C&K : Adopting Procedures, Educating Parties, and Developing Options (Chapter 6)

This chapter focuses on the first three stages of managing public disputes: adopting procedures, educating parties, and developing options. The main element of the adopting procedures stage is establishing ground rules. The ground rules can be established in written form or orally and they can be agreed upon in many different ways (vote, consensus, etc). Most ground rules are established with input from the parties. Some parties can bring up rules in the pre-interviews that will entice them to help problem solve (i.e. “don’t question motives). Some ground rules are established in the first meeting, but ground rules can change as the sessions progress.

Educating the parties entails having the parties explain their interests and their role in the conflict thus far to the other party(s). This includes telling their assumptions, their source of information, and their concerns. This can lead to a discussion about reliability of data and all parties can share their information sources and a common truth can be agreed upon. This stage also includes having discussions about the history of the conflict, which helps identify the key issues for each party. It is important to keep the parties focused on their interests, and this sometimes requires reframing statements and asking probing questions (i.e. what is your concern about that issue?).

Developing options is the first stage of problem solving. It is important for the parties to work together to develop a possible list of solutions. An outside expert can also provide more solutions that the parties may not have thought of. This stage is discussed more in subsequent chapters and other readings because this can be a tricky stage and there are many different models to come up with solutions and put them on the table.