The Expert Podcast

So what are the top four or five conflicts you've ever had in your life? Was it a lawsuit, maybe a probate dispute, maybe a divorce, maybe some conflict with a neighbor or somebody in the neighborhood? It might have been an employment dispute. Some people who have businesses have been involved with some conflict, dispute, or argument over billing or a contract with a third party. All of these disputes have one thing in common: they sucked the energy out of living everyday life. They put all your energy into dealing with this conflict.

When you went through that conflict, what was the final aspect of the efforts that resolved it? What was the thing that made it go away? Was it a court judgment? Was it a failure to proceed? Maybe you just gave up and walked away. The reason that we ask and put your comments below is because we always are looking to get an insight into what are the factors that help a subject escape from a conflict. Any kind of conflict, whether it’s a very serious high-level lawsuit litigation or a very small dispute with a family member—what is the thing that breaks that logjam?

As mediators, we always look to see what are the things that create a resolution naturally without a mediator, arbitrator, or somebody stepping in to facilitate that answer. You know, this graphic you see on the screen is actually a good analogy. This is a representation of a tug of war, and this is what a lot of conflicts are—people tugging, wanting to win that battle. If you think about it, imagine there's a flag right here where this arrow is in the middle. When you win your tug of war, your flag really only moves a couple of feet. It doesn’t go that far. You’re not dragging your flag 10 miles one way or another; it's usually a very small resolution one way or another.

Remember, in this analogy or metaphor of a tug of war that you've all played at picnics or family reunions, when the game is over, and even whoever wins, the flag falls over here. Everybody's on the ground, dirty and dusty, and maybe you’ve banged up your elbow or hurt your knee. So, nobody walks away from it unscathed. Nobody walks away from it with clean hands. Even if you win the tug of war, if you lose the tug of war, not only are you dirty and dusty and got rope burn, but you also now lost the battle. Many conflicts, lawsuits, divorces, and family squabbles are the same thing. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose—you still end up damaged. Anybody who’s been through a conflict can probably attest to that. Even attorneys—ask any attorney, or if you are an attorney—think about all the cases you’ve worked with, and how even the winning party wasn’t feeling victorious when they walked away. They didn’t walk away from that case better than they were before they walked in. They usually have a lot of losses to go around, not the least of which are legal fees, but sometimes there are more losses than that.

So, if you've been involved with a conflict, what was the factor that resolved, dissolved, or escaped that conflict? Did you just give up and walk away, saying, “I had enough with this”? Maybe the other party did. Maybe a judge said, “You win, you lose.” Maybe there was some other factor—a third party that stepped in. What made that conflict go away naturally if you didn’t use a mediator or an arbitrator? We’d love to hear about that.

In addition, of all those conflicts that you’ve been involved with, were there any of them that you couldn’t avoid? In hindsight, could you look back and say, “Well, I could have not been dragged into this if I had done X, Y, or Z”? Or were some of them ones you had no choice? You just got dragged into it, and there was nothing you could have done. Let us know in the comments what your thoughts are on escaping a conflict, avoiding them in the first place, or what factors help resolve them once you get sucked into one.