Large-Scale Conflict Resolution
Project Innovations specializes in solving conflicts that have resisted traditional conflict resolution techniques. Large-scale conflicts are driven by irrational factors, including long histories of mistrust, perceptions that the conflict can't be resolved without vanquishing the enemy, and most paradoxically, public pronouncements of admiration and respect for the other side in the midst of the hottest battles. (In these situations, we always seem to see cooperative people unable to cooperate.) The Project Innovations conflict resolution process brings warring parties together. We address rational and irrational factors and bring unconscious drivers to the surface and remove them.
Resolving Conflict Between Communities
Project Innovations has developed a unique practice to resolve conflicts between communities. Broad based issues can have a major impact on a region and sometimes governmental units cannot or will not work together toward peaceful and mutually agreeable solutions. These conflicts transform into public dramas and cast shadows of distrust on entire regions. We often find these conflicts have been active for years (if not decades) and are passed on to the next generation.
Our Conflict Resolution Processes
- We always begin by helping people understand where they are in the conflict by developing a striking image of the current situation. One example is to imaginatively depict the conflict in drawing a mandala, "magic circle" in Hindu. This type of image is much stronger than a report because it raises primary fears to the surface and dilutes them.
- We show the participants that their conflict has rational and irrational elements and teach them to work simultaneously on both. Our workshops address the logic of the conflict as well as fears, distrust, and victimization. A single team building session will not suffice to address the irrational elements in deep conflicts. The irrational elements must be raised slowly and digested with patience. They must be assimilated for this process. We use techniques like poetry writing, drawing, storytelling, and sharing dreams.
- We bring all parties together to participate in our workshops. Conflicts cannot be solved with a genius and a hundred helpers. All of the dramatis personae have to pitch in and critical tasks must be distributed throughout the group.
- We help leaders evolve and grow in the group's safe space. Most often, strong leaders emerge in the middle of the activities. Our process allows them to gain credibility from both friend and foe alike.
- We provide tools to manage the irrational urges to keep the conflict alive. These urges always surface near the end of the resolution process. When groups have been in conflict for a long time they become comfortable with it. Just before the curtain is ready to drop, irrational requests emerge, old battles are reprised, and little mistakes are inflated into major breaches of trust. The biggest remaining roadblock to conquering the conflict is the fear of success, and our process of confronting these irrational fears is what delivers a peaceful ending.
