The Eight Essential Steps to Conflict Resolution: Preserving Relationships at Work, at Home, and in the Community

This book is about the art of solving long-standing conflicts. Have you had recurring serious arguments with a colleague at work and wondered how you can possibly solve them amicably? Are you involved in a disagreement with a friend and feeling that the only way to settle your differences is to part company? Do you find yourself frequently clashing with your spouse or child about the same issues? Are you a manager, lawyer, social worker, or community leader who regularly needs to arbitrate between adversaries? Whatever the nature of your dispute, The Eight Essential Steps to Conflict Resolution can be your guide. In this book, Dr. Dudley Weeks, a world-renowned conflict resolution mediator, presents an innovative and proven method -- the conflict partnership process -- to help you resolve personal and professional differences of any magnitude in any situation. The conflict partnership approach is based on realistic principles of human behavior and communication. Dr. Weeks first discusses how conflict is a natural part of life and how viewing it in a new way can remove the fear and eliminate the ineffective approaches most people take to resolve disagreements. He then teaches the eight essential skills necessary to unblock disagreements including how to: recognize each party's hidden perceptions of the conflict; discover the shared needs of the relationship; focus on a plan for the future rather than blame for the past; agree upon doables -- actions that can be taken immediately and used as stepping-stones to agreement. Using clear straightforward language, and a multitude of examples drawn from business, family, and community situations, Dr. Weeks shows how conflict parties can move through any issue step-by-step while achieving results that are mutually beneficial and truly lasting.