Conflict is part of the human exerience – it’s baked into our DNA – and lasting solutions require resolving conflict. Here you can read the best information on conflict resolution strategies, hand curated by our experts and trainers in public solutions. People don’t always agree, and resolving those disagreements is key to what we do in public participation. Resolving conflicts takes a lot of “soft skills,” more so than just facts. Data rarely changes someone’s mind. To do that you need humility, respect, authenticity and transparency, qualities that are necessary in dealing with the public for your government, organization, or business. These are the newsworthy articles that we have found contribute to this conversation on conflict resolution. Enjoy, dear reader.
Recently, John Godec was asked to be part of the IAP2 webinar training. It was his great honor to present facilitative mediation, emotions and outrage to a sold out group of members.
Since it was a sold out group and a dynamic discussion, we thought that you, our dear reader, ...
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For a while now, it’s seemed clear that public participation is under assault at the highest levels of U.S. government. Functioning democracies share power with the governed. Of course there are arguments that politicians are obligated to wield their power on behalf of the people who elected them, therefore public ...
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The subject of Power is so vast that it’s hard to tackle from any angle. Power is the warp and weft in the tapestry of human history. Power grabs, power imbalances, abuses of power, struggles against power. The subject is just as ubiquitous today ...
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OK, so this may not be the most politically correct headline for a blog today, but I will stand by it. For over 20 years, before cell phones made the effort moot, Ma Bell and later AT&T used this slogan to get people to call long distance. It turns out ...
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I prefer the cruder version of the above headline but hey, it’s Christmas time. We all know people who have opinions about everything, regardless of whether or not they actually know anything about it. Don’t be one of them....
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Dictionary definitions of conflict vary with the dictionary, some including references to war to others that reference the more mundane incompatibility. Conflict resolution and dispute resolution are often used interchangeably, but disputes are more typically defined as something a little less serious than conflicts, or at least something that’s ...
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Back in one of my previous lives (working for a Fortune 50 company), most of my job was managing a variety of the inadvertent kinds of problems that negatively affected the business, or the variety of other issues brought on by dumb manager decisions and things that people in the ...
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Whether you are engaging in basic public communications or crisis management activities, simple facilitation or consensus building on a complex topic, there is one skill that we all need at all times: The ability to listen. If you have watched any of the recent town hall meetings on TV, you ...
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For those of us who love ice hockey, ’tis the season! As a fan of ice hockey and my work, it struck me that a hockey match is kind of like a public meeting that, if facilitated properly, can end up being a satisfying experience for most. Like many public ...
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The guy running the project was honest; brutally honest in fact. He said he’d done his time in the military, took his degree, his rank and his time in and hooked on with a federal agency that he barely knew existed before he joined it. He was interested in getting ...
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