. 21
• Negotiation is also studied from an institutional perspective. Laws can be analyzed to see how they encourage - or discourage - consensual dispute resolution. 23
• In negotiation, the decisions of all parties interlock, and outcomes are interdependent. 22
• …the number of parties to a negotiation and the nature of their relationship is crucial to the conduct and outcome of the bargaining. 24
• Their attitudes toward risk, whether they can afford to take chances or need to be cautious, can shape their negotiation strategy. 24
• In sum, negotiation is ultimately a consensual process. 26

Fisher, R. (January 1985)_ "Beyond Yes," Negotiating Journal, pp. 67-70.

• Thomas Schelling has pointed out to me, when I negotiate with a panhandler, my primary objective may be to avoid any future relationship whatsoever. 67
• (1) Don’t threaten a relationship as a means of typing to coerce a substantive concession. To do so will not work against a wise negotiator and damages the relationship whatever the outcome (2) Don’t try to buy a good relationship by making concessions that are unjustified on their merits (Appeasement rarely works. You are likely to get more of any bad behavior you reward.) 68
• Trust, however, should not be overloaded. Other things being equal, the less that an agreement depends on trust, the more likely it is to be implemented. 68

• The more one trusts the other side, the greater the incentive one provides for behavior that will prove such trust to have been misplaced. 68
• …wise decision-making between adversaries, within a group, or by a single individual involves both generating possibilities and judging among them. 69
• Power—the ability to influence the decisions of others—is important in every negotiation. 69

Sander, F. (1985) "Alternative Methods of Dispute Resolution: An Overview", University of Florida Review, v. xxxv11, no 1.

• A goal of the alternative dispute resolution movement "is to enhance community involvement in the dispute resolution process. 3
• Negotiation offers the great advantage of allowing the parties themselves to control the process and the solution. 4
• If a third party joins the negotiations, the parties must determine whether he or she has power to impose a solution on the parties, or whether the third party is simply to help the disputants arrive at their own solution. 4 (He envisioned an establishment of an institution as well.)

Breslin, W. (1991) "Breaking Away from Subtle Biases," in J. William Breslin and Jeffrey Rubin (eds.) Negotiation Theory and Practice, pp. 247-250.

• "I have a bias which leads me to believe in the essential goodness of my follow man, which leads me to believe that no problem of human relations ever unsolvable" (Bunche, R.). 247
• If one has complete contempt for the other side, denying them any shred of humanity, then there really isn’t much po in even attempting communication. The optimist—and the practical negotiator –rejects that stance, recognizing that solutions to conflict begin with talking, an acknowledgment of the common humanity we shall share. 247

Fisher, R. (1991) "Negotiating Power: Getting and Using Influence," in J. William Breslin and Jeffrey Rubin (eds.) Negotiation Theory and Practice, pp. 127-140.

• One way to become a more powerful negotiator is to become a more skillful one. Some of these skills are those of dealing with people: the ability to listen, to become aware of the emotions and psychological concerns of others, to empathize, to be sensitive to their feelings and one’s own, to speak different languages, to communicate clearly and effectively, to become integrated so that one’s words and nonverbal behavior are congruent and reinforce each other, and so forth. 130
• Other skills are those of analysis, logic, quantitative assessment, and the organization of ideas. The more skill one acquires, the more power one will have as a negotiator. 130
• Knowledge relevant to a particular negotiation in which one is about to engage is even more powerful. The more information one can gather about the parties and issues in an upcoming negotiation, the stronger one’s entering posture. 130

Fisher, R., Ury, W., and Patton, B. (1991) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, New York: Penguin.

• Every negotiation is different, but the basic elements do not change. xix
• A wise agreement can be defined as one which meets the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolves conflicting interests fairly, is durable, and takes community interests into account. 4
• As more attentions is paid to positions, less attention is devoted to meeting the underlying concerns of the parties. 5
• Figuratively if not literally, the participants should come to see themselves as working side by side, attacking the problem, not each other. 11
• Focus on interests, not positions. 10
• Insist on using objective criteria. 12
• Most negotiations take place in the context of an ongoing relationship where it is important to carry on each negation in a away that will help rather than hinder future relations and future negotiations. In fact, with many long-term clients, business partners, family members, fellow professionals, government officials, or foreign nations, the ongoing relationship is far more important than the outcome of any particular negotiation. p.20
• Whether you are making a deal or settling a dispute, differences are defined by the difference between your thinking and theirs. 22
• As useful as looking for objective reality can be, it is ultimately the reality as each side sees it that constitutes the problem in a negotiation and opens the way to a solution. 23
• The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it, as difficult as it may be, is one of the most important skills a negotiator can possess. 23
• If they are not involved in the process, they are hardly likely to approve the product. 27
• If you want the other side to accept a disagreeable conclusion, it is crucial that you involve them in the process of reaching that conclusion. p.27
• Agreement becomes much easier if both parties feel ownership of the ideas. 28
• Each criticism of the terms and consequent change, each concession, is a personal mark that the negotiator leaves on the proposal. A proposals evolves that bears enough of the suggestions of both sides for each to feel it is theirs. 28
• Apart from the substantive merits, the feeling of participation in the process is perhaps the single most important factor in determining whether a negotiator accepts a proposal. In a sense, the process is the product. 28
• Face-saving reflects a person's need to reconcile the stand he takes in a negotiation or an agreement with his principles and with his past words and deeds. 28
• If you can put their case better than they can, and then refute it, you maximize the chance of initiating a constructive dialogue on the merits and minimize the chance of their believing you have misunderstood them. 35
• The basic problem in a negotiation lies not in conflicting positions, but in the conflict between each side's needs, desires, concerns, and fears. 41
• Behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests, as well as conflicting ones. 42
• Shared interests and differing but complimentary interests can both serve as the building blocks for a wise agreement. 43
• We need not enter into a philosophical debate between free will and determinism in order to decide how to act. 53
• Often the wisest solutions, those that produce the maximum gain for you at the minimum cost to the other side, are produced only by strongly advocating your interests. 54
• Attack the problem without blaming the people. 54
• One lawyer we know attributes his success directly to his ability to invent solutions advantageous to both his client and the other side. 56
• Skill at inventing options is one of the most useful assets a negotiator can have. 56
• For a negotiator to reach an agreement that meets his own self-interest he needs to develop a solution which also appeals to the self interest of the other. 59
• Invent first, decide later. 60
• Someone at the meeting needs to facilitate - to keep the meeting on track, to make sure everyone gets a chance to speak, to enforce any ground rules, and to stimulate discussion by asking questions. 61
• As a negotiator, you will almost always want to look for solutions that will leave the other side satisfied as well. 72
• Look for items that are of low cost to you and high benefit to them, and visa versa. 76
• Statements generate resistance, whereas questions generate answers. 111
• Statements of fact can be threatening. Whenever you can, ask a question instead. 122
• Some of the most effective negotiating you will ever do is when you are not talking. 112
• A good negotiator rarely makes an important decision on the spot. The psychological pressure to be nice and to give in is too great. A little time and distance help separate the people from the problem. 124
• Good faith negotiation does not require total disclosure. 134
• Good negotiators rarely resort to threats. 137
• Relying on standards of fairness and seeking to meet the interests of both sides help produce agreements that are durable, set good precedents, and build lasting relationships. 155
• Before you even begin to negotiate, it makes sense to envision what a successful agreement might look like. 170
• You want the other side to leave the negotiation feeling satisfied and fairly treated. That feeling can pay off handsomely in the implementation of an agreement as well as in future negotiations. 175

Goldberg, S., Green, E., and Sandler, F. (1991) "Saying You're Sorry," in J. William Breslin and Jeffrey Rubin (eds.) Negotiation Theory and Practice, pp. 141-144.

• Many mediators have had one or more experiences in which an apology was the key to a settlement that might otherwise not have been attainable at times, all the injured party wants is an admission b the other party that h or she did wrong; no more is necessary to achieve a settlement. At other times, apology alone is insufficient to resolve a dispute, but will so reduce tension and ease the relationship between the parties that the issues separating them are resolved with dispatch. 141
• Furthermore, to the extent that the dispute has been occurred in the context of an ongoing relationship, the apology is valuable in repairing whatever harm to the relationship has resulted from the dispute. 142

Harshbarger, S. (1991) Mediator Training Manual: Student Conflict Resolution Experts, Boston, MA: Department of the Attorney General.

• …a main job of a mediator and the various skills it takes to do these jobs successfully is to share information from one party to another in order to help them understand each other better. 9
• …keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons people have trouble resolving conflicts is that nobody wants to be the first one to "give in". They each need a way to "save face". 15

Janosik, R. (1991) "Rethinking the Culture-Negotiation Link," in J. William Breslin and Jeffrey Rubin (eds.) Negotiation Theory and Practice, pp. 235-245.

• "There are marked differences in the theory and practice of the several Great Powers. These differences are caused by variation in national character, traditions, and requirements" (Harold Nicholson (1963) Diplomacy, p. 68). 236
• Learned behaviors may touch upon notions of reciprocity and justice, attitudes about acceptable outcomes, or concepts about the appropriate timing for certain bargaining behaviors. 236
• "As a sign of politeness and hospitality, the Arabs tend to listen and nod when high-level Americans talk with them. But this does not mean that they agree" (Flora Lewis, 27 February 1979, New York Times). 237
• Political scientists define ideology as a tight-knit system of ideas which constitutes a full world view. 238
• Michael Kammen (1972) asserts that sets "biformities," or values which are in a dialectic tension, pervade the American national experience: “collective individualism,” “conservative liberalism” “pragmatic idealism,” and “godly materialism,” are few examples…. 239
• The “warrior ethic,” by contrast, encourages risktaking in dogged pursuit of a cause, event at the cost of social turmoil. 240

Nyerges, J. (1991) "Ten Commandments for Negotiator," in J. William Breslin and Jeffrey Rubin (eds.) Negotiation Theory and Practice, pp. 187-193.

• Ten Commandments for a Negotiator are: (1) You shall love and cherish your trade. (2) Be courageous. Accept your responsibilities gladly. (3) The eagle’s eye must be yours: Assess situation quickly. (4) Remember, there are no problems, only opportunities. (5) Be honest under all circumstances. (6) Love your opponent even if you receive something less than that in return. (7) Put yourself in the shoes of your opponent, but do not remain there to long. (8) Convert your opponent into your partner. (10) Do not act before you have found out your partner’s aims. (11) Your partner is at least as intelligent as you are; but you must have more will. 187-8
• …in order to negotiate well, one must love it. A good negotiator enjoys the negotiation process in the first place, is thoroughly involved in it, and strongly identifies with the issues at stake. 187
• A good negotiator must command respect. Respect cannot be conferred by rank or functions; it is due to character. Nothing confers respect more than courage, which is the readiness to accept responsibilities and make decisions. 188
• "The difficulty attracts the man of character, because embracing it, he becomes himself. Had he overcome it or not, it is an affair between them. Like a jealous lover he does not share what it gives him or what it costs to him" (DeGaulle, The Sword's Edge, 1962). 189
• Speed of assessment is vital because time is the eternal enemy of the negotiator. Sometimes one can buy time, but such a purchase often involves a price that may turn out to be too high. Instead of buying time, speed in recognizing the real situation gains time. 189
• A good negotiator should resist the temptation to be dishonest when dealing with a partner whose honesty is questionable. A good negotiator is a lady or a gentleman who assumes that the opponent is also a lady or gentleman. 190
• Empathy is required to get a good relationship that, in turn, leads to the successful conduct of a negotiation. 190

Bercovitch, J., and Rubin, J. (eds.) (1992) Mediation in International Relations: Multiple Approaches to Conflict Management, New York: St. Martin's Press.

• What mediators do, can do, or are permitted to do in their efforts to manage a dispute, may depend, to an extent, on who they are and what resources and competencies they have. 4
• Mediation is a non-coercive, non-violent and ultimately non-binding form of intervention. 4
• Mediation therefore is here defined as a process of conflict management, related to but distinct from the parties' own efforts, where the disputing parties or their representatives seek assistance, or accept an offer of help, from an individual, group, state or organization to change, affect or influence their perceptions or behavior, without resorting to physical force or invoking the authority of the laws. 7
• As a form of international conflict management having high control over the process and low control over the outcome, mediation is likely to be used when (a) a dispute is long, drawn out and complex, (b) the parties' own conflict management efforts have reached an impasse, (c) neither party is prepared to countenance further costs or loss of life, and (d) both parties are prepared to co-operate to break their stalemate. 8
• Mediators, like other political actors, engage in mediation and expend resources because they expect to gain something from it. 9
• International mediators cannot choose any strategy or tactics they wish irrespective of circumstances. Such mediators function within a system that is composed...of the disputing parties, their relationship, the mediator, a number of concerned audiences or constituencies, and other factors such as societal norms, political institutions and economic pressures. The relationships within that system are relationships of exchange and influence: each actor has interest and expectations, each actor possess resources, and each expects to receive some rewards - the mediator as well as the disputing parties. We can, if we so desire, focus on only one aspect of the relationship, say the behavior of a mediator, and prescribe a wide variety of innovative methods of mediation and advise their applicability to all kinds of international disputes. However, unless we take into account the context of the dispute and the resources of a mediator, such prescriptions will account to little more than wishful thinking. 18
• The relationship between a mediator and the disputing parties is reciprocal. Exchange and influence in mediation are thus bidirectional, not unidirectional. 18
• Process (of mediation) and context (of a dispute) are closely interrelated. The context factors influencing the choice and diversity of mediation strategy and behavior can be best understood within a general framework which organizes the dimensions and processes of mediation into a temporal sequences that depict the interplay among prior conditions that are antecedent to mediation, the actual process of mediation, and subsequent outcomes. 19
• Mediators' resources constitute the basis required for exercising leverage, or better still, any form of influence. 19
• If mediators wish to influence a dispute, they have to rely on their resources to induce a change in motivation, perception or behavior. 21
• We can evaluate mediation as being successful when the parties express satisfaction with the process or outcome of mediation, or when either or both of these are perceived as fair, efficient, or effective. 22
• International mediation that emphasizes timeliness, minimizes costs and produces outcomes that maximize the benefits each party experiences, may very well be evaluated by all concerned as successful. 23
• As a process international mediation is likely to be seen as fair when it is open to continuous modification by the disputants and when the mediator treats both parties equally. 23
• Thus, we can assess a particular mediation effort as having failed if the parties continue to interact in the same dysfunctional manner. 24

John Burton (1992) Included in a book edited by John Vasquez of Rutgers University.

• I wish to argue that the future of problem-solving conflict resolution, perhaps like dispute settlement, is not in remaining just an interactive process, but in establishing the basis of an alternative to the adversarial production, legal and political systems that Western societies have inherited and promoted. 1
• It [interactive problem-solving conflict resolution] is primarily a research tool, for the facilitated process gives important insights into human behavior, human relationships and problems associated with existing institutions. 1
• The total social-political-economic-legal system must be the frame in which the analysis is made of the source of the problem and its remedies. 5
• Failed decision making, a failed system, has led to an absence of leadership and even less concern with the future. To go against this defeatist trend we must articulate alternative decision making processes, processes that offer better prospects for formulating and achieving consensus goals. 6
• Resolution has been important in research, for it is the interaction of parties in a facilitated setting that gives insights into the nature of the conflict, and the deep-rooted causes of it. It is these insights that feed back into decision making. It is these insights that enable decision makers to assess the costs and consequences of their policies in the longer term, thus encouraging them to take those steps that will prevent conflict. 14
• The ultimate challenge is the establishment of social and political institutions that are problem solving, and not adversarial and confrontational. 14
• What are sought are leaders who do not have a defined political program which they seek to promote, but have capabilities not unlike those of a facilitator whose prime function is to bring different view-points and interests together, and to help an analysis of problems that can suggest constructive outcomes. 15
• The task of those who are concerned primarily with conflict resolution and prevention, is to articulate alternatives, to set out precisely tested processes and procedures, and generally to provide options to societies desperately in need of them, but which have no clear indications of where to go from here. Then, but only then, is there any prospect of conflict resolution and prevention becoming a political system that can replace what is proving to be destructive of the global environment and of civilizations. 17

Kelman, H. (1992) "Informal Mediation by the Scholar Practitioner", In Mediation in International Relations, J. Bercovitch and J. Rubin (eds.) New York: St. Martin's Press.

• …we try to facilitate a process whereby solutions will emerge out of the interaction between the parties themselves. 65
• What we try to facilitate is not the process of negotiation itself, but communication that helps the parties overcome the political, emotional, and at times technical barriers that often prevent them from entering into negotiations, from reaching agreement in the course of negotiations, and from changing their relationship after a political agreement has been negotiated. 66
• Third party consultation 'attempts to facilitate creative problem-solving by improving communication and analyzing the underlying issues and the relationship between the parties', whereas mediation attempts to facilitate 'a negotiated settlement on a set of specific, substantive issues through reasoning, persuasion, the control of information, and the suggestion of alternative compromises'. 66
• It is true, however, that problem-solving workshops may bring to the surface profound differences between the parties, although they do so in a context in which these differences can be explored and potentially reconciled in a creative search for win-win solutions. 67
• …interactive problem solving is not geared to facilitate the negotiation process itself, but to contribute to creating an environment that makes conflicting parties more ready to enter into negotiations, to bring the negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion, and to transform their relationship in the wake of a political agreement. 69
• Only after both sets of concerns are on the table and each side's concerns have been understood by the other, are the participants asked to explore the overall shape of a solution that would meet the needs and calm the fears of both sides. Each is expected to think actively about solutions that would be satisfactory to the other, not only to themselves. 73
• In general, the third party is prepared to intervene in order to help keep the discussion moving along productive, constructive channels. 74
• On the whole, however, the emphasis on our model is in facilitating the emergence of ideas out of the interaction between the participants themselves. 74
• …an academic setting is a good place to set into motion a process of successive approximations, in which parties that do not trust each other begin to communicate in a non-committal framework, but gradually move to increasing levels of commitment as their level of working trust increases. 74
• …ideas generated in workshops must be acceptable to the two communities, as well as to outside actors, if they are to have the desired impact on the political process. 75
• Workshops can be seen as a process of building a coalition across the conflict line, but it must remain an uneasy coalition that does not threaten members' relationship to their own identity groups. 77
• Workshops can be designed to promote a special kind of interaction or discourse that can contribute to the desired political outcome. 85
• Conflict resolution efforts are geared, therefore, to discovering possibilities for change, identifying conditions for change, and overcoming resistances for change. 89
• Thus, workshops have been designed to identify conditions required for negotiation and to help create a political environment conducive to movement toward the negotiating table. 91
• There are several unique contributions that a continuing workshop can make to the larger political process. It represents a sustained effort to address concrete issues, enabling us to push the process of conflict analysis and interactive problem solving farther and to apply it more systematically than we have able to do in previous workshops.

Baskin, G. (ed.) (1993) Israel/Palestine: Issues in Conflict, Issues in Cooperation, Jerusalem: Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.

• For there to be progress in issues such as resource use and development, some degree of progress must first be achieved on the larger political questions dividing the parties. 86
• …by setting the stage whereby the larger political issues such as identity, recognition, and security are being discussed seriously, there ultimate resolution may be promoted by shifting focus periodically onto matters over which cooperation and agreement may be somewhat less compromising ideologically. The disputants may begin to learn to work together on functional issues of clearly overlapping concern, and thus build both the will and the momentum for tackling more complex and intransigent political issues where self interest does not overlap as clearly. Moreover, progress at resolving functional issues may provide parties with the confidence and concrete evidence that "making a deal" with their adversaries can result in real gains, and thus, the perception of self-interest in cooperation may be enhanced. 86
• For a solution to be mutually acceptable, it must address the variety of deep-felt concerns. 99
• Integrative solutions are those which all parties to a solution are committed to, instead of being coerced by external forces, because they all gain from them and, perhaps more importantly, because it can be demonstrated that such solutions are best suited to fulfilling their needs. 102
• Disputing parties become motivated to "help" the other side achieve its certain goals because of the gains they ca envision for themselves via such cooperation. For instance, the insecurity of either side is viewed as a concrete problem for both. 102
• Integrative solutions cannot be imposed from the outside; they must be internally motivated and derived from the parties themselves. 103
• Political functionalists that the combination of wide sacrifices in national sovereignty, on-going functional cooperation among adversaries, and the creation of supra-national, task-related organizations is the most promising avenue toward peace. 104
• …parties must first perceive the benefits that may be derived from cooperation and joint-problem solving. Integrative and position sum solutions to shared problems, which can build confidence, enhance mutual safety, and protect identities, are likely to be necessary preconditions for successful distributive bargaining and compromise intense ethnic conflicts. 108

Ury, W., Brett, J., and Goldberg, S. (1993) Getting Disputes Resolved, Cambridge: Harvard Program on Negotiation.

• If the parties are more satisfied, their relationship benefits, and the dispute is less likely to recur. 14

Burton, J. (1994) Conflict Analysis: Its Past and Its Future: Changing Assumptions and their Implication.

• Interest-based systems have evolved...despite what appears to be, at least at the level of personal relations, an inherent human preference for collaborative social relationships from which personal security and identity, and enjoyable relationships, are derived. 1
• Even psychologists have tended to take the view that lack of adjustment to social norms is a sign of personal maladjustment. To suggest that institutions and social norms should be adjusted to the requirements of the person is socially unacceptable as it would mean fundamental changes in systems. 3
• It was clear that right and wrong were irrelevant notions in a conflict situation. It was clear that there were exacting processes in facilitated analysis if the objective were conflict resolution and not just international relations research. 14
• Conflict resolution has come from the global society to policy making and management. Management studies could similarly extend from their specific base to the wider society. 23
• In short, conflict resolution, a breakaway from traditional disciplines, should now anticipate its own demise by being incorporated within all social sciences, including economics and law, thus altering their frames, and the policy implications of their theories. 24

Bush, R.B., and Folger, J. (1994) The Promise of Mediation: Responding to Conflict Through Empowerment and Mediation, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• …the mediation process contains within it a unique potential for transforming people-engendering moral growth-by helping them wrestle with difficult circumstances and bridge human differences, in the very midst of conflict. The transformative potential stems from mediation's capacity to generate two important effects, empowerment and recognition. In the simplest terms, empowerment means the restoration of individuals of a sense of their own value and strength and their own capacity to handle life's problems. Recognition means the evocation of in individuals of acknowledgment and empathy for the situation and problems of others. 3
• In short, many have come to feel that empowerment and recognition-the transformative dimensions of mediation-matter as much or more than settlement, and they matter not only in themselves but as expressions of a much broader shift to a new moral and social vision. As much, their importance is primary and immense. 4
• We believe that the transformative approach should be the primary approach to practice in all the contexts in which mediation is used, reversing the direction in which the mediation movement has been heading. 12
• Rethinking the problem-solving orientation starts with questioning the premise that conflicts need to be viewed as problems in the first place. A different premise would suggest that disputes can be viewed not as problems at all but as opportunities for moral growth and transformation. This different view is the transformative orientation to conflict. 81
• In the most general terms, empowerment is achieved when disputing parties experience a strengthened awareness of their own self-worth and their own ability to deal with whatever difficulties they face, regardless of external constraints. Recognition is achieved when, given some degree of empowerment, disputing parties experience an expanded willingness to acknowledge and be responsive to other parties' situations and common human qualities. 85
• Given this meaning of empowerment, it should be clear that empowerment is independent of any particular outcome of the mediation. If the party has taken the time to collect herself, examine options, deliberate, and decide on a course of action, empowerment has occurred regardless of the outcome. 87
• The party has gained increased strength of self from the process of self awareness and self-determination enacted in the mediation session. 88-9
• Solving problems for parties is not transformative mediation, because it fails to empower and perhaps even disempowers the parties. It is the concrete steps towards strengthening the self within the session that constitute empowerment, not the nature of the outcome or solution. 88
• …drawing from their experience in transformative mediation itself, parties may carry over into other situations more ability to be clear about their goals and objectives; more confidence that their interests matter and deserve consideration; more awareness that they have options and choices about how to achieve those goals; enhanced conflict resolution, including a better ability to identify the resources they possess to achieve their goals, within external constraints; and a greater ability to make deliberate and conscious decisions about the choices they identify. 88
• Empowerment, as an objective and an effect of mediation, can extend beyond the immediate case to the parties' ongoing activities. 89
• …empowerment is an objective that can be achieved in all cases; recognition, on the other hand, can only be attained when parties willingly give it-either in response to a mediator's efforts or spontaneously. 94
• …in terms of the objectives of transformative mediation, a mediation is successful (1) if the parties have been aware of the opportunities presented during the mediation for both empowerment and recognition; (2) if the parties have been helped to clarify goals, options, and resources, and then to make informed, deliberate, and free choices regarding how to proceed at every decision point; and (3) if the parties have been helped to give recognition wherever it was their decision to do so. 95
• Successful mediation will bring out the intrinsic strength and goodness that lie within the parties as human beings, to the fullest extent possible. 95
• The hallmark of recognition is letting go - however briefly or partially - of one's focus on self and becoming interested in the perspective of the other party as such, concerned about the situation of the other as a fellow human being, not as an instrument for fulfilling one's own needs. The experience of interdependence, in fact, is a key part of problem-solving mediation. It is not the same as the recognition objective of transformative mediation. p.97
• Transformation is so valuable, because of both the great goodness of the human conduct that results and the great moral effort that is required to produce it. 244
• Therefore, attaining the value of satisfaction is general is only possible through attaining the satisfaction of individuals, each of who defines his or her own good. This is precisely why satisfying individuals has importance. When each person has attained some self-defined good, without preventing other individuals from doing the same-ideally, when all individuals can do this at once-it can be said that life's potential for bringing fulfillment has been realized, even though it has never been defined commonly. 235
• …social institutions must operate not just to allow but to help individuals strengthen themselves and show concern for each other-to enact and integrate their highest capacities rather than their lowest. 244
• The transformative orientation sees conflicts themselves as opportunities, for individuals who are by nature both self-interested and responsive to others, to develop and integrate their capacities for both strength of self and concern for others. Conflict is an opportunity to transform human consciousness and conduct to the highest level of compassionate strength. 249
• The view of conflict resolution as social institution here is also relational, seeing it as not simply protective o facilitative but as educative, encouraging and helping individuals to integrate and enact their highest potential as human beings. 249
• The transformative approach to mediation that grows out of this orientation focuses on empowerment and recognition, both as objectives and as methods of mediation, in order to help parties achieve increased strength of self and responsiveness to one another, however the immediate "problem" is solved. 249
• In a paradigm shift, social institutions not only reflect the shift, they also provide momentum to carry it forward. As the shift begins, new social forms and structures are inspired and legitimized. 258
• In effect, by their choice between the problem-solving and transformative approaches, people in the mediation movement are deciding whether mediation will remain one more institution in an individualist society or become a foundational part of a different relational society that is not a utopian dream but a gradually emerging reality. 259
• The path toward the transformative approach to mediation is also the path toward a social reality founded on a new, relational vision of human life, a vision that offers a way of transcending old dichotomies and opening new possibilities for human consciousness and interaction. 259

Rubin, J. (1994) "Models of Conflict Management", Journal of Social Issues, vol. 50, no 1, pp.33-45.

• Negotiation only takes place under conditions of interdependence. 34
• …the mutual gains approach argues for the possibility of solutions that all sides find acceptable. 36
• To misrepresent what I need, want, or am willing to do in a mutual gains process, however, is potentially to do myself a disservice. 38
• A mutual gains approach does make sense when the conflicting problem to be solved can best be addressed through the sharing of information and a side-by-side analysis of the issue jointly confronting the negotiators. 39
• Third parties can thus prove effective simply because, through their inclusion, they disrupt the stability of a destructive dyad, and because they make it easier for concessions to be made without loosing face. 42
• The mutual gains model instead approaches negotiation as a building process; through the information exchanged between the parties, each comes to get a better sense of the elements that must be included in an acceptable agreement.

Schwarz, R. (1994) The Skilled Facilitator: Practical Wisdom for Developing Effective Groups, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

• Group facilitation is a process in which a person who is acceptable to all members of the group, substantively neutral, and has no decision-making authority intervenes to help a group improve the way it identifies and solves problems and makes decisions, in order to increase the group’s effectiveness. 4
• Consequently, to maintain the group’s autonomy and t develop its long-term effectiveness, the facilitator’s interventions should decrease the group’s dependence on the facilitator. Ideally, the facilitator accomplishes this by intervening in a way that teaches group members the skills of facilitation. 4-5
• By definition, a group member cannot formally fill the role of facilitator. 5
• The facilitator does not intervene in the content of the group’s discussion; to do so would require the facilitator to abandon neutrally and would reduce the group’s responsibility for solving its problems. 6
• A fundamental difference between basic and developmental facilitation is the difference between doing something for a group and teaching a group how to do the same thing for itself. 7
• Unless the group has control over its process, including how it makes decision, development facilitation may be of limited use. 8
• Facilitators do not change people’s behavior. Facilitators provide information that enables people to decide whether to change their behavior. If they decide to change their behavior, the facilitator helps them learn how to change. 8
• Facilitators need a variety of skills and abilities to fill their role, including accurately listening to, observing, and remembering behavior and conversation; communicating clearly; identifying similarities and differences among statements; understanding multiple perspective; analyzing and synthesizing issues; identifying assumptions; diagnosing and intervening on effective and ineffective behavior; being a model of effective behavior; providing feedback without creating defensive reactions; accepting feedback without reacting defensively; monitoring and changing one’s own behavior while working with a group; developing the trust of clients empathizing with clients; providing support and encouragement; and having patience. This is not exhaustive. But no list can capture the complexity of the facilitator’s role. 10
• Some inexperienced facilitators may feel totally responsible for a group’s action; if the group fails, the facilitators believe they are to blame. On the other hand, other facilitators may feel that they have no responsibility for a group’s success of failure. 10-11
• Because the facilitator does not get involved in the content of decisions, the facilitator is not directly responsible for what the group decides. However, because facilitators are involved in the decision process, they are responsible for helping the group consider how is process may lead more or less effective decisions. 11
• When the group does make mistakes, the facilitator is responsible for helping the members analyze the process they used to make the decision that led to the mistake. 11
• Finally, a facilitator must respect a group’s free and informed choice to use an ineffective group process that may lead to poor content decisions. For many facilitators, this is the hardest test of whether they will enable their groups to make free and informed choices. Yet it may also be the most important test. If, by trying to help a group avoid poor process, the facilitator prevents the group from making its own choice, the facilitator acts inconsistently with the core value. Ultimately, this reduces the credibility of the facilitator. Also, this may suggest incorrectly to clients that the core values can be ignored when they seem inconvenient. 12
• "Mediation is the intervention into dispute or negotiation by an acceptable, impartial, and neutral third party who has no authoritative decision-making power to assist disputing parties in voluntarily reaching their own mutually acceptable settlement of issues in dispute" (Moore, 1986, p. 14). 12
• Facilitators and mediation are similar in that both interventions by a neutral third party who is acceptable to the clients and who has no decision-making authority. Both seek to help groups reach decisions that are acceptable techniques, but they apply them in different situations and sometimes to accomplish different objectives. 12
• Objectives. Facilitation and mediation have different objectives. The objective of mediation is to help the parties negotiate a settlement to a particular conflict. 13
• The objective of facilitation, on the other hand, is to help a group improve its process for solving problems and making decisions so that it can achieve its goals and increase its overall effectiveness. 13
• Entering into the process. Because mediators help parties resolve their conflicts, the parties typically seek a mediator after they reach impasse—that is, when they believe they can progress no further. 13
• Controlling the process. Facilitators and mediators help group by influencing the process that they use to work with one another. Yet, mediators exert greater control over the process than facilitators do. 13
• Another difference between facilitators and mediators is that a facilitator works in the presence of the entire group, whereas the mediator may work with the parties together as well as separately. 13
• Mediate comes from a word meaning “to come between”—in this context, to come between group members. Facilitate comes from a word meaning “to make easy”—in this context, to make it easy for the group to be effective. 13-14
• However, in some situations it is reasonable for the facilitator to temporarily play the role of mediator—to come between the different parties that constitute the group. 14
• A facilitator may also reasonably act as a mediator when one or more members of the group want to raise an issue in the larger group but do not know how to do it. 14
• Collusion is inconsistent with the facilitator’s role, because it requires the facilitator to withhold valid information and consequently prevents free and informed choice for certain group members, and it places the interests of some group members above the interests of the group as a whole. 15
• It is a myth that facilitators can always be neutral about the substance or content of a group’s discussions while being partial about what constitutes effective group process. 17
• …because facilitator is not neutral about the content of group’s discussion when it involves how to manage group or interpersonal process more effectively. 18
• Group facilitation is the process by which a person who is acceptable to all members of the group, substantively neutral, and has no decision-making authority intervenes to help a group improve the ways it identifies and solves problems and makes decisions, in order to increase the group’s effectiveness. 18
• To help groups become more effective, facilitators must understand the elements that contribute to group effectiveness and how those elements interact. Te knowledge enables facilitators to determine how members’ behaviors and others contribute to and detract from group effectiveness and to recognize the limits of group facilitation. 19-20
• Effective groups consider conflict a natural part of group life tat, when managed well, improves members’ ability to accomplish their tasks, work together, and contribute to their personal growth. They use conflict to increase their understanding of each other, share previously hidden thoughts and feelings, and openly test differences of opinion. 24
• When members change the patterns of interactions, they change the structure. Because structure develops from group process, the distinction between the two is come what arbitrary. 29
• Effective Group Culture. Group culture is the values and beliefs that members of a group share and that guide their behavior. Beliefs are assumptions about what is true. 31
• Group Norms. Norms are expectations about how people should or should not behave that all or many group members share. 32
• Understanding the organizational context helps facilitators identify how the larger organization is likely to help or hinder a group’s efforts to improve its effectiveness. It also helps identify the extent to which facilitation alone can help a group. 33
• Organizational culture refers to the set of values and beliefs that employees of an organization generally share and that guide their behavior. 34
• Group facilitators intervene largely on process to help groups improve their process, structure, and organizational context. Therefore, facilitation can directly improve the group’ effectiveness to the extent that the group has the direct authority to change the character of the elements that make up these factors. 38
• When the group’s problems are caused in part by elements of factors that the group does not control, group facilitation can help identify the problems but cannot solve them. In this situation, other ways of changing the problems but cannot solve them. In this situation, other ways of changing the problematic factors are needed, including joint facilitation of the group that controls the problematic elements and the affected group. For this reason, the potential power of group facilitation increases as groups move from being manager-led to being self-governing, thereby increasing the range of issues over which they can make free and informed choices and be internally committed. 40

Fisher, R., and Ertel, D. (1995) Getting Ready to Negotiate: The Getting to Yes Workbook, Penguin Books.

• All negotiators have interests. These are the needs, desires, and fears that drive our negotiations. Interests are different fro positions: those assertions, demands, and offers that parties make during a negotiation. 21

• A possible agreement that would meet only our interest is useless if it doesn’t also meet the other side’s interests as well enough so that they are willing to accept it. 22
• Out of diversity—of perspectives, resources, or interests—come the opportunity to create value. Negotiation is not about papering over differences or persuading others to want what we want. It is about recognizing how those differences can help make each of us better off than we would have been without a deal. 33
• 1. A focus on what you want, without regard for the interests of other side, will leave you unprepared to respond constructively to their ideas and concepts. 2. A single position, even with some fallbacks, will leave you unprepared to engage in real problem-solving with the other side or to consider a broad and rich universe of possible solutions. 34
• …if you prepare to minimize differences or acquiesce for the sake of the relationship…you are preparing to leave value on the table. It leads to “least common denominator” solutions. 34
• Classifying the interest by how important they are to each of you serves as a guide for how to proceed to expand the pie before dividing it. 35
• In a negotiation, anything that you value highly and the other negotiator does not represents an opportunity to create value. 36
• Often large institutions are better equipped to handle it [risk] than individuals. 36
• For some, “what other people will think” is more relevant than what actually happened; for others, the opinions of third parties are the unwanted interventions of busybodies. 36
• Differences in the marginal value to each party of some of the goods under negotiation can thus create opportunities to improve the overall value they each receive. 37
• Not every negotiation concludes with an agreement. Nor should it. There are times when you can do better by talking away, because the costs of the proposed agreement exceed its benefits or because someone else is in a position to offer you a better deal. 45

Lowry, K., Adler, P., and Milner N. (1997) "Participating the Public: Group Process, Politics, and Planning," Journal of Planning Education Research, No. 16, pp. 177-187.

• Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which mandated the formation of community action programs to oversee community level antipoverty efforts. Each community action program had to be “developed, reduced and administered with the maximum feasible participation of the residents of the area and members of the groups to be served” [Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, PL88-452, title II). 177
• Facilitated group process in planning contexts have some common features:

A facilitator who is primarily responsible for maintaining the meeting process;

A recorder who maintains a “group memory” of individual participant comments displayed in front of the group.

An explicit purpose for the meeting,

A meeting agenda that reflects the purpose of the meeting and is acceptable to the group, and

A set of ground rules designed to keep the group focused on the agenda, to clarify roles and responsibilities of meeting participants, and to minimize intragroup conflict and keep the process flowing efficiently. 178

• In a partnership process, significant authority s delegated to a group of people who represent different community interests to develop public policy in a particular area. 180
• This process of persuading agencies of the need for facilitation services has often occurred after groups offering such services heard of a planning process in which facilitation services might usefully be included—after a significant amount of planning has already occurred. This use of facilitation in less than optimal circumstances has been justified on the grounds that public agencies need to see what a difference facilitated meetings can make before they can be persuaded to incorporate them more systematically in their planning efforts. 181
• Some public agency personnel are reluctant to engage in a participation process that may involve relinquishing or compromising their control over the outcome of significant portions of a plan. 181
• Determining what is policy-relevant in a community participation program is frequently a subtle process that occurs in the development of meeting agendas, but is also apparent in the interaction among participants. The agendas and the dynamics of most facilitated meetings encourage problem-solving: how should the law be changed? 182
• Multiple devices for establishing such priorities are used: participants may vote on their top choices; they may be given an imaginary of money and asked how they would allocate such a sum among items on a list; or groups may be asked if there are items about which there is consensus. 184
• Those of us involved in constructing and administering group processes lack agree-upon ethical guidelines to guide that practice. Greater attentiveness to the overt and tacit politics of group processes is an important step in creating norms of good practice to guide those of us working in this field. If facilitated group process are to be regarded as fair and credible, and if we hope to broaden the currency of informal processed, such norms must be articulated, debated, and applied. 186

Ellinor, L., and Gerard, G. (1998) Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation, Wily and Sons.

• When there is a strong push for a conclusion or to find one solution, people tend toward discussion. When there is no push for a conclusion or solution, people fins it safer to offer differing views without any need to justify “rightness,” and it will have more of a dialogic flavor. 21
• Dialogue encourages and opening up about problems, issues, or topics. Because it expands what is being communicated by opening up many different perspectives, we call it divergent conversation. 22
• Discussion converges on one point versus dialogues opening to different points. 23
• Whether you meet to dialogue about a problem or about trying to come up with a new way of doing things to make improvements, you may notice a strong tendency to fall back into discussion or to converge on one solution. 25
• In dialogue, we use inquiry for the purpose of digging deeper into whatever we are talking about. We use it to ask about one another’s assumptions and underlying thinking. We use it to clarify and expand what we know about something. Again, our intention in inquiring is to learn more. 25
• …just as two conversations are ever the same even between the same people, no two dialogues are ever the same in the same way. Each time dialogue is practiced, groups invent what works best for them. 26
• Some of the contexts in which dialogue is being explored and practiced are inter-religious groups, conflict resolution and mediation work, educational and public domain work, and therapeutic and small-group settings. 27
• What all of these diverse forms of dialogue seem to share is the intention to promote learning, growth, understanding, healing, and renewal of those engaging in it. 27
• “ I think therefore I am” (Descartes). 98
• “I have been listened to therefore I am” (Anonymous). 98
• Listening is the doorway through which we allow the world to enter. How we listen, to what and to whom we listen, and the assumptions we listen through all frame our perception of reality. Listening may be the single most powerful creative act we perform; we listen and create reality based on what we hear in each moment. 98-9
• Without the ability to listen, collaborative partnership cannot be born or sustained. Listening is an absolute necessity for the health of any whole, be it a work group, an organization, a family or a community. 99
• Listening to another person is a powerful act. It is an act of respect, of valuing. Conversely, not listening is often experienced as disrespect. 100
• Listening without defensiveness, that is, listening from a stance of a willingness to be influenced by what is said. It does not involve any requirement that one actually evidence this willingness by being influenced. Rather, one enters the dialogue with a receptiveness to being influenced and changes only if that receptiveness leads one to willingly change. This requires temporarily letting go of attachments both for and against your own and other’s positions. 104-5
• Many problems or dysfunctions stem from operating out of assumption that parts, people, or departments are separate and unrelated. We may be diverse and distinct, but we are also interrelated. 107
• Inquiry and reflection combined help us dig deeper into whatever important issues concern us, to see new patterns and ways of proceeding. 112
• We speak to the role of inquiry and reflection in fostering collective intelligence and learning and the importance of silence. 112
• "A symphony between notes…" (Glenna Gerard).

Carlson, C. (1999) "Convening," in Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas Larmer, The Consensus Building Handbook, Thousand Oaks: CA: Sage, pp. 169-197.

• However, when the federal agency tried to convene local groups and get them to form partnerships, it failed. 173

• One probable reason for failure was that the agency’s attempts were made unilaterally, without consulting local stakeholders about what should be discussed and what it would take to make the discussions “safe” for participants, among other things. 173
• Consensus building takes time and financial resources and should not be undertaken unless the convenor is legitimately seeking and comfortable with supporting a broad-based agreement. 176
• Consensus building is more likely to succeed if there is general dissatisfaction with the existing situation than if some stakeholders are benefiting from the status quo. 177
• A bedrock principle of consensus-based processes, therefore, is that everyone with a stake in the decision should be represented at the table. This principle helps to ensure that any consensus agreement reached will be seen as legitimate by all relevant parties and have broad support when implemented. 185
• An interest-based approach to negotiation and the use of consensus decision- making are new concepts for many people. Learning how these approached work will help participants function more effectively and shorten the time it takes to achieve results. 185
• An interest-based approach to negotiation and the use of consensus decision- making are new concepts for many people. Learning how these approaches work will help participants function more effectively and shorten the time it takes to achieve results. 191
• Convening a consensus building process may require ways of communicating with a wider public beyond those who can be directly involved to make sure that an agreement will be supported by the constituencies of those around the table. It may mean building partnerships with the media or others to achieve broad dissemination of information and to solicit the views of the public. 192
• Because public mistrust in government are sometimes viewed by the public as a form of co-operation, especially when the issues have already been framed by government, and the participants and neutral are selected by government agency. 195

Ehrmann, J., and Stinson, B. (1999) " Joint Fact-Finding and the Use of the Technical Experts," in Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas Larmer, The Consensus Building Handbook, Thousand Oaks: CA: Sage, pp. 375-399.

• It extends the interest-based, cooperative efforts of parties engaged in consensus building into the realm of information gathering and scientific analysis. In joint fact-finding, stakeholders with differing viewpoints and interests work together to develop data and information, analyze facts and forecasts, develop common assumptions and informed opinion, and finally, use the information they have developed to reach decisions together. 376
• Joint fact-finding in a consensus process assumes that parties with conflicting interests will interpret technical analysis, the questions that he experts ought to ask, the best process fro gathering information and answering questions, the limitations of the various analytical methods that will be used, ad the best way of proceeding once a scientific or technical analysis is completed. 377
• Finally, collaborative process incorporating joint fact-finding are more likely to reach consensus than might otherwise be the case. 379
• Parties working together…investing their ideas, time, and resources into joint seeking good information, become devoted to reaching a mutually agreeable outcome and explaining that outcome to their constituencies and the public. 380
• Joint fact-finding enables individuals with differing interests to work together toward a shared goal. This process fosters trust, enhances communication, and builds understanding—all of which make for a more productive consensus building process. 380
• Because university—based scientists are presumed to be working in the public interest while private consulates are presumed, often unfairly, to be motivated by profit. 388
• In a joint fact-finding process, participants must determine (1) the issues of concern that require further information, (2) a process for gathering information and answering key questions, (3) the questions to be asked and the methods to be used, and (5) the best ways of proceeding once new information is available. 391

Elliott, M. (1999) "The Role of Facilitators, Mediators, and other Consensus Building Practitioners," in Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas Larmer (eds.) The Consensus Building Handbook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 199-239.

• Conflicts grow out of diverse values, perceptions, and interests that exist within a community or organization. 199
• Experienced practitioners help stakeholders to build consensus by identifying existing barriers to effective negotiation and communication, assessing the structure and extent of a dispute, designing ad implementing dispute resolution processes, and helping parties to develop options and reach consensus. 200
• By conducting their dialogues in an open and inclusive manner, and by searching for agreements that speak to all the interests involved. 202
• Communities often enter into consensus processes indirectly, only after trying more conventional approached to resolving conflicts Stakeholders may be skeptical that consensus is even possible, because relationships among them are often strained and the issues are typically complex. 203
• Consensus building practitioners, then, typically fulfill four fundamental functions I a collaborative process: convening, facilitation, mediation, and dispute systems design. These activities may be conducted by a single person to team, so that the person who performs the convening tasks also facilitates the meetings, mediates the disputes, and, if needed, designs systems for resolving future disputes. Or different individuals may perform each function. 205
• They may also work with disputants to identify parties with a stake, design an appropriate decision-making process, ensure appropriate representation of the stakeholders, build the capacity of parties to engage in meaningful negotiations, facilitate more effective communication, and the initiate the process. 206
• Facilitation is the impartial management of meetings designed to enable participation to focus on substantive issues and goals. Facilitators develop an agenda for each meeting, enforce ground rules of conduct, promote interaction and communication during meetings, and bring issues to closure. 206
• Participants who feel empowered to contribute ideas and influence the outcome of a process, and who perceive a facilitator to be evenhanded and neutral, generally become more committed to the collaborative effort, developing leadership within the group and a respect for their follow negotiators. 208
• Mediation is the intervention b an impartial party into a negotiation or dispute. It is designed to help the disputing parties resolve their differences in a voluntary and mutually acceptable manner. 208
• Like a facilitator a mediator must remain neutral concerning the content of a group’s work and has little or no decision-making authority within a group. 209
• …because mediation seeks to enhance negotiations, a mediator works explicitly to manage not just the interactions that occur within meetings but also the dynamics that occur outside meetings. As a consequence of this deeper involvement in negotiations among disputing parties, the effectiveness of a mediator depends even more on legitimacy and trust than does the effectiveness of a facilitator. 209
• The consensus building practitioner does not seek to change the values and interests held by the participants, but rather to clarify them and to assist participants in reexamining how their values and interests might be best met. 213
• Progress is usually not built on efforts to conform all participants to a single, shared sense of the nature of the dispute and its characteristics, but rather by building options that meet each participant’s interests and values. 213
• To reveal core perceptions, practitioners use techniques such as joint fact-finding, structures data queries that help expose differences assumptions, and storytelling. 213
• When most successful, consensus building promotes social learning, whereby a community not only resolves an immediate conflict but also learns how to better manage disputes in the future. 214
• Consensus building is fundamentally a communicative act, and consensus is frequently built on efforts to improve communications. 214
• Facilitators also structure communication within a meeting, by encouraging brainstorming when ideas need to be generated but not when negotiating the final details of an agreement. 214
• Power, built on unequal control over resources, authority, expertise, or position, can fundamentally alter the capacity of disputants to work together. Power-based disputes involve the use of force, explicit or implies, to gain acquiescence by opposing groups, against the will of those groups. 214
• Group may also come together not only to seek agreement on an immediate problem but also to build community out of conflictual relationships and solve the underlying causes of conflict. These groups are involved in the fundamental work of relationship building ad community problem solving. 217
• …such processes transform the relationships and problem-solving abilities of the participants, such that they are better able to resolve future differences in a productive manner. 218
• Trust and confidence are essential, because effective intervention frequently requires the confidential exchange of information and ideas, and because a practitioner must often probe, test, and challenge parties in their efforts to make sense of a conflict and its resolution. 219
• Accountability implies standards of professional practice, standards that the parties accept and to which the practitioner is willing to commit. 218
• Practitioners may, rather, promote the legitimacy of a process by taking specific steps to ensure the presentation and effective participation of key stakeholders, refrain from advocating for any particular perspective on substantive issues,, protect the confidentiality of all private communications with participants, clarify how decisions will be made and by whom within the process, and structure and implement a process that is accountable and fair.
• To be effective, a practitioner must understand the concerns and interests of stakeholders. 219
• With this knowledge, a practitioner can determine how best to promote negotiations and collaborative problem solving, as well as identify strategies for helping stakeholders explore their own interests, understandings, and perspectives. 220
• A practitioner must ensure that the issues presented for discussion deal effectively with the interests and goals of participants. 220
• During a negotiation, issues of personality, precedent, positions, power, and pride can have profound effects. A mediator who understands these potential interrelationships will be better prepared to design process that compensate for these difficulties and to respond more proactively to the dynamics of a negotiation process. 225
• The power of negotiation to fashion wise and sustainable solutions grows out of its ability to bring divergent interests and perspectives into commonality. 225
• Stakeholders include groups and individuals who may be effected by the outcome of the process, who can scuttle and agreement whether or not they participate, or who can block implementation of an agreement. 226
• Practitioners…seek to identify the full range of interests and viewpoints that exist in a community or organization and ensure that appropriate groups represent those interests. 227
• The process emerges from the context, practitioners focus on concerns of substance and relationship to help define how a process should be structures, what issues should be dealt with and when, and what interventions are likely to e of greatest import. 229
• They serve at the pleasure of the parties, place a high value on both neutrality and impartiality, and work to help parties fashion a consensus solution to their own problem. 231
• Professional facilitators and mediators are often able to identify existing barriers to negotiation and effective communication and to develop process that enable a dispute to be resolved. 233
• To maintain legitimacy, mediators must work to keep a process transparent and accessible to participants. 233
• Ideally, the participants in a process will select their own mediators. 237
• Practitioners can be interviewed by a group, which provides a more realistic setting within which to evaluate their skills and sensitivities. The committee generally selects the practitioner based on a consensus decision of the group, thereby building up a pattern of agreement between the disputing parties. 237
• Techniques used by consensus building practitioners allow for an understanding of the issues at conflict, a clear identification of the underlying interests, improved communication. 238
• As the trend toward participatory management and policy development continues to grow, these techniques are likely to become even more integral to decision making. 238

Innes, J., and Booher, D. (1999) "Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems: A Framework for Evaluating Collaborative Planning, APA Journal, Vol. 65, No. 4, pp. 412-423.

• "Our theories determine what we measure" (Albert Einstein, quoted in Senge, 1990, p. 175).
• Because there has been limited systematic assessment of consensus building techniques, even the most experienced practitioners build consensus intuitively, like craftsman. Neither planning professionals nor the academics community has a clear idea of what they should expect from consensus building. 413
• These agreements can be more durable and implementable because, having taken more interests into account, they are less likely to produce unhappy stakeholders who might sabotage implementation. 414
• The quality of these agreements can also be high because they take into account the unique knowledge offered by each stakeholder, not only about their interests, but also about aspects of the problem they understand better than anyone else. 414
• Tangible products can be easily pointed to and recognized. These include formal agreements, sometimes in the form of policies and sometimes as legislation, new regulations, or proposals for voters or public officials to consider. In the cases we studied, groups wrote and passed ballot measures, created strategies for habitat conservation that became the basis of state and federal law, and agreed on water conservation plans. 414
• Tangible products also include second and third order effects—activities triggered by the consensus building process. 414
• Sometimes tangible products are innovations—strategies, actions, and ideas that are new to the context and which break a stalemate or change the direction of policy. 414
• In every process we observed, participant contended that they established new or stronger personal and professional relationships and built up trust, which allowed genuine communication and joint problem solving. With this social capital they felt less hostile to others “views, were more likely to share knowledge, and were likely to negotiate other potentially conflicting issues. In most cases, stakeholders also built shared intellectual capitals, including mutual understanding of each others’ interests, shared definitions of the problem, and agreement on data, models, projections, or other quantitative or scientific descriptions of the issues. Once participants internalize such knowledge, it influences them even more powerfully, helps to coordinate action, and reduces areas of conflict. 414-5
• Finally, stakeholders develop political capital and begin to work together outside the consensus building process to influence public action in ways they were unable to when acting individually. 415
• Learning and change can be the most far-reaching effects of consensus building. Often what has been called “single loop learning” occurs. 415
• In this process, individual participants may discover ways to accommodate others’ interests without damaging their own. They may learn how all participants’ interests are interconnected and come to see the problem as a joint one in which each has a stake. They may even change their understanding of their confrontational tactics, and in the future they may seek out dialogue rather than bringing lawsuits or creating opposing legislative proposals. 415
• Even a process without any agreement may be a success if participants have learned the problem, about each others’ interests, and about what may be possible. 415
• Processes and outcomes cannot be neatly separated in consensus building because the process matters in and of itself, and because the process and outcome are likely to be tied together. No matter how good an agreement is by some standards, if it was reached by a process that was not regarded as fair, open, inclusive, accountable, or otherwise legitimate, it is unlikely to receive support. 415
• Consensus building stands or falls instead on the acceptability of its process. It needs to produce good answers through good processes. A process which ignored a vulnerable interest, failed to take into account important facts, or did not challenge unnecessary constraints, would not only lack credibility, it would probably not produce a particularly good solution. For example, a regional transit planning effort that did not include representation of the inner-city poor produced a plan that failed to provide them access to suburban jobs and cutback on night service essential to employment of many inner-city residents. 416
• Even stakeholders who have not achieved their goals may support a agreement because they believe their voices were heard and their interests incorporated as much as possible. 416
• Typically it is adaptive and evolving, often with spin-off working groups and other self-organizing activities. 416
• Moreover, one cannot clearly differentiate between the process and context, because consensus building is mutually interactive with its environmental groups participated simultaneously in consensus building is mutually interactive with its environment. 416
• These ideas suggest that the most important contribution of consensus building in the long run will be in helping communities and organizations move to higher levels of performance and creativity in a constantly changing world. 416
• Fundamental to this view is the belief that, with adequate theory, accurate observations, and appropriate inputs, we can control how a system behaves. 416
• Today it has become all too obvious that interventions seldom work as intended. The machine metaphor dos not accurately describe the social world, much less consensus building. Machines can be duplicated. They react in predictable ways, and their tendency over time is to lose whatever whatever energy is applied to them. 416
• The processes and the shakeholders evolve continuously and unpredictably; and they interest with and change their environments while they are at work. They may gather energy rather than lose it as they move forward. A complexity theory view of the world fits these characteristics far better than a mechanistic view. 417
• For dialogue to produce emancipatory knowledge, the stakeholders must be equally informed, listened to, and respected, and none can be accorded more power than others to speak or make decisions. 418
• For example, a complexity perspective suggests that a high quality consensus building process in an uncertain and changing society should be self-organizing and evolving, good at gathering information from the environment, and effective at making connections among participants. Consensus building should help a community to learn and be creative. To do this it must challenge accepted knowledge. It must experiment, take risks, and make mistakes from which it learns. It must engage and empower all those with interests and relevant knowledge. It must ensure that information is shared and trusted by all, not only for fairness and to assure information is high quality and relevant, but also so that individuals can act on it. It must build trust, along with understanding of the shared context. It should produce change, including second and third order effects. A complex adaptive system depends on each individual being empowered to act autonomously and in an informed way, so that manipulation of any participants or suppression of their views can only make s system less intelligent. 418
• While it may not be possible for a process to fully meet all the criteria, failure to meet any one of them hinders the effectiveness of them hinders the effectiveness of the process and the quality of its outcomes. 419
• Outcome Criteria: Products a high-quality agreement. Ends stalemate. Compares favorably with other planning methods in terms of costs and benefits. Produces creative ideas. Results in learning and changes in and beyond the group. Creates social and political capital. Produces information that stakeholders understand and accept. Sets in motion a cascade of changes in attitudes, behaviors and actions, spinoff partnerships and new practices or institutions. Results in institutions and practices that are flexible and networked, permitting the community. 419
• A process that involves all stakeholders, including those with little power, is likely to produce a just outcome. If it does not, some interests has either been ill informed or excluded. 420
• Efforts to ensure that all interests are considered and that all interests are met in an overall plan also means that the results are likely to benefit the community as a whole. The solutions produced by consensus building processes are likely to be sustainable because both environmental and economic interests must be satisfied, because the process so fully explored options and the consequences of actions, and ultimately because it builds the capacity of key players to help the system to adapt creatively to change. 420
• A few others studies have used multiple data gathering methods to overcome the limitations of relying on only one source. What is mostly missing from the evaluation is an assessment of the long-term effects, whose importance is just beginning to be evident. 420
• It is also valuable from a societal perspective because it links the distributed intelligence of many players so they can from a more coherent and respective planning system which mirrors the network, evolving social context. 421
• Consensus building has emerged in contemporary times because of its potential to bring about this transformation in the context of a networked society. Indeed, consensus building may be a fractal of the larger phenomenon of collaborative planning, a smaller scale phenomenon of collaborative planning, a smaller scale version of the same structure with similar patterns, mechanisms, and interactive principles. If it is true, understanding the dynamics of consensus building may lead to insight about how to facilitate more adaptive and successful collaborative planning throughout society. 421

Ozawa, C. (1999) "Making the Best Use of the Technology,” in Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas Larmer (eds.) The Consensus Building Handbook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 401-434.

• As supplement to face-to face meetings, computer-based communication modes are increasingly being used in consensus processes, particularly in federal agency- sponsored efforts. 402
• The web and e-mail can be used to assist convenors and facilitators with four discrete functions with four discrete relating to information dissemination: (1) notifying the public of an upcoming consensus building process and seeking out appropriate participants during convening, (2) distributing materials to participants during a process, (3) enabling participants in a consensus process to share information with their constituents, and (4) keeping the public informed about the progress of a consensus building process. 405
• But computer technologies will achieve the goals of public notification and materials dissemination only to the extent that the public is connected to cyberspace. 408
• The heart of consensus building is discussion, debate, and deliberation. Face-to-face interaction is often essential for achieving consensus, especially in situations in which trust among the participants is low. 410
• The balance between face-to-face meetings and internet-mediated discussions has implications for prejudicing a process in favor of writers over speakers, or vice versa. While providing opportunities for participants to express their views in a multiplicity of media is desirable to maximize information exchange among participants, the notion of “equal floor time” takes on new complexity. 416
• Participants who are focusing on the screen are not following the facial expressions, hand gestures, or other body language of the speakers. 416
• This spatially based system allows discrete data, such as census data, to be loaded into a computer, manipulated, and displayed in map form. The visual display of information is often a powerful tool for helping parties reach consensus in certain types of disputes, such as those involving land use. GIS technology allows for the easy creation of overlays in the same way that Mylar maps displaying different sorts of data were once used. 422
• While municipalities, regional public service providers, and state governments are continually expanding these databases, as in any analysis, the results are only as sound as the original data. 422
• Therefore, applications of these computer technologies must be accompanied by discussions of the quality of data and other model parameters that are embedded within the powerful, graphic display of information provided through GIS. Otherwise, participants in a consensus building process may be misled by an erroneous visual image, unnecessarily adding obstacles to the development of a sound consensus. 423
• Intrigued by the possibilities of modifying negotiation software programs for use in consensus building efforts, and the outlook for expanded applications as these tools are further developed and adapted is promising. 425
• To achieve clarity and ultimately to signify a level of mutual understanding. 425
• And computer technologies are not a panacea for the difficult challenge of bringing all potentially affected parties into a discussion. 430

Susskind, L. (1999) "An Alternative to Robert's Rule of Order for Groups, Organizations, and Ad Hoc Assembles that Want to Operate by Consensus,” in Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas Larmer (eds.) The Consensus Building Handbook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 3-57.

• Consensus has been reached when everyone agrees they can live with whatever is proposed after effort has been made to meet the interests of all stakeholding parties. 6
• Participants in a consensus building process have both the right to expect that no one will ask them to undermine their interests and the responsibility to propose solutions that will meet everyone else’s interests as well as their own. 6
• Most consensus building efforts set out to achieve unanimity. Along the way, however, there are sometimes holdouts: people who believe that their interests are better served by remaining. 6
• The mediator may be called on to monitor implementation of an agreement and reassemble the parties to review progress or deal with perceived violations or a failure to live up to commitments. 9
• Facilitation and mediation are often used interchangeably. We think the key distinction is that facilitators work mostly with parties once they are at the table, while mediators work mostly with parties once they are at the table, while mediators do that as well as handle the negotiation and post-negotiation tasks described above. 9
• …some facilitators do not necessarily strive for agreement as mediators always do, but rather seek to ensure productive deliberation. 9
• Ongoing visual representation of what the group has discussed and agreed. Unlike formal minutes of meeting, this “group memory” may use drawings, illustrations, maps, or other icons to help recall what they have discussed. 9
• After interviewing a wide range of stakeholders, a neutral party will suggest whether or not it makes sense to go forward with a consensus building process and, if so, how the process ought to be structured. 11
• Stakeholders are persons or groups likely to be affected by (or who they think they will be affected by) a decision - whether it is their decision or not. 12-3
• Some stakeholders may be involved in a core negotiating team, others may have their interests represented in that team, and still others may choose to observe the process from the sidelines. 13
• Every consensus building effort needs to be initiated by someone or some group in a position to bring the key stakeholders together. 20
• If key stakeholding groups refuse to participate, the process should probably not go forward. 22
• If the participants in a consensus building process decide that it is important to find a way to present a hard-to-represent or diffuse group, they may decide to invite proxy individuals or organizations to preset those interests. 23
• To assist the parties in a consensus building effort, it is important to select an appropriate individual who is acceptable to all the key stakeholders. 24
• A qualified recorder, if one is to be hired, must work in tandem with a facilitator or a mediator. 24
• The recorder captures a group discussion on flip charts and works with any other neutrals involved to produce draft meeting summaries. 24
• Some consensus building process will proceed on a confidential basis, depending on the content of the discussions. 25
• Most group rules for consensus building cover a range of topics including (a) the rights and responsibilities of participants (b) behavioral guidelines that participants will be expected to follow (c)rules governing interaction with the media, (d)decision-making procedures, and (e)strategies for handling disagreement and ensuring implementation of an agreement if one is reached. 26
• Once a consensus building process is under way, some groups or individuals eligible to participate may decide not to attend on a regular basis, or not to participate at all. These individuals, as well as any other interested but nonparticipating stakeholders, should be added to a mailing list so that they can receive either period progress reports or regular meeting summaries. 27
• That is, the group’s mandate, its agenda and ground rules, the list of participants and the groups or interests they are representing, the proposals they are considering, the decision rules they have adopted, their finances, and their final report should, at an appropriate time, be open to scrutiny by anyone affected by the group’s recommendations. 28
• The goals of a consensus building process ought to be to create as much value as possible and to ensure that whatever value is created be divided in ways that take account of all relevant considerations. 28
• An agreement on joint fact-finding should specify (a) what information is sought, (b) how it should be generated (c) how gaps or disagreements among technical sources will be handled. 29
• During the course of a concerns arise it may be desirable to add new participants. With the concurrence of the group, representatives of new stakeholding groups—attracted or recruited because of the emerging agreement of shifts in the agenda. 32
• This is best done in a form that is visually accessible to all participants throughout the process. 33
• Negotiated agreements must often be monitored to ensure effective implementation. Responsibilities and methods for overseeing implementation should be specified in the written report of any consensus building group. 35
• Every consensus building effort needs to be initiated by someone or some group in a position or some group in a position to bring the key stakeholders together. 36
• A draft conflict assessment ought to include a clear categorization of all the relevant stakeholders, a summary of the interests and concerns of each category, and –given the results of the interviews—a proposal as to whether or not the assessor thinks it is worth going toward with a consensus building process. 37
• Every interviewee ought to receive a copy of draft conflict assessment and be given adequate time to offer comments and suggestions. 37
• A draft conflict assessment ought to include a clear categorization of all the relevant stakeholders, a summary of the interests and concerns of each category, and –given the results of the interviews—a proposal as to whether or not the assessor thinkers it is worth going forward with a consensus building process. 37
• Every interviewee ought to receive a copy of the draft conflict assessment and be given adequate time to offer comments and suggestions. 37
• Everyone in attendance ought to review the makeup of the group and try to identify missing actors whose absence would be likely to affect the credibility of a consensus building process. 38
• If a consensus building process is likely to expend over several months or years, participants may decide to appoint alternates to stand in for them on occasion. 39
• When relationships have eroded, however, the use of neutral assistance should be seriously considered. 40
• Most ground rules for consensus building cover a range of topics including (a) the rights and responsibilities of participants, (b) behavioral guidelines that participants will be expected to fellow, (c) rules governing interaction with media, (d) decision-making procedures, and (e) strategies for handling disagreement and ensuring implementation of an agreement if one is reached. 42
• One of the reasons people engage in consensus building efforts is to formulate tailored solutions to whatever problem, issue, or dispute they face. It is important that the participants in these processes feel free to generate plans or solutions that fit their unique circumstance. 43
• Initial drafting responsibility may be allocated to the neutral, but ultimately all parties must take responsibility for a final report if one is produced. 51
• If a participant or an observer of a consensus building process acts in a disruptive manner, the facilitator, mediator, or chair—whoever is managing the meeting—should remind that individual of the procedural ground rule she or she signed. If that does not result in the desired change in behavior, other participants with the closest ties to the disruptive party should be asked to intercede on behalf of the group. 55
• …if those with decision-making authority are involved in a consensus building effort—or, at least, kept apprised of its progress—they may feel sufficiently comfortable with the result to enclose it. 56

Susskind, L., and Thomas-Larmer, J. (1999) "Conducting a Conflict Assessment," in Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas Larmer (eds.) The Consensus Building Handbook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 3-57.

• If a consensus building effort seems likely to succeed, the convenor must ascertain who the stakeholders are and whether or not they will agree to participate. Decisions must also be made about how to frame the issues to the costs of the process, and so on. All of these determinations must e made carefully, because the ultimate success of every consensus building process depends on these early “design” decisions. 99
• In cases in which established groups want to design a new process for dealing with particularly difficult problem or need help untangling a messy internal dispute. 102
• The greatest danger of proceeding without a conflict assessment is leaving out a key stakeholder. 105
• Another danger of proceeding without a conflict assessment is that an assessor may design a consensus building process that does not address the right issues. 105
• Most assessments are conducted by dispute resolution professionals who expect to facilitate the consensus process that follows. They may come from private or nonprofit organizations or from state offices of dispute resolution. 106
• Open-ended questions “allow interviewees to share their perception of reality…without the imposition of an alien framework of analysis” (Moore, 1986, p. 93). Most questions should be open-ended to elicit detailed responses unaffected by the assessor’s perspective, knowledge, or bias.
• In the analysis phase, the assessor must (1) summarize the findings, (2) map the areas of agreement and disagreement, and (3) assess the feasibility of moving forward. 116
• Stakeholder’s skepticism regarding the potential success of a consensus building effort is not a reason to recommend against proceeding. Most people have not been involved in consensus building efforts before and have difficulty judging whether or not such an effort is likely to be successful. 120
• Ultimately, a consensus building group must take “ownership” of the process in which it is involved. 120
• In recommending who should participate, the assessor should think about inclusion and balance. All categories of stakeholders should be identifies, and an approximately equal number of representatives from each major category should be determined. 121
• The assessor should make preliminary recommendations regarding the ground rules that should govern the dialogue. In general, ground rules should address the following. How group decisions will be made. The roles and responsibilities of participants, the mediators, the convenor, and the public. How participants should interact with each other. How media inquiries will be handled. How working groups or subcommittees will be used and their work integrated into efforts of the plenary. How draft documents will be circulated and reviewed. Confidentiality. 123
• Interlocking activities relating to the issues address in the consensus building process will undoubtedly take place before, during, and after the process. 127

Kolb, D., and Collidge, G. (early draft) "Her Place at the Table: A Consideration of Gender Issues in Negotiation."

• Negotiation is often put forth as an alternative to violence and adversarial proceedings; it is an alternative that some argue reflects a feminine view of interaction. 3
• These popular theories of negotiation imply that all conflicts are susceptible to similar formulations and that all parties, despite differences in experience and status, can become equally proficient at and achieve the same results, in its application. 4
• Negotiation conducted in a woman’s voice would. We predict, start from a different point and run a different course than either a purely principled or purely positional model. 5
• Thus, women are energized by their connections and so interpret and locate activities in a spatial and temporal context in which boundaries between self and others and between the task and its surroundings are overlapping and blurred. 5
• It is usually defined as the ability to exert influence in order to obtain an outcome on one’s own terms. 6
• Through mutual empowerment rather than competition, a context is created and sustained which increases understanding and moves participants to joint action. 6
• The essence of negotiating for joint gains involves a search for those sets of agreements that satisfy interests, which the parties are seen to vale differently. 7
• Implied in this model is a view that goals and interests are relatively fixed and potentially known by the parties. The secret to making agreement lies in designing a process where goals and interests can be discovered and incorporated into agreement. 7
• The dilemma for women is to resolve the conflict between compassion for others and their own autonomy and overcome a tendency only to be responsive. 8
• In studies of managers, it is clear that women relative to me have lower tolerance for antagonistic situations and do what they can to smooth over differences even when it means they are the ones to do the sacrificing are less likely to openly advocate their positions. At the same time, there is a proclivity to be too revealing to talk to much about their attitudes. 9-10
• Learning how to use her strengths and manage the dual impressions of femininity and strategic resolve are important aspects of negotiating tactics for women. 11
• For example, there is evidence that when women negotiate with other women, they tend to be more cooperative and use different forms of argument than they do in mixed groups. 13
• …women may be more responsive to interpersonal and situational cues and so conceive their strategic choices differently. 13
• …women apply a longer time frame to negotiation and so interpret isolated negotiation events in the context of longer-term relationships. 13

Rubin, J., "Some Wise and Mistaken Assumptions About Conflict and Negotiation,"

• If conflict settlement implies the consequence of compliance (a change in behavior), then conflict resolution instead implies internalization (a more profound change of underlying attitudes as well as behavior). The third consequence, identification, denotes a change in behavior that is based on the target of influence valuing his or her relationship with the source, and it serves as a bridge between behavior change and attitude change. 3
• The focus of negotiation is not attitude change per se, but an agreement to change behavior in ways. 3
• Similarly, the shift from resolution to settlement of conflict has also increased the attention directed to the role of third parties in the conflict settlement process—individuals who are in some way external to a dispute and who, though identification of issues and judicious intervention, attempt to make it more likely that a conflict can be moved to settlement. 4
• Required for effective conflict settlement is neither cooperation nor competition, but what may be referred to as “enlightened self-interest.” By this I simply mean a variation on what several conflict theorists have previously described as an “individualistic orientation” (Deutsch 1960)—an outlook in which the disputant is simply interested in doing well for himself or herself, without regard for anyone else, out neither to help not hinder the other’s efforts to obtain his or her goal. The added word “enlightened” refers to the acknowledgement by each side that the other is also likely to be pursuing a path of self-interest—and that it may be possible for both to do well in the exchange. If there are ways in which I can move toward my objective in negotiation, while at the same time making it possible for you to approach your goal, then why not behave in ways that make both possible? 4
• Notice that what I am describing here is neither pure individualism (where one side does not care at all about how the other is doing) nor pure cooperation (where each side cares deeply about helping the other to do well, likes and values the other side, etc.)— but an amalgam of the two. 4
• “Trust” and “Trustworthiness,”—only the understanding of what the other person may want or need. 4
• Anthropologists, sociologists, lawyers, psychologists, to name but a few, have now started to come together to exchange ideas, to map areas of overlap and divergence. This, in turn, has made it possible for the development of conflict theory and practice to take shape under a large umbrella than ever before. In fact, the symbolic location of these conversations is more like a circus tent than an umbrella, which beasts of different stripe, size, and coloring all finding a place under the big top. 6
• As one example of what I mean, “face saving” has been an extremely important element of most conflict/negotiation formulations: the idea that people in conflict will go out of their way to avoid being made to look weak for foolish in the eyes of others and themselves. 6
• Instead of starting with demands that are gradually abandoned, the negotiators criticize a single document—through this sort of inside-out procedure—a proposal is developed for which both sides have some sense of ownership. 9
• People typically do not sit down to negotiate unless and until they have reached a point of “stalemate,” where each no longer believes it possible to obtain what he or she wants through efforts at domination or coercion. 10
• That is, the more terrible the consequences of failing to settle—the greater the pressure on each side to talk the conflict seriously. There are at least two serious problems with such “coercive” means of creating a ripe conflict: First, as can be seen in the history of arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, it encourages further conflict escalation, as each side tries to “motivate” the other to settle by upping the same a little bit a time. Second, such escalatory moves invite a game of “Chicken,” in which each hopes that the other will be the first to succumb to coercion. 10
• It is far easier to move from cooperation to competition than the other way around. 11
• Thus, the escalation of conflict often carries with it moves and maneuvers that alter relationship in ways that the parties do not anticipate. 11
• The implication of this point for conflict and negotiation studies is clear: insufficient attention has been directed to the lasting consequences of confrontational tactics. 11