The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Building bottom-up support—reaching out to the other side, allies, and other stakeholders in order to persuade, seduce, barter, beg, and ingratiate in order to mobilize them and secure their support

  Appeasing opponents—learning to tolerate attacks, inflammatory rhetoric, and hyperbole of opponents in the short-term; give in to them on their key demands; suck up to them as much as possible, and quietly lay in wait for conditions to change and opportunities to present themselves to blithely sabotage them and derail their agenda

  Developing autonomy through strong BATNAs (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)—spending time and energy developing a good plan B, where they can still achieve their principle goals unilaterally

  Our upcoming book, Conflict Intelligence: Harnessing the Power of Conflict and Influence (Coleman and Ferguson, in press), provides step-by-step instructions for developing skill in applying these strategies and tactics and enhancing competencies for adaptivity in conflict.

  In conclusion, I offer a few summary propositions from this chapter for use in designing training approaches for power and conflict. The general goals of such training are to develop people’s understanding of power, facilitate reflection of their own tendencies when in low or high power, and increase their ability to use it effectively when in conflict:

  Training should help students understand and reflect critically on their commonly held assumptions about power, as well as the sources of these assumptions. It should also educate students on the dynamic complexity of processes of power and influence; the importance of localized, situation-specific understanding; and the importance of distinctions such as primary and secondary power.

  Students should be supported in a process that helps them become aware of their own chronic tendencies to react in situations in which they have superior or inferior power over others and develop the capacity to employ dominance, benevolence, appeasement, support, and autonomy when necessary and appropriate.

  Students should be encouraged to become more emotionally and cognitively aware of the privileges or injustices they and others experience as a result of their skin color, gender, economics, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, physical status, and the like.

  In a conflict situation, students should be able to analyze for the other as well as themselves the resources of power, their orientation to power, and the strategies and tactics for effectively implementing their available power. Students should also be able to identify and develop the necessary skills for implementing their available power in the conflict.

  Students should be able to distinguish between conflicts in which power with, power from, and power under, rather than power over, are appropriate orientations to and strategies for resolving the conflict.

  Susan Fountain has developed an exercise showing the type of training that gives students simple yet rich experience useful for exploring and examining many of the principles I have just described.

  Participants in the exercise are asked to leave the training room momentarily. The room is then organized into two work areas, with several tables grouped to accommodate four or five people per group in each area. In one work area, the tables are supplied with markers, colored pencils, paste, poster board, magazines, scissors, and other colorful and decorative items. In the other work area, each table receives one piece of white typing paper and two black lead pencils. The participants are then randomly assigned to two groups and allowed into the room and seated.

  The groups are told that their objective is to use the materials they have been given to generate a definition of power. They are informed that once each group has completed its task, they will display their definition and everyone will vote on the best definition generated from the class. The groups begin their work on the task. The trainers actively support and participate in the work of the high-resource group while attempting to avoid contact with members of the low-resource group. When the work is complete, the class votes on the best definition of power. The participants are then brought into a circle to debrief.

  In our experience with this exercise, many useful learning opportunities present themselves. For example, the types of definition generated can differ greatly between the high-resource and low-resource groups. The former tend to produce definitions that are mostly positive, superficial, and largely shaped by the mainstream images from the magazines (beauty, status, wealth, computers, and so on). The low-resource group definitions tend to be more radical and rageful, often challenging the status quo—and even the authority of the instructors. One image listed a series of negative emotions and obscenities circled by pencils that were then jabbed into the paper like daggers. These starkly contrasting definitions often lead to discussion that identifies the source of these differences.

  It is also fairly common in this exercise for many members of the high-resource group to remain completely unaware of the disparity in resources until it is explicitly pointed out to them at the conclusion of the exercise. Members of the low-resource groups, in contrast, are all very aware of the discrepancies. This can be a very powerful moment. Again, the actual difference in resources is minor, but it is symbolic of more meaningful ones, and the participants begin to make the connection to other areas in their lives where they are often blind to their own privilege.

  Finally, during the exercise, members of the low-resource group often attempt to alter the imbalance of power. They try various strategies, including demanding or stealing resources, ingratiation, playing on the guilt of high-resource group members, appealing to higher authorities (the instructors), or challenging the legitimacy of the exercise. Of course, there are also members of the low-resource group who simply accept their lot and follow the rules. These choices are all opportunities to explore what sort of strategies and tactics can be useful when in low power, have participants reflect on their own inclinations and reactions in the situation (whether in low or high power), and examine the beliefs and assumptions on which many of the strategies were based.

  CONCLUSION

  Rosabeth Kanter once said that power is the last dirty word. I have attempted to challenge that notion in this chapter and emphasize the potential for an expansive approach to power in conflict. The realists of the day may remain skeptical, for the world is filled with evidence to the contrary: evidence of coercive power holders, power hoarding, of the defensiveness and resistance of the powerful under conditions that cry out for change. Perhaps the time is ripe for a new approach to power.

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