Image credit: Martin Bangemann – Fotolia.com

Stephanie West Allen recently posted an informative article at Brains on Purpose on neuroscience research about the ways in which brains of people in different cultures function in distinctive ways. References to her own earlier posts, especially What’s Universal in Mediation, as well as the work of Geert Hofstede on cultural difference are well worth exploring.

Her post has set me thinking about a general problem I’ve often run into. Stephanie is well aware of this issue, and I want to say immediately that I’m not talking about her post. She is one of the pioneers in educating lawyers and mediators about cross-cultural issues and knows better than most of us how complicated the issues are.

It’s a given that cultural differences must be understood and respected to achieve effective communication. Those differences concern basic values and beliefs that shape worldviews and guide choices for action in all walks of life. When values at this level differ in fundamental ways, misunderstanding of motives and interests is common, and clashes between groups become more likely and resolution more difficult.

But it is possible to exaggerate the effect of those differences on the process of reaching agreement itself. When culturally distinct groups see themselves in conflict, that perception often has a history of adversarial relationships behind it, tensions about interests that are considered incompatible by both sides, or even overt political domination of one group by another. Any conflict interweaves a complex set of influences.

When it comes to conflict resolution, I think of cultural differences as the most significant barrier to communication and hence to initiating any effective effort of the groups to come together for the purpose of resolving problems. Isolating the influence of culture on conflict as negotiation as a whole may be necessary to help one group learn about the unfamiliar values and ways of thinking of another. That process of study, however, can create an impression that cultural characteristics are more fixed and resistant to change that they actually are.

For educational purposes, separate dimensions and categories are useful to explain the nature of cultural differences – dimensions like a sense of time, the degree of individuality, expectations about authority, forms of social interaction, and the like. Unfortunately, this sort of study has led to overemphasis on composite and artificial concepts such as the Arab mind, the Native American worldview or any number of simplifications that sweep together numerous localized cultures and traditions into a single, “typical” cultural character.

In reality, no culture has survived over centuries without extensive change born of the necessity to adapt to new circumstances – such as new political realities, natural environmental changes, migration, influences of other cultures or the availability of new technologies.

A willingness to get together with representatives of a different culture to resolve conflict is also a willingness to consider adaptation to change. Rigid cultures resist change and are unlikely to show that degree of openness.

One example in the public policy arena comes to mind that illustrates the interaction of culture with other influences such as politics and historical relationships.

During a dialogue between a western state government and a group of deeply traditional Native American governments, it became obvious that the basic values of the two cultures led to sharply different characterizations of the problem under discussion.

The conflict concerned water, and the state interpreted the problem in the context of legal and jurisdictional systems. Against a background of regional demand, the state saw the issues as jurisdiction over the water source and its use for economic purposes. They spoke in the language of law, economics and hydrology. Future growth of the region was at stake.

Leaders of the native governments, on the other hand, interpreted the issue in terms of their community’s responsibility to sustain a source of water that played a central role in religious practices. They spoke in a language of story, ancient tradition and historical events of a spiritual nature (what western culture calls “myth”). Their concern was to continue traditional culture and protect the places of deepest importance to its practice. Time was not readily divided into past, present, future in this context. They had a sacred responsibility for the survival of traditions that defined a way of life.

But the representatives of these dramatically differing cultures shared goals and ways of thinking in this setting. For one, they both perceived their differences about this issue as a conflict that might be resolved through dialogue and negotiation. Both had the same fundamental goal – however they defined the nature and value of the resource – of having authority to control the water source and the waters flowing from it. Both had issues relating to internal decision-making and power dynamics among competing factions within their own groups. Further, they shared the desire for a productive relationship over the long-term.

Achieving success in the process required each side to be open to the other’s specific cultural style of interaction. The state negotiators could not assume that the burden was on the tribal leaders to fit into the non-Indian cultural style. Nor could they attempt to adapt their behavior entirely to the Native American style. Both extremes would be false, coercive in the first case, condescending in the second. Each group needed to speak from the integrity of its own values and cultural frameworks in order to have a productive conversation.

The two groups needed to help educate one another about their values and approaches to the water issue. In effect, they had to establish a common language to achieve the dialogue that could lead to agreement. Understanding cultural differences, especially differences in the way things are valued, was essential for communication, but once that step was achieved the dynamics of the negotiation process were conditioned far less by cultural issues.

Collaborative negotiation based on meeting needs and interests, as opposed to positional or adversarial negotiation, can be quite flexible in adapting to cross-cultural settings – provided the participants are open to understanding and respecting values and styles of behavior very different from their own.

In a 2008 post, Stephanie provided a list of some of the elements of a conflict resolution process that could vary in important ways in different cultures.

As we learn more about culture, we will continue to be surprised at what we thought was universal and in fact is not. . . .
For example, in many other cultures:

• Confidentiality would not make sense;

• Ownership of the dispute (and the responsibility to resolve it) would not belong to the individual;

• Insight about how the problem came about would not be valued (this is especially surprising for those mediators with a therapeutic bent to their model of mediation);

• Self-disclosure or discussing feelings would be inappropriate (particularly surprising for that same group of mediators).

The more we learn to question our assumptions about what is universal, the more culturally sensitive we can become.

Such sensitivity is essential on the part of all participants in order to create a process that they can trust as respectful and fair. Getting to that point can be extremely complicated and require preliminary dialogue sessions – perhaps a series of them – before negotiations to resolve conflict can be attempted.

A collaborative approach to designing the process ensures that the different groups are dealing with each other as partners and avoids the implication that one culture is superior to another. It challenges and hopefully removes unconscious cultural assumptions about how the process should work that could undermine any attempt to make substantive progress.

Openness to cultural differences, the desire to form mutually beneficial relationships, a willingness to engage in effective dialogue to resolve conflict and the ability and commitment to use an agreement as the basis for future action – elements such as these are prerequisites to negotiating agreements to meet important interests. But I would argue that these are not culturally unique. Culture determines the language, behavior and constraints as well as the content of values and needs that guide the participation of each side. Without the shared learning of how to communicate across cultural boundaries, reaching agreement about critical needs would hardly be possible, but that is one element among many.

Any discussion of culture and conflict resolution is controversial, and I’d welcome your ideas and experience to stimulate dialogue about this critical area.

Related posts:

1. Who Are You? Identity Across Cultures

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

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In his latest book, Bernard Mayer has challenged our thinking about mediation by singling out a dimension of conflict that receives too little attention. Simply put: conflict endures, and Mayer argues that the response to it should go far beyond the immediate resolution of disputes. Staying with Conflict is a finely written argument for rethinking mediation and collaboration strategies by putting the reality of long-term conflict at the center of practice. The alternative is immediate settlement of the issues that can be resolved but avoidance of the harder problems that never go away.

As Mayer puts it:

The most significant conflicts people face are the enduring ones — those struggles that are long lasting and for which a resolution is either irrelevant or is just one in a series of partial goals in service of a long-term endeavor.

Mayer calls on the mediation community to stop thinking of its role as limited to the resolution of specific disputes. Instead mediators should address the overall context of conflict and work with clients to understand that differing interests do not disappear because one phase of disputing ends in agreement.

He calls this approach constructive engagement.

And just what does constructive engagement imply? … It means learning to engage with both the conflict and the other disputants with respect for each person’s humanity, if not his or her behavior or beliefs. It means articulating the nature of the conflict in a way that opens the door to communication and understanding rather than slamming it shut. … Constructive engagement requires using one’s power and responding to others’ use of power wisely — upping the level of conflict when necessary but doing so in a way that promotes desired behavior rather than becoming destructive. It means negotiating and problem solving within the context of the long-term challenge … .

He urges mediators to use this concept as a basis for working with clients. Shifting perspective from the tensions of the present problem to the larger context of enduring conflict can help them adjust expectations about resolution. It’s one thing to settle a dispute with someone you’ll never have any future contact with (and many disputes do fall into this category) but quite another if you need to maintain some form of ongoing relationship despite the immediate clash.

Then it becomes a question of managing conflict inherent in a necessary relationship that has other dimensions as well. He urges mediators to take on a new role by providing ongoing assistance to those involved in long-lasting conflict. That means helping them master the skills and strategies he mentions in the excerpt above: respect for differing values and goals, sustaining long-term communication and using power to achieve positive results than bridge-burning.

Although Staying with Conflict broadly addresses all forms of mediation, this provocative essay has particular relevance to the field of public policy and government decision-making. In few other areas of practice does the long-term nature of conflict present itself so clearly and inescapably. Collaborative leaders and practitioners alike well understand this fact, yet they rarely have the ability to step back from immediate disputes.

There are compelling reasons for this. The pressure of time, economics, politics and litigation usually force attention exclusively on the hothouse of the here-and-now. Almost invariably expectation is resolution now. That is the measure of success for public and private managers alike, and they often face serious consequences if they appear unable to settle complicated and volatile situations.

This is the problem that Mayer understates, to some extent. Collaborative practitioners, like their clients, also come under pressure to focus on the immediately resolvable issues and leave the rest alone. If they take on issues that can’t be resolved in the short-term, they fear damage to their own reputations as well as clients’ loss of confidence in consensus building itself. It’s hard for anyone to break out of that pattern.

At least in the public policy field, overcoming all these pressures probably demands nothing less than a cultural and societal shift in thinking about conflict, but that is far beyond the scope and purpose of this book. Mayer is definitely on the right track.

Although clients and mediators have to adapt to the current system to survive, that doesn’t mean they always want to. Mayer’s eloquent writing presents a necessary model for an alternative mindset. That is the crucial starting point – to get people thinking about the possibilities of a new approach. After all that is what mediators typically do.

There are likely to be relatively few who will attempt the basic shift in attitude and practice that Staying with Conflict urges, but change has to begin somewhere. And now there is a good model to work with.

Related posts:

1. Why Certify Public Policy Mediators?
2. Mediator Power & Collaborative Public Policy
3. Peter Adler and The End of Mediation

Reuniting America convened a series of leadership workshops on major issues from 2004 – 2007. These sessions drew together 140 leaders representing the full range of political values and perspectives that dominate discussion of public issues in the U.S. The eventual result was to develop the principles of transpartisanship, an effort to replace the demonizing debates of public policy with dialogue in the exploration of shared values. That work is continued by the Transpartisan Alliance, at the grassroots level, and the Transpartisan Center, with national leadership.

This 2006 video highlights the guiding themes of the leadership workshops. Mark Gerzon, one of the leading facilitators of cross-partisan dialogue in this country and around the world, facilitated the dialogue featured in the video. His book, Leading Through Conflict, is a guide to leadership emphasizing the use of dialogue and conflict transformation methods.