Question posed: How do I change the other person’s behaviour when that is what’s creating conflict? Answer: A fast 3-step dance pattern describes a lot of conflicts. Step one: the first person acts or speaks; Step two: the second person (you) interprets those words or actions, and Step three: the second person (still you) reacts based on that interpretation. So, your question is about changing step one. Most answers to your question advise you on steps two and three because that’s where you have real control. My answer is a little different than… Read more How to change other peoples’ conflict behaviour →
At work, I make dozens of considered decisions about and during each intervention. Think about any conflict, and there was perhaps some heart stopping moment when you realized that someone needs to do or say something. But what? Each intervention, reframe, summary, or caucus, has potential to be a change leading the parties somewhere, with no returning to the prior state. Seventeen years ago, I wrote a 90,000+ word novel about a Conflict Manager’s thought processes at work, the in-the-moment decision-making. Editing those words has been my 16 year obsession since. If… Read more The Mind Of A Mediator: my novel in progress →
How do we know what another person intends? Theory of Mind is something most conflict resolvers know about while perhaps not knowing that it’s called Theory of Mind. It refers to how a person knows what someone else’s intentions are. This belief that we can know someone else’s private unspoken intention, and judge the intention as moral or immoral, is the basis for Theory of Mind research.
Deborah Sword 