Robert Benjamin recently published another of his typically thoughtful and provocative essays at Mediate.com. On Becoming a Rationally Irrational Mediator/Negotiator is the first part of an ambitious five-part series on the role of the irrational in conflict resolution. In this first installment, Benjamin sets the stage for a detailed challenge to the reliance on rational analysis at the heart of major theories of negotiation and mediation.

He points out that, contrary to theoretical assumptions, most people do not make up their minds on the basis of logical argument and well-honed evidence alone. Many non-rational elements are just as important, such as emotional reactions, bias of various kinds, stress and frustration, flawed logic, or fear of change. While practitioners have to deal with these human realities all the time, most theories of negotiation and mediation assume that people can suspend all that and switch on a mode of rational thinking at will.

It’s time, he argues, for the prevailing models of conflict management to recognize the full complexity of human behavior as it affects negotiated resolution. The non-rational dimensions of conflict need to surface and be dealt with rather than ignored at the theoretical level as well as in practice.

I would add a gloss on the word “irrational.” It doesn’t always mean the opposite of “rational.” It’s also about anything that operates beyond or separately from reason. For example, chance is an irrational factor in human affairs. I think of emotion, faith or tradition in a similar way. These are not the opposite of rational thinking; they are different influences and dimensions of experience in their own right.

Another example of irrationality, which Benjamin promises to discuss at length in an upcoming essay, is faith in the power of rational analysis and scientific method to solve almost any problem. He asks the question: Is it irrational to be a rational mediator?

The interest-based model of negotiation, with the related concept of the joint gains or “expanding the pie” strategy, exemplifies the rational approach to reaching agreement. It proceeds by establishing a set of objective principles or criteria for evaluating options and assumes that feelings, action and thought will all conform to these principles. A dispassionate testing of the options against the criteria should yield the optimal solution.

If problems remain, the tools of persuasion that most often come into play rely on enhancing rational analysis to address specific concerns. Technically accurate evidence, objective weighing of alternatives and logical argument will ultimately prevail. The assumption is that a group will follow this rational path to the point where participants are satisfied that their interests have been met, and so reach agreement.

Irrational elements are not necessarily ignored by the process. After all, the interests that participants are trying to satisfy go far beyond money and economic advantage. They can include all sorts of irrational motives like religious belief, cultural tradition, political necessity, public opinion, reputation, the value of a relationship, among many others. Some of theses values and motives will also be reflected in the principles and criteria that a group agrees will guide the evaluation of proposals for resolution.

I say “some” because, under the theory, there is a sorting out of “true” interests that can yield to negotiation from the values and claims to legal right that are not negotiable. In doing so, however, it’s often the case that precisely those irrational factors that influence human decision-making the most are pushed off the table.

Values and motives relating to religion, political ideology or culture may not be negotiable, but they certainly affect the ultimate willingness of an interest group to accept an agreement. Subordination of these elements can often lead to refusal to accept even the most rational of resolution proposals. The irrational doesn’t go away just because it’s not on the table.

Benjamin’s call for revisions to the prevailing models is especially timely in light of new scientific findings. He points to recent neuroscience research as evidence that the human mind simply doesn’t work in a linear fashion. Instead, there’s a “messy” and constant interplay among many parts of the brain as different dimensions of important decisions are considered.

It’s time for the models to match the full complexity of human behavior and incorporate new tools for addressing the irrational factors of decision-making. These factors shouldn’t be considered beyond the theoretical reach of conflict resolution. There are too many practitioners who know that rational analysis is not the whole story.

Related posts:

1. Mediating on Two Tracks: the Rational and the Rest of Human Nature

Susan Collin Marks is the Senior Vice President of Search for Common Ground (SFCG). In this interview with the European Journalism Centre, she describes some of the goals of SFCG and specific projects involving popular media to reach millions of people in war-torn countries.

The mission of Search for Common Ground, founded in 1982, is nothing less than shifting the world away from conflict to cooperative solutions. It now operates a series of global forums and media projects as well as seventeen field programs, mostly in African countries but also in Macedonia, Ukraine, Jerusalem, Nepal and Indonesia. These are all countries dealing with the effects of violent conflict as well as deep ethnic and political divisions.

SFCG emphasizes long term commitments in its projects and partners with local peace activists to achieve its goals. As noted in the video, one of the organization’s most distinctive strategies is to use popular media and culture to encourage cooperation and reconciliation. In the group’s own words:

Our methodology is rooted in a simple idea: Understand the differences and act on the commonalities. Within that framework, there are numerous delivery systems. We have developed these into a diverse toolbox that includes such traditional conflict resolution techniques as mediation, training, facilitation, and back channel negotiations and unconventional ones involving radio and TV production, music, sports, and community organizing. Because violent conflict depends on stereotyping, demonizing, and dehumanizing, we make extensive use of popular culture to help reverse this process. Thus, among other things, we produce soap operas that communicate win-win messages of mutual respect, tolerance, nonviolence, and problem-solving. We make music videos that have turned into theme songs for entire peace processes. In a dozen countries, we produce soap opera and reality TV – with good values. In addition, our toolbox includes street theater, sport, art, community organizing, and film festivals.

For further information, consult the Search for Common Ground website at www.sfcg.org.

The video is a production of the European Journalism Centre, is a nonprofit organization that provides news, resources and programs for mid-career training of journalists and media professionals. Its online magazine reviews journalistic standards and practice throughout Europe and internationally.

The real test of a collaborative agreement only begins when the changes it requires hit the streets. That’s when it gets personal. Carrying out an agreement usually means that particular people will have to do things differently, pay costs they’re not used to paying, live with new restrictions, new requirements.

The negative side of change is often the first to be noticed, even if an agreement’s hoped-for benefits have been well-publicized. They may look fine on paper but quite different when change comes knocking on the door.

Half a century ago, Eric Hoffer wrote in The Ordeal of Change:

We can never be wholly prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs inordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.

That’s especially relevant when it comes to implementing a collaborative agreement. Every collaborative leader and practitioner works hard to ensure that all the interest groups necessary to produce and support an agreement are in the room.

Even processes that are well designed can’t possibly include everyone. Representation is not a perfect system. There is a wider public and there are operational staff within implementing organizations who haven’t been in the loop. They may hear of it only during or after formal adoption. Even if they’ve heard of it, the potential impact may not have been clear.

The first test of implementation takes place inside the very organization(s) charged with turning its provisions into actions. Those actions may require changes in the way staff and managers do their work. They may have to master new skills, new procedures, new goals and metrics to measure progress. That can look risky to both career prospects and professional self-esteem. And fears at that level will likely trigger resistance to change.

As noted in the earlier post, resistance is often considered an irrational obstacle to implementing new ideas and methods. There is likely a group ready to embrace the changes; they “understand.” The resisters “don’t get it” and stubbornly cling to their familiar ways.

What is often overlooked, however, is that those in favor of the change also have an emotional response. Instead of feeling fearful and threatened, they feel empowered and excited. In both cases, what happens is that people personalize the change. They favor or oppose it by imagining what it will mean for their own lives and jobs.

Marketers and politicians, among many others, have long understood that people don’t accept something new simply because they hear a list of excellent reasons. They have to be moved to act in a new way. When it comes to accepting the changes called for by new policies, both the staff charged with carrying them out and the members of affected communities need to translate the abstractions they hear into specific ways their daily personal and work lives might have to change.

Yet responses by leadership to emotional resistance usually rely on efforts to educate, to provide additional information to persuade the skeptics. That’s a rational strategy. It assumes that if each individual grasps the benefits, which seem obvious to those who support the new agreement, they should understand how their interests will be met and their situation improved, despite certain trade-offs that might be necessary.

It’s also assumed that emotion is a negative that clouds judgment. Reason should prevail through a calm appraisal of the pro’s and con’s. Emotion needs to be vented, gotten out of the way as quickly as possible. They are matters of individual adjustment.

If the change is deep enough, those assumptions don’t capture the reality. There are several dimensions that will not be touched by additional information and education.

• Emotion and reason are not good or bad. They are different ways of evaluating experience. Emotional responses indicate not only the intensity and hence importance of the concern. They also are signals about basic values that shape daily life. And as noted above, they are a principal means by which individuals internalize and make sense of impending change.

• Emotions are not entirely internal to individuals. People react on a feeling level to an event or perception of some kind and look to others experiencing the same thing for validation of that personal reaction. If you learn that most of the other staff in your program or neighbors in your community or whatever type of group you’re part of may share the same feeling you do, it’s a great relief. In that sense, emotional responses are highly social and are legitimized by being shared.

• One of the realities that is often forgotten in the push to carry out the terms of an agreement is that whatever change it requires is experienced in a broad context of other, unrelated shifts that are taking place at the same time. If the cumulative effect makes life or work harder, the latest change might be experienced as the last straw. Future benefits may not materialize, but I’m paying yet another price in the here and now.

So what to do?

• Start by recognize the legitimate feelings of the opposition – and show understanding of the larger context of change that is also putting pressure on them. Demonstrating that understanding lets people know you want to be responsive to the impacts they face.

• Take a collaborative approach in figuring out how to proceed from this point. Those who believe they’ll be harmed need to have a chance to communicate exactly what they’re concerned about and know that they’re really being listened to. If the response is more one-way flows of information to show how mistaken they are, that may only increase the frustration. They’ll believe they’re not being heard, and the divide between adopters and resisters will be reinforced.

• Create a forum to allow the expression of the fears of loss related to specific changes but then go beyond that to elicit ideas for action that respond to those concerns. This may well require the help of a facilitator trained in the many methods for working in this context. They will know how to structure and conduct meetings of this type to produce positive outcomes.

• To build on those results provide learning opportunities on how to put new ideas for action into practice. Organizational staff need training and/or mentoring tied to their specific assignments and assurance that they’ll be given adequate time and opportunity to master new skills. Community members need hands-on workshops close to home that give them a chance to learn step by step what they can do to carry out the ideas they’ve helped develop.

There is no way to accommodate everyone’s needs or respond to every concern. But there are ways to address the ones that are widely shared. Publicity campaigns and testimonials won’t do it. Responsive collaboration during implementation can make a positive contribution.

Many who spend their time trying to find agreement among adversaries have long been familiar with the work of John Forester. A professor of planning at Cornell, he’s always followed his own path directly into the realities of facilitative practice rather than the intricacies of theory. Dealing with Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes is a remarkable presentation of what he’s learned over the past decade.

His earlier books, Planning in the Face of Power
and The Deliberative Practitioner, focused on the immediate work of planners and public managers and their experience with participatory methods.

Dealing with Differences uses this same approach. Through his skillful interviews with dozens of facilitative leaders, he elicits the stories that capture choices they made in the midst of contentious disputes. This is the immediate drama of discovery experienced by practitioners and participants alike. As he summarizes his method of interviewing:

Asking “What did you think about X?” we have found, gets us a theory or speculation; asking “What did you do when X happened?” gives us a flow action to consider. Asking what someone thought about a bluff or strategy gives us the considered opinion of a spectator; asking how they responded to the bluff or strategy gives us the considered judgments of an engaged actor — and that’s what this book’s about: the hows of dealing with differences of interests, values, and power.

How adversaries manage to learn from each other is one of the book’s major themes. The diverse practitioners who tell their stories share an ability to help people locked in confrontation to set aside their combative mindsets. We hear exactly how they moved groups from the conviction that fruitful communication could never occur to an openness to learn from differing views and exchange new ideas for future action.

• We listen to Shirley Solomon describing the moments of human understanding and learning between county and tribal residents in Skagit County, Washington. By talking together about what they valued in the place they shared, rather than arguing political positions, they were able to set aside decades of conflict to focus on practical steps.

• Mike Hughes in Colorado talks about progress on HIV/AIDS issues that surprised stakeholders who had thought any constructive outcome impossible because of deep value differences. The approach in this case was to agree to respect those differences rather than waste time trying to convert each other. The stakeholders could then move on to consider specific areas of possible cooperation.

• Carl Moore describes how he shifted residents of a midwestern city away from repetition of familiar problems to possible action for the future.

• In facilitating a roundtable on the highly charged issue of off highway vehicle use on public lands, Lisa Beutler relates how she was able to reframe discussion and shift from hostile argument to dialogue on practical issues the stakeholders could work on.

An important dimension of Forester’s approach is his broad view of facilitative leadership. He does not limit himself to professionals who devote their careers to mediation and dialogue. While their work offers valuable examples, his larger concern is for the thousands of planners, managers, elected leaders and others trying to use collaborative methods in many different professional roles.

Like Peter Adler in Eye of the Storm Leadership, John Forester understands that it is these leaders who will play critical roles in spreading knowledge of the usefulness of collaborative methods far beyond a single professional circle. Dealing with Differences tells powerful stories to help public policy leaders move from theory to effective practice.

This is a passionate book intent on pushing aside facile arguments against collaborative process. It takes on the political “realists” who have simply given up hope for change and want to rely on confrontation and conflict. And it challenges the “practical” critics who regard the approach as too time-consuming, costly or simply idealistic. Forester insists that criticism needs to be constructive and based on considered review of specific accomplishments and methods, not a matter of offhand judgments.

To make that possible, he clearly summarizes the practical wisdom drawn from the narratives of facilitative leaders. These summaries resonate more deeply than most “lessons learned” because he conveys so well the immediate drama of practitioners responding to challenges within the dynamic of group experience. He creates an exceptionally helpful context for the stories of how participants can be guided to make important breakthroughs.

These are exactly the “war stories” that practitioners love to share because they are so helpful for relearning basic lessons and sharpening skills. This book opens that dialogue to a wider public and organizes it clearly and evocatively so that others can learn from these experiences. Those are exciting stories to hear, and few have communicated their essence so skillfully as John Forester.

Related posts:

1. Weaving Collaborative Networks – 2
2. Power Differences, Consensus Building & Collaborative Networks