C&K: Reaching and Carrying Out Agreements (Chapter 7)

This chapter focuses on the many different ways to reach and carry out agreements. The focus is on how to reach consensus with a large group of people. You must make sure that everybody agrees on the process of reaching an agreement, and that everybody okays every part of the solution. If not, there can be committees which decide upon the agreement; when they redraft it to incorporate the concerns, everybody present has to re-approve the agreement.

I found the diagrams of the different ways to reach the agreement to be the most helpful part of the chapter. It really helped me visualize what the different ways of approaching conflict resolution can look like. One general question I have from the reading is how to you decide who is on the resolution 'committee'? Would it be better to just have the negotiators? This part did not seem clear to me. Another thought that I had throughout the chapter had to do with the honesty of the participants. The chapter gives several scenarios about how people would respond to the solutions and how they would voice their opinions. I am not convinced that people are going to be that honest or clear. This is especially apparant on page 143 (3rd paragraph under section "applying criteria to existing options."

I like how the authors focused in the latter half of the chapter on the idea of open communication. You can lose all of the work you put into an agreement by not fully communicating how the solution(s) were reached with the parties. This can make parties feel slighted or cheated. This reminds me of how we often talk in class about how people will settle for less if they view the process of fair, and conversely, people may reject an agreement that has many components that suit them because they felt the process was unfair. It is all about perception, and this puts a lot of responsibility on the interveners to make sure the process is going smoothly.