Glossary
At Confluence Collaboration, we frequently receive questions about terms and definitions, including mediation and facilitation. We’ve compiled a list of these to help you understand the terminology. We’ve also included a brief glossary to clarify and hopefully demystify some of the industry jargon commonly used, along with links to some articles for further reading. You can also read our case studies to see how we’ve helped clients manage conflict.
We hope these resources are helpful to understanding some of the strategies and interpersonal dynamics involved in the most common types of conflict management and collaborative practice methods. If you have a question about how we can help you manage conflict, schedule a free consultation.
Terminology & Definitions
Mediation is a method of conflict resolution often used as an alternative to litigation, which can typically be more complex and costly. In the natural resources industry, parties might want to mediate a dispute to avoid going to the press, a local government board, or the state legislature. A neutral third-party mediator aids in the negotiation process between two or more disputing parties.
The mediator’s role is to help the parties communicate effectively, analyze the dispute, weigh their options, and develop a mutually acceptable solution. A mediator is there to guide the process but is not expected to be a subject matter expert in the disputed topics.
In contrast to arbitration, where the arbitrator makes a decision, a mediator has no decisional authority but instead helps the parties arrive at their own conclusions about whether and on what terms to settle.
Facilitation is a form of assisted negotiation like mediation. As with mediation, the facilitator focuses on the agenda and flow of the meeting, the negotiation process, and keeping the parties on track. Facilitation is typically used for multi-party meetings or consensus-building processes within one organization or across many organizations and parties. Facilitators are expected to have some familiarity with the topics under discussion, but are not typically expected to be subject matter experts on the content of the proceedings.
A facilitator works with the parties to:
- Make sure that all appropriate parties are at the table;
- Foster open discussion consistent with agreed-upon ground rules and agenda;
- Keep an accessible record to help the parties focus on the agenda and see areas of common ground;
- Ensure through active listening that each speaker feels understood, and every participant has a chance to speak; and
- Help interested parties understand the issues and pursue potential areas of common ground.
Stakeholder Engagement is a process where an organization includes individuals and groups with an interest (or “stake”) in the outcome of its decision-making processes. Input from stakeholders helps the organization decide and act. A stakeholder is an individual or organization which will likely be directly affected by those decisions or will have an impact on how decisions made by the organization will be implemented. This method includes identifying stakeholder groups and their representatives, systematically collecting and incorporating feedback, and reporting that information to all stakeholder groups.
To read about what this looks like in practice, read our case study about how a proposed highway access relocation impacted a Maryland community.
Policy Dialogue opens up discussion, improves mutual understanding, and assesses the degree of consensus and conflict concerning public policy disputes. Policy dialogues typically do not address siting disputes, where multiple stakeholders (parties with an interest or “stake” in the problem or issue) discuss the site of a facility such as a landfill or gravel pit. These dialogues frequently uncover shared interests, values, and points of consensus among stakeholders that were previously obscured by the adversarial rhetoric characteristic of escalating policy controversies like water rights disputes.
While reaching a resolution is not the objective of many policy dialogues, the examples discussed on our website typically lead to consensus-based action, such as this residential infill development case study involving a debate over whether and how to allow McMansions in established urban neighborhoods or this case study about attempts to secure a “Wild and Scenic” designation for the Patuxent River in Maryland.
Consensus Building is a multi-step group decision-making process that calls for near-unanimous agreement rather than a majority vote. Also commonly known as collaborative problem-solving, consensus building is useful in complex multi-party disputes, including environmental and public policy contexts. This method allows various stakeholders (parties with an interest or “stake” in the problem or issue) to work together to develop a mutually acceptable solution.
To see an example of consensus building, read our case study of a multi-party effort to mitigate water treatment plant discharge into the Potomac River.
Collaborative Learning is a group discovery approach to adaptive management and consensus building through learning together. A term of art used by Daniels and Walker in a book about environmental and natural resource policy, the collaborative learning method is useful in decision-making that involves complex natural resource subject matter, such as forestry or watershed management. This method operates on the assumption that no one party has all of the knowledge required to make a decision. By engaging in a group fact-finding and learning process, collaborative learning helps parties better understand on the ground facts and one another’s perception of the natural resource situation and make decisions based on what they learn during the process. The goal of collaborative learning is to make progress on complex science-based issues without seeking complete or enduring resolution.
To see this approach put into practice, read our case study about how members of a church congregation decided whether to split into different factions or remain together.
A technique that is similar to collaborative learning is called stakeholder collaboration. To see how stakeholder collaboration works in practice, read our case study to see how three separate parties resolved a water rights dispute.
In terms of the work we do, public engagement is a process designed to encourage members of the public to learn about and engage in discussions about proposed public decisions that may impact their community. Successful public engagement efforts depend upon people skilled at identifying potentially interested parties, conducting outreach to those parties, and coordinating meeting times and places for those parties to attend and learn more about how these proposed changes that may impact them. Public engagement is an effort to obtain substantive input beyond what is gained from a public hearing through meetings designed for public input, polling, surveys, and focus groups.
To see what this approach looks like practice, read our case study about a county’s proposed revitalization plans affecting two urban neighborhoods.
General Conflict Resolution Resources
To learn more about mediation, FindLaw offers a good basic overview of the mediation process.
To learn more about how facilitation works, here’s a Facilitation 101 article from Beyond Intractability.
Did you know there are a few commonly used negotiation styles? Calum Coburn summarizes five of them in this blog post for Negotiation Experts.
In this chapter of the book Leadership in Healthcare and Public Health, Fadi Smiley explores common types of conflicts, different negotiation styles, and leadership through conflict.
There are often many complex dynamics underlying negotiations, including cognitive biases and hidden motivations. Read a succinct overview of decision-making perspectives in negotiation by Steve Smutko and Richard Alper, which is based upon an article by Chia-Jung Tsay and Max Bazerman in Negotiation Journal (.PDF, 205 KB).
Not all negotiations are based on one party winning and the other losing. This is especially true in mediation, facilitation, and other types of alternative dispute resolution. To see the difference, read this handy chart at Beyond Intractability, which compares positional (“win-lose”) to integrative (“win-win”) bargaining.
Mediators aren’t the only professionals who need to understand how to manage conflict in their work. This article from the Project Management Institute contains helpful diagrams and good definitions related to conflict management that apply to many professional contexts requiring conflict management.
In an excerpt from his memoir, the former U.K. Prime Minister shares conflict resolution tips based on his work negotiating the nearly intractable peace process in Northern Ireland (.PDF, 754 KB). Note: This article is provided by permission of Negotiation Briefings. To purchase individual or group subscriptions to this publication, contact Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@businessmanagementdaily.com or (703) 905-8000.
This Help Guide offers good advice about self-management during a conflict. It also includes some good tips on managing conflict in broader contexts such as mediation.
Conflict or indecision can stall progress and waste resources.
But it’s possible to find common ground.
Unbiased facilitation creates forward momentum by uncovering solutions based on common desires and goals.
