Conflict & Mediation.

“Conflict is inevitable, combat is optional." — Max Lucado

Advancing the community’s interest and promoting needed cooperation and trust can be hard work. Managing conflict to get key decisions made – legitimately and wisely. Dealing with unequal power and gaining more leverage. More than ever, effective problem-solving demands that we know when and how to craft valuable agreements with other parties.

As more and more stakeholders ask to participate in decisions that affect them, and as the work of public problem-solving is shared across the government, business, and nonprofit sectors, the demand for negotiation grows dramatically. No one can afford to ignore this core civic skill: being able to creatively advance shared interests and resolve differences.

—Text by Xavier de Souza Briggs, MIT (Boston, Massachusetts)

How that approach works:

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