Conflict Resolution – Deconstruction to avoid Destruction

From many victims’ perspectives, conflicts look huge, complicated and unmanageable, with no obvious resolution trajectory.  Think: “how can I eat this elephant?”

From an outsider’s perspective, the same conflict may look very different.  Without the strong emotions, it’s easier to perform a rational analysis that calmly evaluates complexity, urgency and solution entry points.  If the analyst has also dealt with many conflicts in the past, the scale and complexity of the current problem will look much more manageable.

After dealing with thousands of conflict resolution activities, it’s clear to us that many disputes are more effectively resolved through “deconstruction”, than by traditional conflict resolution processes.

So, how will you eat your elephant? “One mouthful at a time” (warning: ensure your elephant doesn’t mind being eaten before trying this!).

Deconstruction steps: (1) dismantle the dispute scenario into bite-sized pieces and spread them out;  (2)  cluster individual pieces into relevant groupings; (3) eliminate duplicates and obvious irrelevants; (4) explore and evaluate the pieces;  (5) remove anything that no longer looks like a significant problem; (6) resolve whatever issues remain (if any);  (7) rebuild the scenario / contract / relationship with whatever’s left; (8) get on with your life.

In many cases, provided the dismantling process has been worked at a pace that keeps everyone engaged, the parties will respond with a surprised: “cherchez la problème?” (find the problem?).

This suggests that many conflicts have more emotion in them than actual substance.  And, because emotions can easily overwhelm rational thinking, and because they are personal, self-endorsing, and not easily detected or understood by others, they are generally hard to identify, define and manage, much less resolve, through a direct approach.  Deconstruction either evaporates the problem altogether, or makes its component parts more concrete.

Deconstruction in Conflict Resolution is positively anti-climactic.  In normal conflict resolution processes, parties expect some sort of painful big bang resolution and/or some kind of rebirth on the other side.  Deconstruction just moves people from being in conflict to not being in conflict, with a bit of learning about how it all came about thrown in, for good measure.

For parties that need to be able to live with each other afterwards, in families, businesses or organisations, it’s so much less painful a process.

Commencing a Conflict Resolution process:  quickly achieved by phone or written application to The Solutionist Group.

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