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Introduction:
The task of the
mediator, according to Leo Smyth, a mediator from Ireland, is to simultaneously honor people's personal
frames and perceptions while dealing with the "realistic" elements of
the conflict. This is, by no means, an easy balance to achieve.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Realistic Elements of Conflict
Leo Smyth
Professor of Management, National University of Ireland
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A: I am of the opinion that one has to accept that while there is a huge amount
of work that needs to be done on people's psychology and perceptions and feelings and all that sort of
stuff, nonetheless, there are realistic issues that need to be sorted out...
Well, maybe they can't be sorted out, which I think is the thrust of what I'm
saying, until some work has been done there. Equally at the other extreme, if
you like, while there are grounds for saying there is such a thing as power
politics, there is such a thing as realistic conflict, there are such things as
real conflicts of interests, they do exist.
But at the same time I think
one needs to understand that they are not as objective as all that. They
are always perceived through interpretive schemes, which is one reason why things that seem
utterly incredibly important at one point in time seem to be basically capable of being
negotiated away later. So they always exist through these. And consequently our
understanding of third party interventions must be to try to hold both
of these together. That's reflecting at least the way I seem to understand
conflict management.
Q: Steering between the objective and relative in a sense? Steering
between "we'll find what we look for" and "this is what's
actually there right now"?
A: Yes, but maybe not so much steering between, as trying to hold both in the
one conceptual frame, which is uncomfortable.
Q: It's no easy task.
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