Dealing with Controversial Issues and People

1. Dealing with Controversial Issues and People • Tim Campbell, County Agent for Community and Economic Development • University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service

2. Two Major Principles • Conflict is normal. • Conflict is (always) an opportunity.

3. Meditation Methods • Focus on a sound or object • Relaxation • Focus on breathing

4. Types of Conflict • Intra-personal • Interpersonal • Public • Strategic

5. Mediation Process Step 1: Issues exploration Step 2: Issues refinement Step 3: Options exploration Step 4: Options refinement Step 5: Signed agreement

6. Top 10 Reasons to Acquire Better Negotiation Skill • Improve personal and professional profitability. • Achieve desired outcomes and create synergy whilefostering relationships. • Maximize financial returns and value in negotiations. • Avoid being cheated. • Neutralize difficult negotiators and their tactics. • Enter into and conduct negotiations with confidence. • Know when and how to walk away from a negotiation. • Improve personal relationships with colleagues, clients and loved ones. • Build leadership and team building skills. • Turn cultural differences into assets rather than liabilities.

7. Basics tenets of principled negotiation • Participants are problem-solvers • Separate the people from the problem • Focus on interests, not positions • Invent options for mutual gain

9. Discussion Guidelines • Only one person talks at a time. • Stick to the subject. • Be brief. • Be an active listener. • Everyone participates, no one dominates. • Honor time limits. • It’s okay to disagree. • Attack the problem, not a person.

10. Fight or Flight Response • “our body's primitive, automatic, inborn response that prepares the body to "fight" or "flee" from perceived attack, harm or threat to our survival.” • ----- Neil Neimark, M.D.

11. Breakthrough Negotiation • Go to the Balcony • Step to Their Side • Reframe • Build Them a Golden Bridge • Use Power to Educate

12. Reframing • How can we accomplish or do “X” while at the same time accomplishing or doing “Y”?

13. Costs of Interpersonal Conflict • Poor morale • Reduced productivity • Unacceptable levels of stress • Sleeplessness • Long-term health problems • Violence • Higher healthcare costs

14. Benefits of Being a Win-Win Negotiator • 10-to-50 percent gains in productivity • High morale • Less stress • Fewer health problems

15. Civility • “Crude, Rude and Obnoxious Behavior Has Replaced Good Manners.” • U.S. News and World Report (1996)

16. Trust • “Proceed independent of trust.”

17. Uncle Jimmy Rule • What should you say?

18. Uncle Jimmy Rule • “I don’t know Uncle Jimmy, what do you think?”

19. Power and Conflict • “Most conflicts directly or indirectly concern power, either as leverage for achieving one’s goals, as a means of seeking or maintaining the balance or imbalance of power in a relationship, or as a symbolic expression of one’s identity.”

20. Global Opportunity? • U.S. spent $13.1 trillion on Cold War • What would happen if win-win became the default mode of the world? • Is this possible? • Are we willing to live our lives for the “seventh generation”?

21. Resources • This paper and other resources on conflict management and negotiation are at <http://ces.ca.uky.edu/pike/news/agreement_training.htm>