As a beginning mediator, I would on occasion ask disputants in private caucuses, “Who is right and who is wrong in this conflict?,” and, “Has everyone told the truth?” Of course, the answers where consistently, “I’m right; the other party is wrong,” and, “The other party is not telling the truth.”

 I struggled with this in teaching others to be mediators and eventually began to say, “Everyone believes they are telling the truth.” The implication of that is, of course, that the parties also believe the other party is not being truthful. And in mediation classes to further the point I would say, “the truth doesn’t matter, it’s not the mediator’s job to determine who is telling the truth.”

Psychologists have long studied cognitive bias in decision making and the systematic errors in thinking that influence our decisions. One example is that we all seek out evidence that confirms our beliefs and ignore information that challenges them. So by the time disputants come to mediation or go to trial, they have attended to messages and information that supports their positions and ignored or discounted the ones that challenge their positions.

So, I’ve come to the position of saying that disputants in mediation typically believe they are completely “right” and that the other party is flat-out “wrong.” That cognitive bias is often the major challenge in mediation and dispute resolution.

How do mediators deal with this challenge? I can only speak for myself and describe two strategies to help the disputants move into a place where they are able to work together to find a resolution. One is to help the parties begin to understand how it is possible that their adversary could come to see the dispute the way they do. I ask questions such as, “How could a person in their position see the conflict the way they do?,” and, “If you were in their position, how would you see the conflict?”

 The other strategy, and more typically, I attempt to keep the parties focused on the future and not the past. In other words, my helping the parties focus on, “where they want to go from here,” takes the attention away from, “how do we get here?”  In most cases when parties have reached a resolution, the misunderstandings of how the dispute started fade in importance.

In one large mediation over billing charges for printing services the parties had folders of documentation as evidence of their position, but the dispute eventually came down to the meaning of the phrase, “cost plus expenses.” Each had a very different meaning for what they had agreed “expenses” were and each contended with enthusiasm that there had been deliberate misleading statements made. But during the mediation the parties were able to reach a mutually agreed upon resolution when they focused not on who had “lied,” but on where they were to go in the future. Of course, they both believed they were each “right,” but in the end it didn’t matter. How best to continue working together was more important.

Perhaps most of us have at one time or another been in a conflict that just seems overwhelming and nothing you try to resolve it seems to change the dynamics of the issue. And certainly all of us recognize local or national conflicts that just seem to tear communities apart. These long-lasting disagreements that seem to be resistant to good-faith attempts at resolution have been labeled as “intractable.”

Peter Coleman, director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, estimates that 5% of conflicts are highly destructive and intractable. Coleman and his colleagues offer several guidelines to consider for such challenges. Some that can be used in several situations are:

               > > Intractable conflicts tend to become polarized as “us vs. them” and issues can become simplified by one side or the other with no acceptable middle ground. Generally speaking, dispute resolution specialists work to “complicate” the conflict by “unpacking” it into many contributing subconflicts. With more issues, there may be even one that the parties can agree upon and from there go on to other resolutions.

               >> With intractable conflicts, the parties tend to ignore and not recognize positive information about the other party. It may be helpful to assist the parties to identify and recognize some positives about the other. It doesn’t matter what it is. What is important is to begin seeing the other party as not totally “evil.”

               >> Recognize that the time frame for intractable conflicts may be extended. In simple language, there is a time for conflict resolution and that time can’t be rushed since parties can’t be forced to work together until they are ready to do so. Changes in intractable conflicts may operate on a radically different time frame.

               >> Intractable conflicts may become amenable to resolution after some type of major destabilizing shock. Sometimes it takes a major external event to motivate parties to recognize that it is time to resolve the conflict.

In my experience, the most difficult conflicts can become ones that can be dealt with when the parties are ready. Sometimes that readiness comes from unexpected external events. A very difficult business dispute I mediated was only settled when one of the parties experienced a major illness in her family. As she told me, she now recognized that some things in life were more important that continuing the dispute and it was time to settle.  

As in other human activities, there is a time.