John Ford & The HR Mediation Academy

Newsletter cover image

Assessing "Looking Good"​ or Actual Behavior?
I’m publishing this newsletter series to discuss the nuances of the four timeless topics for people and organizations: conflict, change, transformation, and consciousness. Please subscribe to never miss an article.

In the 1960s, three instruments assessed the five conflict modes: Blake and Mouton (1964), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), and Hall (1969). So why did Ken Thomas and I develop a fourth instrument to measure conflict-handling behavior?

In the early 1970s, both Ken and I were acutely aware of the potential social desirability response bias in all self-report assessments: The tendency for people to respond to test items in order to look good to themselves or others (whether this bias is conscious or unconscious) versus accurately disclosing their actual behavior or interests. For example, we suspected that most people would prefer to see themselves as high on collaborating and low on avoiding, regardless of their actual conflict-handing behavior. Indeed, when Ken and I collected research data on the three existing instruments, we found that there were very high correlations between the social desirability of the five modes and people’s actual mode scores on a self-report assessment: On average, more than 90% of the variance in mode scores was explained by social desirability (88%, 92%, and 96% for the Blake and Mouton, Lawrence and Lorsch, and the Hall instruments, respectively). Consequently, for all practical purposes, these instruments were NOT measuring a person’s conflict-handling modes — since people’s scores were explained (accounted for) by social desirability.

To make a long story short, Ken and I repeatedly tested the social desirability of many conflict items for our new instrument and then paired items (for example, a collaborating item was paired with an avoiding item) that were both equal in social desirability. Since a person could not choose any of the 30 A/B forced-choice items merely to look good (since the pairs had been matched on social desirability), respondents now had to candidly disclose how they actually behaved in conflict situations. Indeed, when Ken and I collected research data along the same lines as we had done for the other three instruments, the variance of mode scores on the TKI that could be explained by social desirability dropped to 17% (as compared to over 90% for the other three instruments). That was a huge improvement!

Over the years, many people have told me that it’s “cumbersome” or “tedious” to respond to the TKI’s A/B format — even though it takes less than 15 minutes to complete all 30 forced-choice items. But these typical comments don’t really surprise me: I believe that once the social desirability response bias has been removed from ANY instrument, it requires more diligence for a respondent to disclose his actual behavior or preferences, rather than to simply pick items to look good. But the intent of every self-report instrument is to measure what it claims to measure, not some OTHER concept…such as social desirability.

Several additional conflict assessments have been published since the 1970s. In virtually all cases, the developers of those new instruments use something other than a forced-choice format (such as a five or seven-point Likert scale for each conflict item), because they want to make their assessment easier to take (than the TKI). And yet, these developers seem to be totally unaware of what effect different scaling methods have on the social desirability response bias. In the interest of ease, and ease alone, these other assessments have thus fallen into the same trap as the three assessments that were developed back in the 1960s (what goes around comes around): Ease of responding — by implicitly giving people the opportunity to look good to themselves or others — is no substitute for a valid assessment. In fact, I believe that the lasting and growing success of the TKI over the past 35-plus years is precisely because the TKI controls for social desirability and thus provides its users with an accurate assessment: a true “aha” experience.

You can find the original research publication that compared the four conflict instruments on social desirability here.

Kilmann Diagnostics offers a series of eleven recorded online courses and nine assessment tools on the four timeless topics: conflict management, change management, consciousness, and transformation. By taking these courses and passing the Final Exams, you can earn your Certification in Conflict and Change Management with the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI). For the most up-to-date and comprehensive discussion of Dr. Kilmann’s theories and methods, see his 2021 Legacy Book: Creating a Quantum Organization: The Whys & Hows of Implementing Eight Tracks for Long-term success.

https://www.mediate.com/articles/galton-love-weiss-video.cfm

Decline of Dialogue? Galton, Love, and Weiss on Joint Sessions, Caucuses, and the State of Mediation If the point of mediation is to get parties together to discuss and thereby resolve their problems, why is the distinct trend to keep the parties apart?

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_can_we_learn_from_the_worlds_most_peaceful_societies?utm_source=Greater+Good+Science+Center&utm_campaign=1e26ac34a2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_GG_Newsletter_June_8_2021&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5ae73e326e-1e26ac34a2-51986887

What Can We Learn from the World’s Most Peaceful Societies? A multidisciplinary team of researchers is discovering what makes some societies more peaceful than others.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/companies/arid-40289162.html

Mediation beats adversarial at resolving workplace disputes Mediators are helping minimise conflict in the workplace, family farm, inter-agency, medical issues as well as marital discord

The Relevance of Mediation in the Modern Workplace
by Thomas Todd
April 2021
Disagreements are a part of human nature. As long as people exhibit diverse traits stemming from different experiences, their opinions will differ. And where contrasting views exist, conflict looms.

The workplace is not exempt from these disagreements. A difference of opinions occurs between colleagues in any industry. Even in schools and colleges, students argue with each other and with their instructors, unable to resolve their disputes peacefully. Nevertheless, be it a do my essay writing agency or a respectable legal firm, employees at all levels need to let calm heads prevail.

In situations like these, an individual or neutral entity can defuse the workplace tension. This person is known as a mediator, and the process of using a middleman to resolve crises is called mediation.

The Relevance of Mediation in the Modern Workplace Disagreements are a part of human nature. As long as people exhibit diverse traits stemming from different experiences, their opinions will differ.

Drafting Mediated Workplace Agreements
by Christopher Sheesley
March 2021

Sometimes, as a result of a mediated conversation, a conflict is resolved when participants experience a breakthrough leading to authentic understanding. More often, there isn't a tidal tone shift, but parties are at least able to reach concrete improvements to their future working relationship. Wherever a resolution lies along this spectrum, one of the mediator’s key tasks is encouraging the parties to memorialize their agreements. The following are the top four tips a mediator can use when writing an agreement in situations when one is warranted by the outcome and each party’s wishes.

Drafting Mediated Workplace Agreements To enhance communication flow and joint involvement in certain decision-making areas, agreements need to be well planned-out.

https://www.paulekman.com/blog/errors-in-detecting-lies/?utm_source=mailchimp_Aug19.20&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paul&utm_content=errors-deception-detection-blog-aug-2020-img&utm_term=deception&mc_cid=df962c53c9&mc_eid=906cb6d48b

Detecting Lies Errors | Othello Error & Brokaw Hazard Discover common mistakes when detecting lies, including the Othello Error and the Brokaw Hazard. Learn about the dangers and precautions of catching liars.

In my book Peace at Work, I articulate what I call the Stance of the Mediator. The final element (the ninth) is that we are an inspiring beacon of hope. But what exactly do we mean by hope. I found this article about wise hope (written in these times of Covid-19 on point:

Wise Hope in the Time of the Pandemic by Roshi Joan Halifax
by Roshi Joan Halifax on April 14, 2020 in General, News, Roshi Joan Halifax, Upaya’s Blog
Hope always bothered me. It just did not seem very Buddhist to hope. And, for many today, being hopeful seems worse than futile, as we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, where thousands are dying, world economies are crashing, the medical system is facing unprecedented challenges, clinicians are confronted with moral dilemmas that are heart breaking, and the climate catastrophe continues to unfold.

Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi once said that life is “like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.” Indeed we seem to be sinking. And having this sinking feeling coloring my world, I could not utter the word “hope” without feeling like I was betraying reality.

But last year, oddly enough, I became hopeful, and decided I wanted to look at hope more closely. I began my exploration with looking at what hope is not. It became clear to me that hope is not the belief that everything will turn out well. People die. Populations die out. Civilizations die. Planets die. Stars die. Recalling the words of Suzuki Roshi, the boat is going to sink! If we look, we see the evidence of suffering, of injustice, of futility, of desolation, of harm, of ending all around us, and even within us. This virus, for example, is a strong case in point. Who knew? Certainly not most of us………

But we have to understand that hope is not a story based on optimism, that everything will be ok. Optimists imagine that everything will turn out positively. I have come to consider this point of view dangerous; being an optimist means one doesn’t have to bother; one doesn’t have to act. Also, if things don’t turn out well, cynicism or futility often follow. Hope of course is also opposed to the narrative that everything is getting worse, the position that pessimists take. Pessimists take refuge in depressive apathy or apathy driven by cynicism. And, as we might expect, both optimists and pessimists are excused from engagement.

So, what is it to be hopeful and not optimistic? The American novelist Barbara Kingsolver explains it this way: “I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference between being optimistic and being hopeful. I would say that I’m a hopeful person, although not necessarily optimistic. Here’s how I would describe it. The pessimist would say, ‘It’s going to be a terrible winter; we’re all going to die.’ The optimist would say, ‘Oh, it’ll be all right; I don’t think it’ll be that bad. The hopeful person would say, ‘Maybe someone will still be alive in February, so I’m going to put some potatoes in the root cellar just in case.’ … Hope is ….a mode of resistance…. a gift I can try to cultivate.”

If we look at hope through the lens of Buddhism, we discover that wise hope is born of radical uncertainty, rooted in the unknown and the unknowable. And we are sure in the vise of a radically uncertain time. But really, how could we ever know what is going to happen? Yes, experts are modeling the future, but they are not making the future. And these models can lead us astray.

Potatoes in the cellar, I thought…. that is a hope as a manifestation of wisdom and caring, and it is also an expression of resistance to futility and sappy positivity. This kind of hope, what I call “wise hope” requires that we open ourselves to what we do not know, what we cannot know; that we open ourselves to being surprised, perpetually surprised. And I think that wise hope emerges from deep inside the preconscious only through the spaciousness of radical uncertainty, of surprise.

It’s when we discern courageously, and at the same time realize we don’t know what will happen that wise hope comes alive. In the midst of improbability and possibility is where the imperative to act rises up. Wise hope is not seeing things unrealistically but rather seeing things as they are, including the truth of impermanence…. as well as the truth of suffering—both its existence and the possibility of its transformation, for better or for worse.

Wise hope also reflects the understanding that what we do matters, even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can really know beforehand. Ultimately, we cannot know what will unfold from our actions now or in the future; yet we can trust that things will change; they always do. But our vows, our actions, how we live, what we care about, what we care for, and how we care really do matter all the same.

Yet often we become paralyzed by the belief that there is nothing to hope for—that our patient’s diagnosis is a one-way street with no exit, that our political situation is beyond repair, that our medical system is broken, that there is no way out of our climate crisis, or the global crisis we are facing as the wave of this virus captures more and more in its tow. We might feel that nothing makes sense anymore, or that we have no power and there’s no reason to act.

I often say that there should be just two words over the door of our Zen temple in Santa Fe: Show up! One might ask why would I want these words over the door of our temple, when despair, defeatism, cynicism, skepticism, and the apathy of forgetting are fed by the corroding effect of conventional hopelessness. Yes, suffering is present. We cannot deny it. As I am writing this, another five thousand people have died of the covid-19. Who were they? Who loved these recently deceased? Who might have been infected by them? How will they be remembered?

Wise hope doesn’t mean denying the realities that we are confronted with today. It means facing them, addressing them, and remembering what else is present, like the powerful shifts in our values that recognize and move us to address suffering right now. Seven hundred years ago, in Japan, Zen Master Keizan wrote: “Do not find fault with the present.”. He invites us to see it, not flee it!

This gift of life that I have called “wise hope” is rooted in our vows and is what Zen Master Dogen means when he admonishes us to “give life to life,” even if it’s just one dying person at a time, one caregiver at a time, one child at a time, one life at a time.
As Buddhists, we share a common aspiration to awaken from our own confusion, from greed, and from anger in order to free others from suffering. For many of us, this aspiration is not a “small self” improvement program. The Bodhisattva Vows at the heart of the Mahayana tradition are, if nothing else, a powerful expression of radical and wise hope and hope against all odds. This kind of hope is free of desire, free from any attachment to outcome; it is a species of hope that is victorious over fear. What else could be the case as we chant: Creations are numberless, I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them. Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it. The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.

Indeed, may we embody it……….. accompanied by wise hope.

Wise Hope in the Time of the Pandemic by Roshi Joan Halifax - Upaya Zen Center This gift of life that I have called “wise hope” is rooted in our vows and is what Zen Master Dogen means when he admonishes us to “give life to life,” even if it’s just one dying person at a time, one caregiver at a time, one child at a time, one life at a time.

https://bit.ly/32PyI7t

Can You Really Train Mediators Online? Reflecting On MWI’s Experience By Chuck Doran and Megan Winkeler For the past twenty-six years, MWI has offered four mediation trainings per year, every year. The workshop was held in many different venues over that time – the library of a district courthouse, the Union Club of Boston, One Financial Center, the Boston Bar Assoc...