Module 1: Introduction — Locus of Control

Core Principles of Conflict Resolution

The foundational orientation of this course rests on a deceptively simple but practically demanding insight: the only person you can change is yourself. In everyday conflict, the instinctive response is to locate the problem entirely in the other party — “the other person is the problem.” Yet this instinct forecloses the most powerful avenue for change available to any individual, which is the modification of one’s own conduct, attitudes, and expectations. How one functions within a community — the quality of attention, the spirit of engagement, the willingness to reflect — will be the primary determinant of whether relationships with others are constructive or corrosive.

A second core principle follows naturally: your power to influence a situation positively is likely greater than you think. People caught in escalating disputes often feel trapped, convinced that the dynamics are entirely beyond their control. The course challenges this assumption at every turn. Viktor Frankl, writing from the experience of Nazi concentration camps, articulated the deepest version of this principle: when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. The capacity for inner freedom — the freedom to choose one’s response even when external circumstances are fixed — is a form of power that conflict parties routinely underestimate.

A third principle reframes conflict itself. Conflict is normal. More than that, conflict can be positive and even life-giving. Relationships that appear entirely free of conflict may in fact be an indicator of ill-health — signs of suppression, avoidance, or a power dynamic so lopsided that the less powerful party has learned silence. Healthy conflict, worked through with integrity, builds creativity, sharpens perspectives, produces more robust solutions, clarifies identity, and generates new relational norms for managing future disagreements.

The Spirit and Skill of Resolution

A fourth principle distinguishes this course from purely technical approaches to conflict: healthy conflict resolution depends as much on your spirit as it does on your skill. Technique without relational integrity tends to produce clever but fragile agreements. The course therefore holds these two dimensions together: it teaches skills, models, and frameworks, while simultaneously attending to the inner life of the person who applies them. Each person carries a mountain to climb — a backstory of formative experiences, wounds, pressures, and aspirations that shapes how they enter every conflict encounter. Awareness of this reality generates the graciousness that effective resolution requires.

Principles five and six operate together and in creative tension. On one hand, there are situations in which the wisest intervention is to walk away — to disengage from a conflict rather than escalate it further. On the other hand, there are situations in which walking away abandons an important relationship or allows injustice to continue unchallenged. Determining which response is appropriate takes considerable reflection and discernment. The conclusion the course draws is that pausing and thinking almost always works better than jumping in feet first. The discipline of attention, reflection, and then engaged action — in that order — is the foundational practice of skilled conflict resolution.

Module 2: Core Terms

The Cycle of Conflict

Understanding conflict begins with understanding the psychological cycle through which it is perpetuated. David Augsburger observes that in stress, people regress to earlier learning, and since defensive conflict behaviours were often learned in fragmented, distorted fashion during experiences of high anxiety, they may be the least functional responses available. This observation points to the pre-conscious dimension of conflict: people often do not know why they respond as they do, because the beliefs and feelings driving their responses were formed before conscious memory.

The cycle of conflict can be described as follows. Conflict happens. The parties respond, and that response is shaped by their beliefs and attitudes — about conflict in general, about the specific context, about themselves, and about the other person. The consequences of that response then reinforce the original beliefs and attitudes, tightening the cycle. If a person believes that conflict is dangerous and that others are hostile, their defensive response will typically generate a hostile reaction from the other, which confirms the original belief. The cycle thus becomes self-sealing.

The negative spin cycle is particularly resistant to change because the beliefs and attitudes that drive it operate largely below the level of conscious awareness. The cycle invites a hard look at patterns: How is this conflict benefiting the parties? How have they been acting? What would it look and feel like to act differently? The course offers a crucial practical insight: it is easier to act ourselves into change than to think ourselves into change. Cognitive reframing alone rarely breaks a deeply ingrained conflict cycle; behavioural change must accompany and often precede attitudinal change.

Definitions of Conflict

The course employs multiple definitions of conflict, each illuminating a different dimension of the phenomenon.

The third definition is particularly significant for this course. It reframes conflict not as a pathological breakdown but as an epistemological opportunity — a moment in which the multiplicity of human perspectives becomes visible and negotiable. From this vantage point, the existence of conflicting realities is not a problem to be eliminated but a resource to be engaged.

Module 3: Cognition and Conflict Escalation

Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Justification

One of the most powerful forces driving conflict escalation is cognitive dissonance — the psychological discomfort experienced when a person holds two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The social psychologist Carol Tavris, in her work Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), documents in detail how powerfully the mind works to resolve this discomfort, not by changing behaviour, but by rewriting memory and narrative.

A classic example: a person who thinks of themselves as good will not easily accept evidence that they have yelled at someone, because good people do not yell. The mind resolves this tension in several ways — by minimizing the behaviour (“I spoke loudly and passionately, but did not yell”), by externalizing responsibility (“they made me do it”), or by creating an exception to the general rule (“the other person deserved it”). In the context of conflict, this means that people act badly, justify their behaviour as a legitimate response to the other’s provocation, and progressively attribute negative qualities to the other — either that the other’s behaviour justifies their own, or that the other is actually guilty of the very behaviours they themselves are exhibiting.

Over time, people tell stories about the past, and those stories reshape memory. What was once an interpretation becomes a recollection. The person comes to genuinely “remember” the other doing hurtful things, and to genuinely “remember” that they themselves never behaved that way. This deepening of distorted narrative is one of the primary reasons that long-standing conflicts become so difficult to resolve.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

Intimately connected to cognitive dissonance is the fundamental attribution error — a specific, predictable bias in how people interpret the behaviour of themselves versus others.

The pattern can be represented in a simple matrix. When we behave well, it reflects who we are. When we behave badly, we were forced into it by circumstances or by the other’s provocation. When the other person behaves well, they were forced into it by circumstances — it reveals nothing fundamental about them. When they behave badly, it reveals exactly who they are. This asymmetry is not consciously calculated; it is a product of how the mind organizes experience in order to protect the self-concept.

The attribution error produces several compounding effects in conflict situations. It shapes judgments of blameworthiness — the other is more culpable than oneself for the same behaviour. It shapes assessments of stability — the other’s bad behaviour is seen as a permanent trait, whereas one’s own is situational. It shapes perceptions of globality — the other is globally bad, not bad in a particular context. It generates assumptions about selfishness and negative intent on the other’s part that are not applied to oneself.

In group conflict, the attribution error pushes people to see all members of the opposing group as essentially the same — as sharing the negative characteristics attributed to the group — while seeing one’s own group as internally diverse. This dynamic underlies the logic of statements such as “you are either with us or with the terrorists,” in which the nuance within the opposing group is erased while the nuance within one’s own group is assumed.

Overcoming the attribution error requires two things: awareness of the error itself, and a fundamental shift in attitude. The key is to move from judgment to curiosity. Rather than assuming negative intent and character, the resolution-minded person asks: What might their back story be? What are their past experiences with people in situations like this? What might their experiences with me have been? These questions do not require abandoning one’s own perspective; they require holding it alongside a genuine openness to the perspective of the other. Listening — deeply, attentively, and without defensive reactivity — is the primary practice through which this shift is enacted.

Conflict Escalation

Patrick Lencioni’s work on organizational health identifies a pattern that recurs in groups of all kinds. Most groups exist in a state of artificial harmony — a surface-level pleasantness that masks unaddressed tensions. People do not address the conflicts that bubble just below the surface. At some point the pressure becomes too great, the conflict bubble breaks, and the confrontation that follows tends to be mean-spirited and personal because all the accumulated tension is released at once without the skills or the relationship capital to manage it constructively. Once the catharsis of that release passes, the group often relapses into artificial harmony, and the cycle begins again.

The course maps conflict escalation on a seven-level scale. At levels one through three, conflicts remain manageable and can be addressed by the parties themselves using interpersonal skills. At levels four and five, parties typically call for help — mediation or facilitated dialogue becomes necessary. At levels six and seven, the conflict has reached a crisis point. A defining characteristic of conflict at this intensity is the disappearance of neutral ground: as Foucault’s analysis of power anticipates, there is no neutral position. Each person is either an ally or an enemy.

Healthy Versus Unhealthy Conflict

Healthy conflict generates increased creativity, more robust solutions, greater clarity of perspective, energy and motivation, stronger teams, clearer group identity, and new norms for managing future conflicts. It is distinguished from destructive conflict not by its intensity but by the spirit and the skills with which it is engaged.

Unhealthy conflict, by contrast, produces escalatory spirals of bad behaviour, carries significant financial costs, causes damage to physical and mental health, affects parties well beyond the immediate participants, closes off other opportunities, and drains participants of energy.

The long-term consequences of chronically unhealthy conflict patterns in organizations, families, and communities are severe. Resources that could be devoted to creativity and growth are diverted to managing damage. Relationships that could be generative become brittle or break entirely. The course’s purpose is to equip students to interrupt these patterns and to work toward the kind of healthy, constructive conflict engagement that produces growth.

Module 4: Communication

The Standard Communication Model

Communication is the medium through which conflict either escalates or resolves. The standard communication model, as described by Betty Pries, begins with the observation that any communicative act involves an idea that emerges from a particular context; that idea is then encoded into language (or other signals); the encoded message travels through a channel; and then the listener decodes it according to their own context, experiences, and interpretive frameworks. The response then feeds back into the system.

At each point in this process — in the encoding, in the channel, and in the decoding — there are sources of noise that can distort the message. Physical noise (ambient sound), semantic noise (different meanings attached to the same words), cultural noise (different interpretive frameworks), and emotional noise (defensive or reactive states in either sender or receiver) all introduce the possibility of miscommunication.

Kraus and Morsella identify four models of communication that correspond to increasingly sophisticated understandings of how meaning is made:

1. The Encode-Decode Model holds that effective communication requires matching what is encoded with what is decoded — working to increase the signal-to-noise ratio through clarity of expression and careful listening.

2. The Intentionalist Model holds that determining what a speaker intended to communicate is as important as decoding the literal content of their words. Shared background knowledge is required to accurately infer intent.

3. The Perspective-Taking Model holds that clear communication requires taking into account the perspective from which the other person sees the situation — their history, values, relationships, and prior experiences.

4. The Dialogic Model holds that communication is less an interaction between individuals sending and receiving discrete messages, and more a dance in which communication partners together create meaning. Meaning is rooted not in any individual but in the social context of the relationship.

For conflict situations, the goal is to move toward the dialogic approach: noting places of disagreement, stepping into those disagreements rather than avoiding them, listening carefully and with full attention, and responding with careful consideration of the other’s viewpoint rather than from reactivity.

Communication Skills: I Statements, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

Three foundational communication skills are introduced for managing difficult conversations.

I statements are structured expressions of the effect of the other’s behaviour on oneself. The four-part structure is: (1) “I feel…” — naming the emotion; (2) “When you…” — naming the specific behaviour; (3) “Because…” — naming the link between the behaviour and the feeling; and (4) optionally, “I would prefer…” — naming an alternative behaviour.

The critical distinction is between “I find that offensive” (a statement about the objective offensiveness of the other’s behaviour, which invites debate about whether it really was offensive) and “I felt offended” (a statement of personal effect, which opens a conversation about impact and possible change). The I statement begins with radical ownership of one’s own feelings: the other person is not responsible for what one feels; they are responsible for the nature of their behaviour.

Paraphrasing is the practice of reflecting back what the other person has said, looking for the significance and the emotion that underlie the words — not parroting the words themselves, but demonstrating that one has heard and valued the emotional reality beneath the content. This is useful when the other person is sharing something important to them.

Summarizing is used when the other person has spoken at length. The skill involves listening for one or two key narrative points, identifying the primary emotion that underlies what has been heard, and reflecting that back in one or two sentences. The discipline of summarizing — staying brief, capturing the essence, naming the feeling — communicates genuine attention and understanding.

Intent, Action, and Effect

Betty Pries’s Intent-Action-Effect model identifies three distinct elements of any communicative act that are frequently confused in conflict situations.

In conflict, a common and destructive dynamic occurs when the listener assumes that the speaker’s intent matches the effect they experienced. If I am hurt by what you said, I assume you intended to hurt me. This assumption is almost always inaccurate — intent is private and cannot be directly read from action — but it drives the attribution error and the cycle of self-justification. The speaker, for their part, may insist that because their intent was benign, any hurt the listener experienced is illegitimate. This is equally mistaken: what was said may be hurtful regardless of intent, because the listener’s back story shapes how they receive the message.

The model offers a productive conversational structure: name one’s own effect clearly, name the specific behaviour (the action), and then inquire — with genuine openness and curiosity — about the other’s intent. This inquiry is the key move that breaks the pattern of mutual attribution. It is not always safe or appropriate to have this conversation directly, but even using the model as an internal reflective tool can change how one relates to a difficult situation. The process through which grievances are formed — assuming negative intent, obsessing about the hurt, holding the other to expectations they cannot meet — can be interrupted by this model.

Module 5: Conflict Styles

Johari’s Window

The Johari Window, developed by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, is a framework for understanding self-knowledge and its limits in the context of relationships. The window has four quadrants organized around two axes: what is known to self versus not known to self, and what is known to others versus not known to others.

• Arena: known to self and known to others — the area of open, shared awareness.
• Blind Spots: not known to self but known to others — aspects of one’s behaviour that others observe but of which one remains unaware.
• Facade: known to self but not known to others — aspects of oneself that one chooses not to disclose.
• Unknown: known neither to self nor to others — the domain of unconscious motivations, repressed experiences, and undiscovered capacities.

For conflict resolution, the Arena is less important than the other three quadrants. It is not uncommon for people in conflict to act in ways that surprise themselves — to discover, through the conflict process, blind spots they did not know they had. The Facade is relevant when parties have withheld information or feelings that, once shared, fundamentally alter the conflict dynamic. The Unknown region suggests that conflict sometimes reveals things about both parties — needs, fears, patterns of response — that had not previously been articulated by either.

The window counsels humility: in reflecting on conflict styles, there may be a great deal about oneself and one’s ways of functioning of which one is simply unaware. Testing self-description with trusted others who know one well is an important discipline.

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Inventory

In the 1970s, building on the earlier Managerial Grid Model of Blake and Mouton, Ken Thomas and Ralph Kilmann developed the Conflict Mode Inventory, which maps five distinct styles of conflict engagement on two axes: concern for self/concern for outcomes (the vertical axis) and concern for others/concern for relationships (the horizontal axis).

Almost no one exists at the extreme corners of this model; real conflict behaviour is distributed across the space. The model is descriptive rather than prescriptive — it names the behaviours associated with each style to help people understand the sources of their own responses. Different contexts call for different modes: competing may be appropriate in emergencies; accommodating may be appropriate when the issue matters more to the other person; avoiding may be appropriate when the timing is wrong; collaborating is most appropriate when the interests of both parties and the quality of the relationship are both important.

Mitchell Hammer’s Intercultural Conflict Styles

A significant critique of the Thomas-Kilmann model is that it is too deeply grounded in mainstream North American cultural assumptions. Mitchell Hammer’s work on intercultural conflict styles addresses this limitation directly. The groups to which people belong — defined by gender, ethnicity, religious community, generational experience, and other markers — play powerful roles in shaping values, interpretations, and behaviours in conflict. Culture is patterned and those patterns are identifiable, yet not everyone in an identifiable group lives the patterns in the same way, and not all members of the group adhere fully to the patterns.

Hammer’s insight can be represented by imagining the Thomas-Kilmann space not as populated by individual points, but by clusters. The centre of the cluster for one cultural group may be located at a very different point in the space than the centre of the cluster for another group. Individual variation remains within each cluster, but the cluster itself has a characteristic shape and location.

A critical warning accompanies this framework: we must be careful not to stereotype. Stereotypes are statements that all members of a group occupy the same point. They are resistant to evidence — when someone does not fit the stereotype, the mind produces protective responses: “You’re not like the rest,” “You aren’t really a member of that group,” or “You are one of the good ones.” The correct use of Hammer’s framework involves three observations: a group will have a preference for a particular style; all styles will be present to some degree in a large enough group; and not every member will practice the preferred style in the same way, and not all members will have the preferred style.

Module 6: Apology

What Constitutes a Real Apology

The course distinguishes between two kinds of apologies: reflexive apologies (“I’m sorry!”) spoken automatically in minor social collisions, and significant apologies that address genuine harm. A significant apology involves a structured transfer of power and shame. In the harm relationship, the person who caused harm holds power — they are not in fear of reprisal and have not lost voice, agency, or protection. The person experiencing harm has had their agency, voice, and sense of safety compromised. A genuine apology is an act in which the person who caused harm acknowledges the reality of that asymmetry and takes meaningful steps to restore it.

A significant apology consists of several elements. First, it must acknowledge the specific harm done — not in a vague, risk-managed way (“I’m sorry for any harm I may have caused you”) but with specificity: naming the behaviour, naming the harm it caused, and recognizing the emotional consequences.

Second, a genuine apology is offered without defence. The temptation is to explain one’s good reasons for the behaviour, to provide context that mitigates culpability. But to introduce a defence is to undercut the apology — it shifts the conversation from the harm done to the reasonableness of the person who caused it. The course holds that the discipline of saying “I have no excuse for what I did” short-circuits the attribution error. It is to block one of the most powerful ways that minds naturally work to protect the self-concept.

Third, the apology involves an expression of regret — a sincere statement that the fact of having hurt the other person has caused the apologizer genuine distress. Because the apology is offered without defence, it leaves the offender vulnerable, and that vulnerability is not a weakness in the apology but its core.

Fourth, where harm has resulted in material loss, an apology must include restitution. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu observed: “If I steal your pencil, then apologize for doing so, but keep your pencil, I have done nothing.”

Apology and the Legal System

The legal system operates as a blame model: if you admit you caused harm, you are by definition responsible, and that admission can be used against you in civil proceedings. For this reason, most insurance policies contain clauses to the effect that if a policyholder apologizes, they may have waived their insurance coverage. This creates a structural disincentive for the kind of genuine acknowledgment that both moral integrity and relational healing require.

Research suggests, however, that many lawsuits are driven less by the desire for financial compensation than by the desire for recognition — for acknowledgment that harm was done and that it mattered. A genuine apology, offered early, may in many cases decrease rather than increase the risk of litigation. Several Canadian provinces have enacted apology legislation that allows expressions of regret to be made without those expressions being admissible as evidence of liability.

Large Group and National Apologies

The principles of significant apology apply at the collective level. The course examines two Canadian examples. The internment of Japanese Canadian citizens during World War II resulted in the forced relocation and loss of property of thousands of Japanese Canadians. Not until 1987 did the Canadian government issue an apology, following years of lobbying by descendants of the internees. The Residential School System for Aboriginal peoples of Canada, designed to “kill the Indian in the child,” produced generations of deeply damaged children unable to parent their own children in healthy ways. On June 11, 2008, the Canadian government apologized to Aboriginal Canadians for the decisions, actions, and legacy of the Residential School System.

These national apologies raise complex questions about whether they meet the criteria of genuine apology — whether they acknowledge specific harm with specificity, avoid defence, express genuine regret, and include meaningful restitution. They also raise questions about who speaks for a nation, who counts as harmed, and whether an apology can be meaningful when those who caused the harm are no longer alive.

Module 7: Forgiveness

Defining Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the human repertoire. The course begins by clearing away common misconceptions.

What forgiveness is not: Forgiveness is not accepting or tolerating injustice. It is not forgetting — though sometimes forgetting follows forgiveness naturally. It is not the suppression or abandonment of anger — anger can be a healthy and appropriate response to genuine wrong, and forgiveness does not require that it be denied or eliminated.

What forgiveness is: Forgiveness involves deciding that one will not allow the action of the other to continue to control one’s inner life. It is the letting go of resentment, bitterness, and the desire for revenge. It involves seeing the other person as a complex human being capable of both good and bad, rather than as simply and purely evil. It involves wishing the other person well — not necessarily seeking proximity to them or resuming a damaged relationship, but releasing them from the grip of one’s own resentment.

Two things notably absent from this definition are significant. First, forgiveness does not require reconciliation — the restoration of the relationship to its former state. A person can forgive someone and still choose not to resume contact with them, particularly when the relationship involved ongoing harm. Second, forgiveness does not require that the offender request it. Forgiveness is primarily an internal act on the part of the person harmed, an act that releases that person from the ongoing costs of carrying resentment. It is something one does for oneself, not something one does for the other.

Forgiveness may be understood as releasing the other from any obligation they may have to oneself — extending a hand of grace. This is a demanding practice, and the course does not minimize that difficulty.

The Forgiveness Model

The course presents a model of the forgiveness process as a journey through several stages. A harm event occurs, generating pain and hurt. The initial response may be denial — a refusal to fully acknowledge what happened. As denial breaks down, anger emerges. Anger, if not processed, can harden into resentment — a chronic, corrosive state in which the pain is regularly revisited and the story of the harm is rehearsed. At some point, the person arrives at a choice: whether to continue carrying the resentment or to move toward release. Choosing release opens the possibility of compassion — seeing the other with the complexity they actually have — and then exit from the cycle of pain. The model acknowledges that this journey is rarely linear; many people recycle through earlier stages multiple times.

A key principle from trauma theory informs this model: trauma that is not transformed is transferred. Unprocessed pain is not contained; it spills into other relationships, into the next generation, and into one’s own inner life. The choice to work toward forgiveness is therefore not simply a personal benefit; it is an act with social consequences.

The Amish and Forgiveness

The response of the Amish community to the 2006 Nickel Mines school shooting — in which a gunman killed five Amish girls before killing himself — became internationally noted for the speed and completeness of the community’s forgiveness of the perpetrator. The course uses this example to explore the conditions that make such a response possible.

The Amish began with a deep communal expectation of forgiveness, rooted in their theological tradition. They have a history of persecution stretching back to the 16th century, which means they have a repository of culture and experience for responding to grievous harm. Their communal rather than individualist orientation means that the burden of processing harm is shared across the community rather than borne by isolated individuals. And rather than transferring the trauma — passing it unchanged to the next generation — they have developed practices for transforming it. They are a people who have lived their pain but found a way not to get lost in it.

One final note from the course: for some who have left Amish communities, there are accounts of coerced forgiveness — forgiveness demanded before it has been authentically worked through — which is not genuine forgiveness but a socially enforced performance of it.

How Grievances are Formed

The course traces a four-stage process through which unresolved hurts become entrenched grievances. First, a hurt occurs that the person perceives as being about them and unique to them — as a personal attack rather than as the consequence of the other’s own struggles, limitations, or blindness. Second, the person “rents” a great deal of psychic space to the hurt, giving up power over their own emotional life by allowing the hurt to dominate consciousness. Third, the person comes to believe that letting go of the hurt means saying the hurt was not important — a false equivalence that binds them to continued suffering. Fourth, the person holds the one who hurt them to unenforceable rules, expecting a perfection of behaviour or sensitivity that no human can provide.

The course’s response to this pattern is relational: we need to tie our healing not to the person who caused the harm — who may never be capable of or willing to give us what we need — but to our own internal work. Our task becomes letting go of our need to have the other person fix our pain.

Module 8: Conflict Analysis

A Systems Perspective

Betty Pries’s approach to conflict analysis draws on systems theory — the understanding that individual conflicts do not occur in isolation but always within a broader system of relationships, structures, and patterns. Edwin Friedman’s work suggests that every conflict operates within a system, and systems exert themselves via patterns. Understanding those patterns is essential to understanding and intervening in conflict effectively.

The systems perspective is represented through a model of concentric circles. An individual (such as Sally, the case study used in the course) exists at the centre. Around her are the interpersonal relationships she has — with specific colleagues, family members, or friends. Around those are the small group or team dynamics — the micro-system. Around those are organizational factors — policies, culture, leadership dynamics. And around all of these is the macro-system — the broader social, economic, and cultural context.

When Sally begins to exhibit problematic behaviour at work, the instinct is to locate the problem in Sally. The systems perspective asks where in the system the problem actually lives. Often the “symptom bearer” — the person whose behaviour is most visible or disruptive — is expressing a dysfunction that exists at one of the larger system levels. Treating Sally’s behaviour in isolation, without attending to the organizational or interpersonal factors that shaped it, will produce temporary relief at best.

Conflict triangles are a specific systems pattern. Tension between two parties (A and B) tends to pull in a third party (C) — a colleague, a supervisor, a family member — who then becomes embedded in the conflict. The C position is uncomfortable because each of A and B pulls on C to take their side. The systems intervention is to help C remain in a “self-differentiated” relationship to both A and B.

Self-Differentiation

Self-differentiation, a concept drawn from family systems theory (Murray Bowen and Edwin Friedman), is the capacity to be emotionally connected to another person while also being clear about where one’s own responsibility begins and ends — and where the other person’s responsibility begins and ends.

Self-differentiation is not disengagement — it is not coldness or emotional distance. It is precisely the dual move of genuine emotional connection combined with clarity about boundaries. This dual move is the key to functioning effectively in the C position of a conflict triangle. When a person in the C position becomes “hooked” — when their own anxiety is triggered by the dynamics of the A-B conflict — they lose self-differentiation, and the conflict typically escalates.

The key practices of self-differentiation include: staying conscious of one’s own anxiety; focusing attention on where responsibility for resolution actually lies; asking good questions that help each party understand their own circumstances; avoiding the temptation to advise or to solve the conflict for the parties; and maintaining emotional connection without taking sides. As the person in the C position, one always has three choices: leave, entrench the conflict, or engage in a way that contributes to health.

Module 9: Polarities and Sources of Conflict

Understanding Polarities

A polarity is a particular kind of conflict that is often mistaken for a problem to be solved. It is a disagreement between two poles of a value tension — a yes/no conflict that is actually a both/and reality. Polarities cannot be resolved by choosing one side; they can only be managed by living with both sides in creative tension.

Common polarities encountered in social, organizational, and family life include: clarity versus flexibility; tradition versus change; autocratic versus participatory leadership; plan versus act; self versus other; being versus doing; critique versus encouragement. In each case, what looks like a yes/no choice (“We should be more flexible” / “No, we need to be more clear”) is actually a both/and reality — the organizational system needs both clarity and flexibility, applied appropriately in different contexts.

The key principles of polarity management are several. First, the more one emphasizes the upside of one’s preferred pole and the downside of the other’s pole, the more one begins to live in the downside of one’s own pole. Rigid clarity produces brittleness; extreme flexibility produces chaos. Second, in order to gain the genuine benefits of one pole, one needs to also seek the benefits of the other. Third, when polarity is misread as a binary problem, parties tend to over-emphasize their own side and move toward an extreme emphasis on the goodness of their position.

Polarities are experienced as conflicts but are actually disagreements about deeper foundational values. Yes/no conflicts can be raised to a polarity discussion as a way to build understanding between parties — moving from the surface argument about a specific issue to the underlying value tension that gives the argument its intensity.

Distinguishing Conflicts, Problems, and Polarities

The course draws a three-way distinction that is practically important for choosing appropriate intervention strategies.

A problem can be solved. Parties get together, examine the problem, brainstorm ideas, reach agreement on the best solution, implement it, and the problem is done.

A conflict can be resolved. There may be disagreement about the nature of the problem or about the best solution. Resolution involves the work of reaching common ground on both the problem and the solution. If done well, the conflict is resolved and the problem solved.

A polarity can only be managed. The parties live with the polarity over the long term. They find ways to balance the two poles; they learn to address the conflicts and problems that flow from the polarity; they solve and resolve those specific conflicts, but the polarity itself remains.

Sources of Conflict

The course identifies five primary drivers or sources of conflict, drawn from the conflict analysis literature.

Value conflicts arise when parties hold different values as foundational. Clues include different criteria for evaluating what is right or wrong, a deep focus on determining who is right and who is wrong, and a sense of passionate ideological investment in the dispute. Value conflicts may masquerade as disputes about specific issues, but the intensity behind the issue points to a deeper disagreement about what matters most.

Relationship conflicts arise from the dynamics of the relationship itself: misperceptions and stereotypes, poor communication and miscommunication, repetitive negative behaviour patterns, incompatible personality types or relationship needs, and the weight of past experience with others that is brought into the current relationship. The relationship nature of the driver is often hidden behind actions taken on the basis of misperceptions.

Moods and externals are factors that are unrelated to the substance of the dispute but shape how it is experienced and expressed. These include previous psychological history or needs, personality type differences, and pre-existing values or emotional states that make a party more reactive.

Data conflicts arise when the issue is the data itself. There may be a lack of information, misinformation, different views on what information is relevant, different interpretations of the same data, or different understandings of procedure. The attribution error shapes the interpretation of data in ways that parallel its shaping of the interpretation of persons.

Structure conflicts arise from features of the situation rather than from the parties’ dispositions. Unequal control, ownership, or distribution of resources; unequal power or authority; geographical or environmental factors that hinder cooperation; and time constraints can all generate conflict that has little to do with the intentions or character of the parties.

Interest conflicts arise from perceived or actual competition over substantive, procedural, or psychological interests. Psychological interests — recognition, belonging, security, self-determination, and success — are particularly significant because they are foundational; when they are not met, parties will find or create substantive conflicts through which to express their unmet needs.

Module 10: Power

Defining Power

Power is one of the most contested concepts in conflict resolution theory. The course begins by surfacing several working definitions. Power can be understood as: the ability to get what you want over the objection of others; the capacity to bring about change; the ability to influence another to do something they would not do on their own, or to act against their own interests; and the possession of both a voice (what I say counts) and a choice (I can decide the outcome regardless of what others want).

In popular culture, power is consistently represented as power over others — as domination, control, and the ability to compel compliance. Phrases like “power move,” “power play,” and “just politics and power” all invoke this image.

Feminist theorists offer a richer typology. Power over is the familiar model of domination and control. Power to is the capacity to act, to accomplish, to achieve — a generative rather than dominating form of power. Power with is relational power — the capacity that emerges from coalition, solidarity, and cooperative action. These three forms are not simply variations on a theme; they represent fundamentally different understandings of what power is.

Relational power holds that power does not belong to the individual but rather to the group. The use of power resources is effective only to the extent that it is endorsed by the people against whom it is mobilized. This insight — drawn from the work of Hannah Arendt and others — has profound implications for understanding both the limits of coercive power and the possibilities of collective action.

Michel Foucault’s Post-Modern Approach to Power

Michel Foucault’s analysis offers a further and more unsettling account. For Foucault, power is not primarily a resource that some people possess and others lack. Power is a property that inheres in social relationships and social structures — it circulates within those relationships in a way that makes everyone, not just the dominated, subject to power relations.

The deep connection between power and knowledge means that what counts as truth is itself a product of power relations. Systems of knowledge can be created and maintained in ways that enhance inequality, keep those with few resources from demanding more assistance, and keep them from pressuring for change — not through overt coercion but through the shaping of what seems natural, normal, and obvious. This analysis has significant implications for mediation and conflict resolution: the question is not only what power resources the parties have, but how they are embedded in larger relations of power, and what forms of knowledge circulate in the room that keep those relations of power intact.

The Victim-Villain-Rescuer Triangle

The Victim-Villain-Rescuer (VVR) triangle describes a common dynamic in which people occupy roles that are both emotionally compelling and self-reinforcing. The case study of “Sue” illustrates the dynamic: a person who has experienced victimization (past discrimination) takes on a rescuer role (hired to address gender discrimination in her workplace), but employs power-over strategies in the rescuer role. In doing so, she is perceived by others as a villain, loses her position, and becomes a victim again — confirming her original orientation.

The triangle illustrates how power can be misused even by those whose motivation is justice. The analysis turns on the distinction between power over (the mode Sue used — attacking, pressuring, coercing), power with (working cooperatively with those she sought to help — building their capacity and coalition), and power to (the generative, enabling use of her personal resources and passion to accomplish change through legitimate means).

The triangle also appears in discussions of bullying. Bullying is defined as conscious, wilful, and deliberate activity intended to harm, to induce fear through the threat of further aggression, and to create terror in the target. This distinguishes bullying from conflict, which involves at least some degree of mutuality and the possibility of engagement between parties. The bystander in bullying situations occupies a C position with particular moral weight.

Module 11: Positions and Interests

The Iceberg Model

The distinction between positions and interests is one of the most practically important frameworks in the entire course. A position is the stated outcome that a party wants — what they say they want. An interest is the underlying need, desire, fear, or concern that motivates the position.

The iceberg metaphor captures the relationship between them. The position is visible above the water line. Below the water line lie the interests — experiences, relationships, stories, principles, and values — that give the position its meaning and emotional charge. If parties remain focused on their competing positions, they will never discover the full depth of what each actually thinks and needs, nor will they find the creative solutions that serve both parties’ genuine interests.

Interests are divided into wants and needs. Wants are interests related to substance or process — tangible interests in specific outcomes or in how the process unfolds. Needs are interests that operate at the level of basic psychological makeup — the intangible interests in recognition, safety, belonging, self-determination, and success that every human being carries.

Psychological interests fall into five broad categories: (1) self-determination — “I can do it myself”; (2) belonging — “they are not letting me play”; (3) recognition, often expressed as fairness — “his piece is bigger than mine” or “you did a good job”; (4) security — “are you safe to be around?”; and (5) success in some part of one’s life — “I can do it.” If these psychological needs are not met, parties will reliably generate conflicts over substantive issues as a vehicle for expressing their unmet needs.

Moving from Positions to Interests

The skills and attitudes required to move from positional to interest-based engagement include:

Acknowledgment — summarizing or paraphrasing what the other person has said, demonstrating that one has heard and understood their perspective.

Inquiry — asking open-ended questions designed to invite the other person to say more about what is important to them: “Tell me more,” “What were you hoping for when you said that?”, “What meaning did you take from that?”

Genuine curiosity — bringing an attitude of openness rather than evaluation to what the other shares.

Disclosure — sharing one’s own interests when appropriate, modelling the vulnerability required for interest-based conversation.

Walking with two feet — holding one’s own perspective and the other’s perspective simultaneously.

When parties have deeply entrenched positions and there appears to be no common ground, moving down both icebergs builds understanding. Greater understanding can begin to shift attitudes. It can enable parties to move away from the attribution error and see each other with something closer to compassion. New experiences of each other then become possible, generating the relational conditions for eventual resolution.

Module 12: The Power, Rights, Interests Paradigm

Introduction

The Power, Rights, and Interests framework, developed by Ury, Brett, and Goldberg, provides a comparative map of the major approaches to conflict resolution. Every conflict resolution process can be characterized by the primary currency it uses to determine outcomes: power, rights, or interests.

Power-based processes resolve conflict by determining who is more powerful — who can compel the other to comply. This may take the form of direct coercion, economic pressure, strikes, or litigation threats.

Rights-based processes resolve conflict by determining what rights are at stake and whose rights have been violated. The paradigmatic rights-based process is court adjudication, but arbitration and rights-based negotiation (e.g., with lawyers) also fall in this category.

Interest-based processes resolve conflict by exploring the underlying needs, desires, fears, and concerns of the parties and seeking solutions that meet those interests. Mediation (in most of its forms) and integrative negotiation are the primary interest-based processes.

Power-Based Conflict Resolution

Advantages of power-based resolution: It allows for an immediate response; it gets things done; it can resolve deadlocks; and it can be used in the interest of a weaker party who lacks other resources.

Disadvantages: Power methods are disenfranchising — they take decisions away from those who are affected by them. Power is inherently win/lose. Power is easy to subvert — those who lose a power contest will work to undermine the outcome. Power can create escalating interactions, as parties respond to power moves with counter-power moves. Power systems can create opposition that cannot be deterred. And organizations do not get the benefit of the collective wisdom of their members when decisions are made by power rather than by collaborative deliberation.

Rights-Based Conflict Resolution

In healthy systems, rights codify power and interests in order to manage power and maximize general interests — they protect the many by limiting the arbitrary exercise of power by the few. In unhealthy systems, rights codify power and interests in ways that maximize power for the few and minimize the general interest. Rights can be framed positively (everyone has the right to practice the religion of their choice) or negatively (everyone has the right to be free from discrimination on the grounds of religion).

Advantages of rights-based resolution: The system provides relative consistency, general fairness, and predictability. It is not random — it reflects some external standard. It provides avenues for minorities to legitimate their claims against majorities.

Disadvantages: Rights can be used as a trump card, to the exclusion of responsibility. We cannot create rules for everything, so rights systems inevitably have gaps. Rights-based systems produce winners and losers; consistent application of rules is often more important to the system than the quality of the individual outcome. Time and expense can be considerable. And the strict application of rights can be alienating.

Interest-Based Conflict Resolution

Interest-based processes explore desires, needs, fears, and concerns — the deep territory beneath stated positions. This exploration is best done through mediation and negotiation.

Advantages: Interest-based processes result in greater ownership of the outcome, because the parties themselves have determined it. They rely on the wisdom of the participants. They often create more comprehensive solutions that address the full range of parties’ concerns. Those who are impacted by decisions make those decisions. Solutions tend to be longer lasting. Decisions are more likely to address the underlying concerns that generated the conflict.

Disadvantages: Interest-based processes can be time-consuming. Interests may be incompatible or too difficult to articulate clearly. The conversation may inadvertently level the playing field in ways that harm a less powerful party who would be better served by an appeal to rights.

Choosing Among the Three

Interest-based systems should be used most frequently. Rights-based systems are the choice where interest-based options are not appropriate: where the parties’ perceptions of power and rights are such that no negotiation space exists; where a decision must be made about a non-negotiable value issue; or where the issue is one of public importance. Power-based systems are so damaging to relationships that they should be avoided if possible and treated as the option of last resort.

A stable conflict resolution system is one in which interest-based processes are predominant, rights-based processes are available as a backstop, and power-based processes are minimized. An unstable system is one characterized by overemphasis on power, a rights-based framework that has few interest-based alternatives, and little effective use of interest-based approaches.

Module 13: Interpersonal Conflict Resolution

Emotions and Conflict

Emotions are not obstacles to effective conflict resolution; they are its indispensable content. Yet they are among the most difficult dimensions of conflict to navigate well. The question is not whether to express emotion but how to do so in ways that advance rather than undermine the conversation.

In conflict, a person who is emotionally expressive is likely to be read by a calm interlocutor through the lens of the attribution error — as manipulative, out of control, or aggressive. At the same time, the emotionally expressive person is likely to read the calm interlocutor’s composure as coldness or indifference. These differing emotional responses could usefully be explored using the Intent-Action-Effect model: what were the intents and effects connected to each party’s emotional style?

The patterns of emotional response are shaped by many factors: family of origin, personality, gender, culture, past experiences, and learning in various social contexts. Under stress, people revert to their default emotional patterns — and those defaults were shaped in contexts that may have very little to do with the current situation.

The primary emotion in conflict is frequently not the emotion that is most visible. Anger, for instance, is often secondary to hurt, which is itself often secondary to fear — fear that one’s sense of self, one’s place in the relationship, one’s sense of the world as ordered and meaningful, has been violated. When a person perceives that violation, the adrenalin response is triggered, and the available responses narrow to fight or flight. Because conflict conversations increase adrenalin, they can degrade the very cognitive capacities needed to navigate them well — another reason that pausing and reflecting before engaging is so important.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence, developed in the work of Peter Salovey, John Mayer, and Daniel Goleman, identifies four components and four associated skills relevant to conflict resolution.

The four components are: self-awareness (knowing what one is feeling and being able to name it); self-regulation (the ability to regulate one’s own emotions and emotional expression); social awareness (attunement to the emotional climate of a group or relationship); and social regulation (the ability to act in ways that influence the emotional expression of others).

The four associated skills are: perceiving emotions (detecting and deciphering emotions in faces, voices, body language, and cultural artifacts); using emotions (harnessing emotions to support thinking and problem-solving); understanding emotions (comprehending the language of emotions and the complex relationships among them); and managing emotions (regulating emotions in oneself and others).

With emotional intelligence, it becomes possible to enter conflict in new ways: with openness to the other’s story, with a clear sense of one’s own identity and the sources of one’s own story, with the capacity to see the impact of one’s own behaviour on others, and with the ability to own and describe one’s feelings.

The Five Dysfunctions Framework

Patrick Lencioni’s model of team dysfunction, applied broadly to organizational and interpersonal contexts, identifies five interlocking failures. At the base is an absence of trust — without trust, parties will not be vulnerable with each other, and without vulnerability, real relationship is impossible. Trust, in this model, has three components: the belief that the other cares about me, the perception that the other is competent, and the perception that the other is consistent.

On top of absent trust sits fear of conflict — conflict is avoided because it feels unsafe. Without the capacity to engage in conflict, teams and relationships cannot surface the real issues that need to be addressed. Without real conflict, there is no genuine commitment — people comply with decisions they have not truly bought into. Without commitment, there is no accountability — no willingness to call out behaviours or results that fall short of what was agreed. And without accountability, the group fails to achieve its results — it becomes focused on individual self-protection rather than collective outcomes.

Brene Brown’s research on vulnerability is directly relevant here: if people do not have the capacity to be vulnerable, conflict conversations are entered from behind a wall of defensiveness. Sharing one’s vulnerable reality with another person gives that other person the capacity to be gracious within the context of a trusting relationship.

Module 14: Negotiation

Overview of Negotiation

According to the 2008 Peace Process Yearbook, in international and national conflicts over the preceding fifteen years, only 7.5% ended with a military victory by one party. The negotiation route — long and difficult — prevailed in 92.5% of cases. If this is true at the international level, it is even more true at the interpersonal and community level: the vast majority of conflicts are ultimately dealt with through some form of negotiation.

Distributive Versus Integrative Negotiation

The most fundamental distinction in negotiation theory is between distributive (positional, competitive, zero-sum) and integrative (interest-based, cooperative, varying-sum) approaches.

In distributive negotiation, the resources available for distribution are treated as fixed. One party’s gain is another’s loss. The goal of each party is to maximize their own share of the fixed pie. Information is minimal and strategically disclosed. Decision-making is oriented toward taking and holding positions and splitting the difference.

In integrative negotiation, there are ways to expand the resources available for division. The goal is to seek integration of objectives so that there is maximum benefit for both parties. Information is constantly exchanged in order to gain the fullest possible picture of the situation. Decision-making is built around assessing alternatives and finding creative solutions.

Interest-Based Negotiation: The Seven Elements

The course presents a comprehensive framework for interest-based negotiation organized around seven elements.

Interests — what people really want. The position is the outcome one wants to achieve; the interest is the underlying need, desire, hope, fear, or concern. Exploring interests involves wide-ranging conversation, open-ended and curious questions, genuine demonstration of interest in the other’s interests, and disclosure of one’s own interests as appropriate.

Options — what possible agreements exist. Generating options begins by redefining the problem in terms of interests rather than positions. If someone names a position, it is reframed as an option. Brainstorming is the primary tool: generating as many possible solutions as possible before evaluating any of them.

Alternatives — what one will do if no agreement is reached. The key concept is the BATNA: Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement — the best outcome one can achieve without the other party’s agreement. Each party has their own BATNA, which is not disclosed to the other. Unlike an option, an alternative does not require the other’s consent. Knowing one’s own BATNA and its consequences is crucial; thinking about the other’s BATNA is also strategically important. One’s BATNA sets the floor below which no agreement is acceptable.

Legitimacy — how parties know they are not being treated unfairly. External standards or criteria — objective benchmarks such as market value, legal precedent, expert opinion, or community norms — are used to measure the acceptability of proposed outcomes. These standards address both the fairness of the process and the fairness of the outcome. Legitimate standards should be established before options are assessed, not after.

Relationship — readiness to deal with the relationship dimension. The substantive problem and the relationship problem must be clearly separated; even if there is a relationship problem, it does not follow that the other person is the problem. Historical perspective is useful: what was the relationship like initially? What changed? The goal is to address the relationship problem directly, and when agreement is reached, to be clear about future expectations.

Communication — readiness to listen and talk effectively. Communication is likely part of the problem, the means for solving it, and part of the solution. Effective negotiation communication involves balancing asserting one’s own perspective and empathizing with the other’s; using open-ended questions; practicing active listening, paraphrasing, and reframing; and maintaining the fundamental shift in attitude from judgment to curiosity.

Commitments — what commitments to seek and make. Process commitments at the beginning of negotiation include: negotiating in good faith, being an active participant, making full disclosure in a timely way, avoiding positional bargaining, ensuring one has the authority to negotiate and decide, and providing accurate data. Outcome commitments should be drafted together, clearly, and comprehensively.

Module 15: Mediation 1

Defining Mediation

Mediation is a decision-making and conflict resolution process — sometimes described as facilitated confrontation — in which the parties are assisted by a neutral third party. The critical word is “assisted”: the mediator does not decide; the parties do. The mediator brings skills, techniques, and knowledge to the conversation that help the parties do the work they need to do. The goal is to assist parties in reaching an outcome to which each can assent.

The mediator is always in the C position of the conflict triangle — present in the conflict, but not a party to it. The essential discipline of mediation is self-differentiation: remaining genuinely connected to both parties, caring about what happens to them, while ensuring that the responsibility for the conflict and its resolution remains squarely with the parties themselves. Taking control of the resolution of a conflict shifts the line of primary tension from A-B to mediator-A or mediator-B, making the mediator responsible for an outcome they cannot control and leaving the parties no longer responsible for their own resolution.

The giving of responsibility to the parties extends to deciding what is talked about. This is not simply a procedural nicety; it is central to the mediator’s role of creating a safe environment for the conversation.

Pre-Mediation

There is debate in the mediation field about whether pre-mediation contact with parties is appropriate. Some argue against it, on the grounds that it introduces bias, leads to a more scripted mediation, and may lock parties more firmly into their positions before the session begins.

The course’s position is that pre-mediation contact is generally beneficial. Bias can be triggered in approximately two seconds at the start of a mediation session regardless of whether pre-mediation contact has occurred; skilled mediators develop the capacity to set aside the first telling of a story before meeting the second person. Pre-mediation serves multiple important functions: it allows the mediator to describe the process in detail and answer questions; it allows parties to tell their story and begin to feel heard; it builds rapport and trust in the process; it allows the mediator to assess appropriateness for mediation and identify potential trouble spots; it allows mediation to be an informed choice; and it prepares the parties for the session.

Logistics questions that must be resolved before mediation begins include: who needs to be present; what will and will not be discussed; the purpose of the session; when and where it will take place; what location feels neutral and safe; and what the seating arrangement will look like.

The Classic Mediation Model

The four stages of the classic mediation model closely follow the structure of the interpersonal conflict resolution process:

Stage 1: Open the dialogue. The mediator introduces themselves and the process, establishes ground rules, and creates the container for the conversation.

Stage 2: Hear from both sides. Each party tells their story. The mediator listens, paraphrases, and summarizes. The goal is for each party to feel heard, and for the mediator to develop an understanding of each party’s experience.

Stage 3: Build understanding. This is the core of the mediation — using the tools of Intent-Action-Effect and Positions-Interests to help parties understand each other at a deeper level. The mediator helps parties move below their positions to the interests that animate them. Starting points for this stage are: what is most pressing for the parties; where early success might be achieved; and what the parties have in common.

Stage 4: Plan resolution and test agreements. Options are generated and evaluated against legitimate standards, and an agreement is drafted. Post-mediation follow-up checks in with participants and verifies that agreements are holding.

Module 16: Mediation 2

Variable Features of Mediation

Mediation is not a single, uniform process. It varies along several dimensions: whether it is voluntary or mandatory; the extent to which parties have a choice of mediator; the qualifications and expertise required of the mediator; the mediator’s responsibilities toward the parties, toward third parties, and toward outside standards; and the degree and scope of confidentiality.

Confidentiality is foundational to the integrity of mediation: without it, parties cannot speak freely, and the process cannot function. The standard principle is that what is shared in mediation remains within the mediation process and cannot be introduced in subsequent court proceedings. The limits of confidentiality are discussed in Module 23.

Four Models of Mediation

The course identifies four major models of mediation that vary along several continua: how much the mediator intervenes regarding outcomes; how much the process seeks therapeutic change in the parties; how much the process adheres to fixed procedures; what role past events and future possibilities play; the legal status of the outcome; and the independence and neutrality of the mediator.

Settlement Mediation (also known as compromise mediation) focuses on incremental bargaining toward a midpoint that both parties can accept. Its main strength is familiarity — most people understand the logic of positional bargaining and the splitting of differences. Its weaknesses are significant: it completely ignores interests, and it can be difficult to close the final gap because agreeing with the other person feels like losing. The standard is “let’s get the job done.”

Facilitative Mediation (also known as interest-based or problem-solving mediation) grew in the 1980s in response to critiques of settlement mediation as overly controlled. The facilitator is the process expert; the parties are the content experts. The primary strength is party control of outcomes. Its weakness is that it requires genuine involvement and engagement by the parties. The standard is the exploration of interests.

Transformative Mediation (also known as reconciliation or therapeutic mediation) is a response to facilitative mediation that had become the dominant model. In transformative mediation, the mediator does not define the dispute for the parties; they work within the parties’ own framing. Decision-making is delayed until the parties have achieved their own clarity about needs and their own understanding of each other. The main strength is the emphasis on resolution — genuine transformation of the relationship — rather than mere settlement. The main weakness is that no agreement may be reached. The standard is self-determination of the parties above all else.

Narrative Mediation (“re-storying” the conflict) defines the dispute in terms of the narrative each party holds about the conflict. The mediator acts as a coach, helping parties dig through their stories to find turning points where a new story can be imagined. Decision-making is delayed until old stories are understood and a new story is articulated. The main strength is that narrative mediation digs deeper than interests to find even more foundational factors — the stories through which parties construct their experience and identity. The primary weakness is that it does not work well with conflicts over tangibles or where there is no significant story to be told.

Factors for Mediator Consideration

In choosing among models and approaches, mediators must attend to several contextual factors: the size of the group; who the “unseen participants” are — the people not at the table whose interests or perspectives shape what is possible; the level of conflict escalation; the level of commitment to the process; the safety of revealing emotional content; and issues related to the specific parties — language ability, mental health concerns, cross-cultural dynamics, and energy to participate.

Research on the effectiveness of therapeutic modalities — directly relevant to mediation — finds that the most important factor is not the modality itself but the character of the practitioner. Effective mediators demonstrate integrity, trustworthiness, wisdom, genuine curiosity rather than judgment, and empathy. A modality matters less because of its specific practices than because it creates a road map — an internal orienting framework that allows the mediator to be present and responsive rather than lost.

Module 17: Arbitration

Defining Arbitration

Arbitration is a private, adjudicative conflict resolution process in which the parties agree to submit their dispute to a neutral third party (the arbitrator), who then makes a binding decision. Like court adjudication, it is a rights-based process: the arbitrator’s task is similar to that of a judge, though it happens within the context of a contract that has set out the parties’ rights and the scope of the arbitration.

Arbitration carries enforcement mechanisms — the arbitral award, like a court judgment, can be enforced through the courts. This distinguishes it from mediation, where no agreement exists unless the parties themselves reach one.

Compared to court adjudication, arbitration offers several advantages: it is private (not part of the public record), it can be faster and cheaper than court proceedings, parties have greater control over the selection of the arbitrator and the procedural rules, and the process can be tailored to the specific dispute. It is said to be capable of maintaining business relationships because it does not require the degree of adversarial practices that litigation does.

However, arbitration shares with adjudication the fundamental feature of third-party decision-making: the parties lose control of the outcome. This is a significant tradeoff, particularly in disputes where the parties have an ongoing relationship and where the quality of the solution matters more than its speed.

Module 18: Hybrids (Hybrid ADR Processes)

The Spectrum of Dispute Resolution

Between the poles of pure interest-based negotiation and full court adjudication lies a rich variety of hybrid processes that combine elements of different approaches. These hybrids have developed in response to the recognized limitations of both purely rights-based and purely interest-based processes.

Common hybrid processes include:

Med-Arb — a process that begins as mediation and, if no agreement is reached, converts to arbitration with the same third party. This preserves the interest-based possibilities of mediation while guaranteeing that a final binding decision will be reached. The concern is that the prospect of arbitration may inhibit full and open disclosure in the mediation phase.

Arb-Med — the reverse sequence: arbitration first (the arbitrator reaches a decision but seals it), followed by mediation. If mediation succeeds, the arbitral decision is never revealed. If mediation fails, the sealed decision is opened and implemented. This removes the concern about disclosure in the mediation.

Early Neutral Evaluation — a process in which a neutral expert evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of each party’s case early in the dispute, providing an informed reality check that often facilitates negotiated settlement.

Mini-Trial — a structured exchange of presentations to a panel of senior decision-makers from each party (often in a business dispute), designed to give the decision-makers a realistic assessment of the dispute so they can negotiate a settlement informed by what might happen in court.

Hybrids tend to inject interest conversations into rights-based processes and rights analysis into interest-based processes. They represent the field’s recognition that the choice is not always binary — that creative process design can capture the benefits of multiple approaches while mitigating their respective weaknesses. The research base on hybrids is still developing, but the trend in the field is strongly toward process flexibility and design.

Module 19: Civil Adjudication

Civil Court Adjudication

Civil courts adjudicate five broad categories of disputes: contracts, torts, family law issues, constitutional law questions, and administrative law matters.

Contract disputes involve claims that one party has failed to perform obligations under a legally binding agreement. The court determines whether a valid contract existed, whether it was breached, and what remedy is appropriate.

Family law matters include the dissolution of marriages and common-law relationships, parenting plans, child support, and spousal support. The court applies statutory frameworks (such as the Divorce Act in Canada) to determine outcomes based on the rights and interests of the parties and, centrally, the best interests of children. Increasingly, people are turning to mediation to resolve family law issues because it allows far greater latitude in reaching creative, party-controlled solutions — while always knowing that if agreement cannot be reached, the courts will impose an outcome.

Torts are civil wrongs — harms caused by one party’s failure to meet a legal duty owed to another. The most important tort is negligence: the harm caused when a person fails to take reasonable care to prevent foreseeable harm to another.

The Six-Step Negligence Analysis

Determining liability in negligence involves six sequential questions:

1. Duty of care — did the defendant owe the plaintiff a duty? This is established when the harm and the plaintiff were reasonably foreseeable.
2. Standard of care — what was the required standard of behaviour, and did the defendant fail to meet it?
3. Injury — was there actual harm that would not have occurred but for the defendant’s actions?
4. Remoteness of damages — was the harm a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s breach? The “thin skulled plaintiff” doctrine holds that the defendant must take the plaintiff as they find them — even if the harm was far greater than would ordinarily be expected.
5. Contributory negligence — did the plaintiff contribute to the harm, and if so, to what extent? This may reduce the award proportionally.
6. Damages — what does the defendant owe as a result?

Module 20: Criminal Adjudication

A Brief History of Criminal Justice

The distinction between civil and criminal law is a relatively recent development in legal history. In England prior to the Norman Conquest (1066), all harms were essentially local: the feudal nobility responded to harms within their territories, and the church played a significant role in managing conflicts and wrongs within communities. There was no centralized state apparatus for criminal justice.

The Norman Conquest began a process of centralizing the power to address serious harms. The concept of “the King’s peace” emerged: certain harms were now understood as breaches of the King’s peace — affronts not merely to the individual victim but to the sovereign order itself. This conceptual move — transforming a harm to an individual into an offence against the state — is the foundation of modern criminal law.

Even institutions we take for granted are historically recent. The police as an institution dates from the 19th century. The crown prosecutor as an agent of the state to prosecute crimes before the courts first developed in the 16th century under Henry VIII. The prison as the primary means of punishment dates from the late 18th century.

Throughout this history, communities have repeatedly resisted the centralization of the power to respond to harm — a tension that underlies the emergence of restorative justice in the contemporary period.

The Evolution of Punishment Theory

The development of criminal justice has been shaped by several successive philosophical frameworks:

In its early development, criminal punishment was oriented around the principle of retribution — a person who harms must have a corresponding harm inflicted upon them; the punishment mirrors the wrong. By the 18th century, the Enlightenment understanding of humans as rational beings gave rise to a deterrence rationale: crime involves rational choice, and punishment should be calibrated to make crime a rational choice no one would make. The 19th century saw the rise of rehabilitation as an orientation — the idea that crime is a symptom of psychological or social dysfunction, and that punishment should aim to change the offender. Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was built on the idea of creating conditions for prisoners to reflect on their lives and find inner resources for change. By the mid-20th century, the rise of economics and libertarian politics introduced incapacitation and just deserts as dominant rationales — keeping offenders off the streets and giving them what they deserve, no more and no less.

Modules 21 and 22: Restorative Justice

Justice Needs

When a harm occurs, a complex of needs arises for those involved. For the person harmed:

• A shift from autonomy and control to fear and loss of control creates a need for safety and empowerment.
• Isolation, stigmatization, and shame create a need for acknowledgment and connection.
• A shift from a sense of meaning to an experience of the world as chaotic creates a need for answers and vindication.
• Material losses create a need for restitution.

For the person who caused harm:

• The experience of having caused harm creates a need for accountability — not in the sense of punishment, but in the sense of genuine acknowledgment and response.
• There is a need for the opportunity for personal transformation.
• There is a need for support — the offender is also embedded in a community and may be grappling with the consequences of their act.
• In some cases there is a legitimate need for incapacitation — the protection of the community from ongoing harm.

The conventional criminal justice system is designed to meet only a few of these needs — primarily those related to accountability (through prosecution), incapacitation (through imprisonment), and general deterrence. It does not address the needs of victims for acknowledgment, answers, or restitution in a comprehensive way; it does not meaningfully address the needs of offenders for transformation or community reintegration.

Restorative Justice in Practice

Restorative justice operates through three orientations: encounter, restorative, and transformative.

Encounter processes bring together the person harmed and the person who caused the harm in structured, facilitated dialogue. Victim-offender mediation (VOM) is the oldest and most extensively researched restorative process. Research consistently shows high levels of victim satisfaction with VOM, higher rates of agreement compliance than court-ordered restitution, and significant psychological benefits for victims.

Family group conferencing (FGC) is increasingly used in youth crime. It brings together the victim, the offender, their families and support people, and a facilitator. FGC broadens the circle of accountability and support beyond the dyad of victim and offender and has shown strong results in youth justice contexts.

Circles are rooted in North American Aboriginal cultures and traditions. They bring together a wider community — affected parties, community members, elders, and facilitators — in a process of collective deliberation and decision-making.

Restorative processes focus on the offender: circles of support and accountability surround a released offender with a small community of support who help the person reintegrate and remain accountable to those they have harmed.

Transformative processes like family group decision-making extend restorative principles beyond the criminal justice context — into child welfare, schools, workplaces, and communities — as a general approach to responding to harm and conflict.

Module 23: Ethics

Defining Intervention Ethics

Ethics is the systematic study of right and wrong behaviour. Intervention ethics is the application of ethical thinking to those who work to intervene in the conflicts of others — mediators, arbitrators, negotiators, and others. Because mediation is not a fully governed profession in most jurisdictions, ethical awareness and training are particularly important: practitioners must develop the capacity to recognize ethical issues and respond appropriately without necessarily having a professional body to appeal to.

Key Ethical Principles for Mediators

Self-determination is the cardinal principle of mediation ethics. The essence of mediation is that the parties decide. The mediator must maintain independence and impartiality, and must act in ways that allow both parties full and equal engagement in the process.

Conflict of interest arises when the interests of the mediator are in conflict with the interests of one or both parties. A conflict of interest compromises neutrality and must be disclosed; in many cases, it requires the mediator to withdraw from the process.

Confidentiality obliges the mediator to afford clients complete confidentiality. Without the consent of the parties, what is shared in caucus — a private meeting between the mediator and one party — cannot be carried to the other party. Confidentiality enables the candid disclosure that makes interest-based processes possible.

Quality of process is a professional obligation: the mediator must develop and lead a process of high quality, not merely one that produces an agreement. An agreement reached through a flawed or manipulated process does not carry the legitimacy that genuine mediation can produce.

Fees must be clearly disclosed at the beginning of the process. Financial transparency is part of the mediator’s duty to the parties.

Agreement to proceed requires the mediator to ensure that mediation is an appropriate and informed choice for the parties. The client’s ability to negotiate is a threshold question: if a party lacks the capacity to participate meaningfully — due to power imbalance, mental health issues, or other factors — the mediator must assess whether mediation can proceed fairly. Full disclosure is expected of the parties as a condition of the process.

Ethics Beyond the Code

Several ethical challenges fall beyond the formal codes but remain matters of professional responsibility. Questions about who is at the table — whose interests are represented and whose are not — raise ethical concerns about the completeness of the process and the fairness of any agreement reached. If one party is completely unwilling to accept any responsibility for the conflict, the mediation likely cannot proceed in any meaningful way.

Limits of confidentiality are legally mandated in some contexts. Under child welfare legislation such as the Child and Family Services Act, any person (including a mediator) who has reasonable grounds to suspect a child may be in need of protection has an obligation to report to child welfare authorities — regardless of the confidentiality of the mediation.

Mediator power is a subtle but significant ethical concern. If the mediator is similar to only one of the parties in terms of gender, race, education, or cultural background, they may unconsciously direct the process in ways that favour that party. Mediators must be constantly vigilant to ensure they are not unthinkingly steering parties toward the mediator’s own preferred direction.

Module 24: Course Review

Comparing Processes Across Key Dimensions

The concluding module of the course maps the major dispute resolution processes — negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and civil adjudication — against a set of comparative dimensions.

Power imbalances: Negotiation offers no mechanisms for managing power imbalances other than the parties’ own skills. Mediation provides the mediator with some ability to expand the power resources of the less powerful party and to inhibit power moves by the party with greater resources. Rights-based processes, by focusing on rights, presume the ability to limit the exercise of raw power.

Satisfaction: Interest-based processes tend to produce higher levels of party satisfaction with outcomes, because the parties have determined the outcome themselves. Rights-based processes produce parties who comply with outcomes but who may experience the process as alienating or the outcome as unjust.

Cost: Moving from negotiation toward adjudication brings in more professionals — mediators, arbitrators, lawyers, experts, courts — with attendant costs. The further toward the interest-based end of the spectrum, the lower the cost in financial terms.

Time: Interest-based processes, while not always faster than rights-based processes, tend to resolve disputes more quickly when both parties are genuinely engaged. Court litigation is notoriously slow.

Relationship: Interest-based processes tend to improve or at least preserve relationships. Adjudication never improves relationships and almost always causes them to deteriorate. Arbitration is said to be capable of maintaining business relationships because it does not require the adversarial posture of litigation. Hybrid processes consciously borrow from interest-based models and often do improve working relationships.

Truth: In litigation and arbitration, truth is that which can be proven — evidence-based, subject to rules of admissibility. Interest-based processes are not interested in determining an authoritative account of what happened; they are interested in the truth of each party’s experience, which may differ substantially from what could be proven.

Society’s interest in the outcome: As disputes become more complex and the interests of third parties and the broader public become more significant, the interest of the state and society in the outcome grows. This is one of the reasons that criminal adjudication is entirely a state function — the state, representing society, has an overriding interest in the outcome.

Locus of decisions: Interest-based processes place decision-making with the parties. Rights-based processes place it with the third party — judge or arbitrator. Hybrids are working to introduce party decision-making into systems designed for third-party determination.

Durability of outcomes: Party-determined outcomes tend to be more durable than imposed ones, because the parties have ownership of them. Imposed outcomes may be technically complied with while being practically undermined.

Control, flexibility, and participant capacity: Moving from negotiation to adjudication involves a steady decrease in control by the parties over the process, a decrease in flexibility, and a decrease in the expectations placed on parties’ own capacities for engagement. Adjudication requires the least from parties in terms of active participation — they are largely spectators to a process conducted by their advocates and the court.

Trust: Interest-based processes are structured around the building of trust — trust is the result of the engagement in the process. The mediator helps parties engage in ways that build trust with each other. Rights-based processes have no need for trust between parties and no expectation that trust will be built. Hybrids are designed in ways that create the possibility of building trust as they progress.

The ultimate goal: Interest-based processes seek to meet the needs of the parties. Rights-based processes seek to determine rights and enforce them — the goal is victory for the party whose rights are vindicated. Hybrids seek to inject the idea of meeting needs into the rights-based winner-take-all framework.

The course’s final lesson is the same as its first: the choice among these processes is not merely technical. It depends on the spirit and the discernment of those who use them. A skilled, ethically grounded, emotionally intelligent practitioner can create conditions for transformative resolution even within imperfect institutional frameworks. And a practitioner who lacks those qualities will undermine even the most elegantly designed process. The only person you can change is yourself — and that, in the end, is both the challenge and the promise of conflict resolution.