BI ArticleIdentify the Overlay Issues in Dispute
Factual and procedural disputes, framing, miscommunication, and escalation are "overlay problems" that make intractable conflicts even harder to resolve.
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Constructive Conflict Guide >
The Complex Factors That Make Intractable Conflict So Difficult
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BI Article
Identify the Overlay Issues in Dispute
Factual and procedural disputes, framing, miscommunication, and escalation are "overlay problems" that make intractable conflicts even harder to resolve.
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Conflicting Visions and Frames
When people have divergent and competing images of what is happening in the world, why, and what they want, that makes resolving the conflicts between them much more challenging than it is when they share fundamental understandings of what the conflict is about, and how it might be resolved.
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Escalation
Guy Burgess calls escalation "the most dangerous force on the planet" It involves the increase in intensity of a conflict -- the number of parties and issues increases, tactics become heavier, hatred increases, and overall destructiveness generally increases as well.
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Communication Failures
Communication often breaks down in conflict. Sometimes it gets cut off altogether. Other times people use hostile language that just makes the conflict worse. Or the disputants' background information and worldviews are so different that they think the other side is "evil," or "stupid," or "crazy," even though they have good reason to think as they do, given the information that they are basing their attitudes and actions on.
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Factual Disputes
Disputes over facts have always been present in technical and environmental conflicts. But the ease in creating "fake facts" has made these kinds of disputes much more common, and difficult to resolve, and it can be very hard for lay people to figure out which "experts" are speaking the truth, and which are not.
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Dispute Resolution Procedural Problems
One type of "conflict overlay" are procedural problems--problems of fairness, transparency, predictability, and other procedural missteps.
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Stripping Away "Overlay" Problems That Make Conflicts Appear More Intractable Than They Really Are
Intractable conflicts have core issues -- the things that the conflict is "really about" and usually a set of "overlay" or complicating factors -- problems that overlie (and often obscure) the core issues making them harder to constructively address. Identifying and correcting (or at least limiting) these problems is a first key step in efforts to handle conflict more constructively.