Conflict Hack Like A Boss: Practical Mediation Strategies for Resolving Partnership Problems

By Jennifer Sabir

This book was written for the purpose of provide a basic understanding of conflict resolution techniques that aid in building positive, respectful, and peaceful partnerships with others. Additionally, it will cover effective strategies and tips to enable you to become a solution seeker of your life such as: understanding why conflict happens, how to identify problems before they start, identifying personalities prone to conflict, common power imbalances, understanding the cause and effect in conflict, and the stages involved in the mediation process. It is through awareness, that we are able to transcend our present situation and gain a broader approach that will allow for more effective, deeper, and compassionate interpersonal relationships. I believe that it is in each person’s power to self-mediate when facing conflict for the purpose of building effective partnerships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Sabir
• Release date: Jan 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311341716

Jennifer Sabir

I am a trained Mediator, and have experience in private interpersonal conflict resolution mentoring, spiritual direction, & multi-cultural facilitation. Credentials: I have done individual Conflict Coaching, Personal and Entrepreneurial Mentoring, Cultural Facilitation,Spiritual Direction, and Relationship Advice to persons from diverse personal and geographical areas. Additionally, I have worked in various roles and industries (legal, retail, corporate, entrepreneurial, web development, and cultural/spiritual) in the area of client relations and first time resolution.

Book preview

The Nature of Conflict

"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." –Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the early days of human development, man has sought to both engage and resolve conflict. Various approaches to conflict resolution have been attempted including: proactive retaliation, passive aggression, non-resistance non-judgmental peace-keeping, facilitative and transformative approaches.

Yet despite such commitment to the mediation process, conflict still maintains a strong participator in the daily lives of humanity. Over the past several years, mediators across the globe have sought more professionalized development and accreditation, slowly infiltrating into the legal system to give disputants an option to discover less expensive, minimally explosive approaches to resolving conflict with one another. Additionally, humanitarian and peace organizations continue to preach and practice non-violent methods that have resulted in nothing more than a great deal of theory and less long-standing resolution. There is much confusion remaining in the world with practitioners and supporters questioning why humanity, (although professing and advocating peace) remains in a state of conflict. Despite what peace and human rights organizations’ statistics show, there is a great deal of unreported conflict going on behind closed doors.

Actively managing conflict is at the forefront of any and every relationship, organization, government, and country. Yet, despite such various models of alternative dispute resolution and legal structures, we still cannot find peaceful solutions as a human race. Within humanity lies a duality teetering between peace and conflict. The natural laws of polarity seem to indicate man is unable to choose the best solution for the whole as an unconscious act when the risk of conflict is first triggered.

I believe that until awareness and personal accountability are practiced by every individual; we will continue to engage in conflict regardless of how trained or committed we are to the concept of global peace. Peace can never be regulated for it to be long-standing. To force an idea of peace without a proper restructuring or reconditioning of each individual’s way of thinking, living, relating, and engaging with his or her fellow man and society, the result will remain an illusory idea rather than an instinct.

In recognizing that each decision we make, and experience or relationship we encounter, we must be mindful as to the intention, cause, and effect that is initiated from every perspective. Rather than blaming outside participants or situations for our dire circumstances, one must first take an active responsibility to self-reflect, and understand how he or she was an integral part of initiating and unfolding the process leading to the state of conflict. We each hold a personal choice to relate, engage, react, or invest in either a peaceful mind set, or a conflicted one. Even when the other person tries to trigger and engage us, we still hold the power to work towards diffusing or exacerbating it further. The quicker we choose to change our thoughts and actions (regardless of the situation faced) the more readily peace will be our companion even in a state of conflict. We each hold the internal resources to transcend any state that opposes our external state.

Whether a person chooses an alternative dispute resolution approach to solving conflict (such as legal or third-party intervention), self-mediates, or becomes complacent and indifferent to the reality of the situation, there are elements that must be understood to obtain the most effective win-win outcome.

As an example, two years ago, I assisted to resolve a conflict that occurred involving a long-standing dispute between family members. A male relative lived with and cared for his elder aunt a number of years, after her husband had passed. Upon obtaining his university degree, he held a desire to relocate and start over personally and professionally. However, because his aunt had no other relatives willing to move closer to care for her, she placed unreasonable demands on him to care for her using culture and religion as her negotiating tools. Although the woman was in good health and highly capable of taking care of herself, she felt this man’s companionship and assistance with household maintenance tasks came as priority over his needs and goals.

The man sought on more than one occasion to appeal to other family members, but they sided with the elder woman’s request to keep him on as caretaker due to her promising to leave them a portion of her estate if she passed. He repeatedly tried reasoning with her, but she refused to listen. Finally, the young man requested a neutral facilitator to hold a family meeting to try and mediate a solution. Although the family members were initially resistant, the mediator sought to level out the power balance present through discussion of the issues affecting all of them including uprooting the original source of conflict.

It was discovered that several factors were contributors regarding unfulfilled needs by the man’s aunt both prior to and after her husband died. Because her nephew offered to help the family out while he attended college, she grew overly dependent upon him placing him under tremendous stress. Once he graduated and wanted to move away, she began verbally and mentally abusing him making him feel guilt over leaving her alone.

It was not until the family members discussed and confronted the issues involved, such as long-term eldercare and estate planning issues that the parties agreed to discuss a mutual resolution and written agreement. Each area of contention had to be confronted and broken down to the core, before real rebuilding of the relationships within the family could occur.

Mediation and Mental Science

Krishnamurti said, Observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.

Quantum physics has long since established that thought is energy comprised of multi-coloured fractals of light and grid patterns, held within a gravitational field. As the great inventor, Nikola Tesla, so remarkably conducted thought experiments to understand the full understanding of what components existed and held influence on the desired outcome, so we too can be the solution specialists of our own life challenges.

Science has shown under the relationship of causality, there is a direct relationship between the cause and its effect. This further philosophically and practically helps us understand why a thought, word, or action creates a positive or negative outcome in our experience. However, until you reverse it, taking it from the effect back to its origin or cause, you will not fully understand how the manifestation has been brought into fruition. Likewise, if an outcome is not to your liking, you can work in reverse to review, observe, and edit the construction, piece-by-piece; to make improvements, and understand the relationship of the various fragments in your mind.

Say, for example, you are facing a conflict with your partner, and you keep pushing at them for a particular response, and they resist or push back, until it becomes an ongoing battle of control. What each side is doing is trying to force one another into compliance, using techniques of manipulation and control. However, that is far from effective, and will result in the effects diminishing further because it restrains one’s ability to exercise full freedom of expression and imagination. Herman Melville was quoted saying, "We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results." Therefore, consciously speaking, we cannot escape the cause and effect sequences in our minds.

To discover a solution to any challenge, it is a matter of re-entering your mind where the point of limitation (inner conflict) began. You must be able to imagine every aspect that has the potential of existing alongside those elements that have caused the conflict. When you take the matter from effect back to cause, you are able to track this duality to observe any progress that has been made.

Conflict begins and ends in the mind when one chooses to traverse the world of consciousness and electromagnetism. This enables the solution to replace the previous problem and manifest as a productive external experience.

Consider a recent conflict you faced. Within the puzzle that appears to be without solution are two separate, individual components with two differing agendas. Yet in spite of these two separate beings, there is a shared centre that is forever expanding within the space between them. When we notice only conflict, it is due to focus being applied to the negative charges being given off, and the area where individual expression is being displayed. However, when the two charges are at rest, the propagation of electromagnetic effects are no longer being engaged, hence there is no longer any perceived threat.

Electromagnetic energy, which is defined as energy propagated through free space, or material medium in the form of electromagnetic waves be it visible light, X-rays, gamma rays etc. follow the theories of Maxwell-Lorentz and Einstein's general relativity. As humans all have an electromagnetic energy field, it affects the interpersonal communication exchanged on a quantifiable basis. Scientists have explored and found that as a result, the human body acts as a transmitter and receiver of energy which often is projected and received on an ongoing and multiplistic basis.

So when two charges moving together act on each other, the source of the effect felt by one is a fixed point in the ether left behind by the moving source. Since the effect propagates from a point left behind by the moving charges, an observer moving with the charges can use this fact to determine that the charges are moving.

As internal conflict is housed within thoughts that are derived from cellular memory, filtered by subconscious belief systems and experiences, they further trigger emotions that continue to remain fluid depending upon the stimuli presented to it.

Consider also the superstring theory of physics that particles contain mini strings that vibrate along with like resonating strings at varying frequencies. This further holds the potential to produce additional layers of resonation further strengthening and solidifying the bond to form particles of matter that are of like-mind, or focus. Emotions then are the physical manifestation of the original thought. If negatively expressed emotions along with opposing actions are the result of conflict, then conflict could be deemed opposing energetic frequencies, or frequencies not experiencing proper flow.

When we are simply observing energy being exchanged without identifying with it, it eventually runs its course, and although it may experience peaks and valleys, eventually it will settle down completely with little effort. When we engage something during the natural unfolding process, when it is highly charged; it runs the risk of creating or building opposition which further escalates being out of a state of flow.

There is a place beyond right and wrong, I'll meet you there. – Rumi

While conflict offers an opportunity to uncover the unique, individual multiplistic aspect of free will that exists between persons, it gives rise to a place of non-judgement where we allow another to fully express and work out their thoughts (both consciously and subconsciously) without fear of reprisal, labelling, or rejection. This is the place where solutions are born, and we can build bridges of reconciliation and effective partnerships built upon win-win outcomes. Conflict divides not only the shared world between us, but the world within where there are fragments upon fragments of sub-structures of events that further overlap, combine, and build the foundation for how differences will be perceived and conflict