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Conflict Sensitivity and Creative Conflict Transformation: Appropriate Dispute Resolution
We’ve all been in situations where we suddenly find ourselves flying in a fit of rage, fueled by uncontrollable emotions and frustration. Things start to escalate, and before you know it, you end up uttering hurtful words and doing things that will leave a permanent scar on what once were healthy relationships. To make things worse, after everything has been said and done, we try to justify our original feelings and actions out of pride. I found myself in the exact same situation as a child. I remember being bullied in elementary school, and instead of taking the high road and being the better person, I retaliated. I could vividly recall the time that I pushed my classmate into a puddle because he was taunting and mocking me. I let my rage take over and I became the very thing that I detested.
I started to realize the impacts of my actions when I grew older, and I found that fighting fire with fire was not necessarily the best approach to such situation.
Fast forward to 2019, and I am already in my second year in law school taking up the course Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) under Dean Joan S. Largo. One of the course’s requirements was for us to attend a seminar entitled “Conflict Sensitivity and Creative Conflict Transformation: Appropriate Dispute Resolution” with Mr. Cesar H. Villanueva. Other than modules on conflict management in the workplace for my Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management classes for my Master’s in Business Management degree, this is the only other course on conflict transformation that I have ever attended.
I thought that the seminar would be about the different laws and procedures surrounding alternative modes of resolving conflicts in the country, because other aside from the lupong tagapamayapa, I did not have that much knowledge on ADR laws and procedures. I thought that it would walk us through the various procedural aspects of helping clients resolve their conflicts and disputes, in the hope of avoiding lengthy litigation in court. However, it turned out that the seminar did not focus on procedures. Instead, it aimed to walk us through the various means and methods of dealing with conflict, be it legal or not.
As a member of Transcend Philippines following the movement set by Sociologist Joahn Galtung, Mr. Villanueva adopted the former’s definition of conflict as “a process through which two or more actors (parties) try to pursue incompatible goals while trying to undermine the goal-seeking potential of the others.” This definition of conflict made me realize how I have been improperly approaching conflict management.
In most situations, there are two underlying factors to conflict, the first being the substantive elements or the disagreement between goals and ideas, and the latter being the personality dynamics between parties to the disagreement. Instead of focusing on incompatible goals or ideas, more often than not, I attach the disagreement and incompatibility with the person/s proposing the said goals or ideas.
During the first breakout session in the first day of the seminar, I realized that I was not the only one who improperly managed conflict. I was fortunate enough to become part of a diverse group composed of not only second year law students, but also fourth year law students. As we were discussing our own personal experiences regarding conflict management, at one point in our lives, we were all guilty of letting conflict between personalities dominate, instead of focusing on incompatible goals and ideas. Call it human nature, perhaps. All of us needed to be reminded about how to properly deal with conflicts, especially since we all share that common dream of becoming Carolinian lawyers someday.
That being said, Mr. Villanueva told all of us at the seminar venue that we should not be afraid of conflict. According to him, conflict is but normal. It has its own life cycle, often appearing, disappearing, and then reappearing after it tapers down. What all of us should be mindful about, though, is how we approach conflict as we become embroiled in it.
To that end, we were introduced to the different tools that we could use in managing conflicts, which we had to apply and present using a real life conflict situation in another breakout session. Our group focused on the conflict between the government, through the Land Transportation and Franchise Regulatory Board (LTFRB), traditional public utility vehicle (PUV) operators, the commuting public, and Angkas, an on-demand, app-based motorcycle ride-hailing service.
To aid in our analysis, we used the Onion Ring and mapped the different stakeholders (Conflict Parties Mapping) to help us better understand the conflict at hand. We found that there is a disconnect between the need for a safe, fast and convenient mode of public transport by the riding public; the need for regulation and safety by the government through the LTFRB; the need for a sustainable means of living by the Angkas drivers; and the need to limit competition by traditional PUV operators.
In the end, it was all about the balancing of interests among the various stakeholders, rather than personality issues among them. However, through the conflict parties mapping, we found that there is a common link among all stakeholders that would connect, balance, and neutralize the conflicting interests – and that is the riding public. Mr. Villanueva emphasized how important it is to find a common party that would foster understanding between the conflicting goals and ideas of the other parties in the conflict parties map.
The identification of this common party would be the starting point from which all parties would be able to properly discuss among themselves how to better resolve or manage the conflict at hand. In Mr. Villanueva’s simple example, he showed us how the grandmother was able to resolve the conflict within the family between the first generation siblings as well their respective children. This is because the grandmother played an important role in each of their lives, and they have nothing but utmost respect for the grandmother which made all of them open to a dialog with each other, at the behest of the grandmother.
Aside from identifying parties, in the afternoon session of the said seminar, Mr. Villanueva introduced us to the chocolate exercise. He called upon two of our classmates from EH403, Kara and Horeb. He then presented to them 1 piece of Ferrero Rocher chocolate, after which he asked Kara and Horeb how they would be able to determine which of them would get the said piece of chocolate. It took Kara and Horeb some time before they were able to come up with a solution, but in the end, they decided to just split the chocolate so that each of them would be able to get their share.
After the sad activity. Mr. Villanueva discussed to us the different outcomes that might arise from the said chocolate dilemma. He first posited the idea that one party, either Kara or Horeb, would prevail over the other. In that scenario, only one party would get to eat the chocolate, and the other one would be left unsatisfied. In the possible scenario, both Kara and Horeb would walk away, and neither party would get to eat the chocolate, leaving both of them unsatisfied. In the third scenario, which was the one done by Kara and Horeb, both parties would come up with a compromise, with each one getting a half of the chocolate, leaving both of the somewhat, but not fully, satisfied.
Mr. Villanueva then introduced us to a fourth possible scenario, which, according to him, would be the most ideal one. In that scenario, which he labelled as transcendence, in order for both Kara and Horeb to be fully satisfied, they would get another piece of chocolate. He labelled this as transcendence because it goes beyond the normal compromise, which, more often that not, would not really lead all parties to be fully satisfied.
In the first breakout session of the second day of the seminar, in order to further exemplify transcendence, Mr. Villanueva asked the groups to come up with a possible solution to two families with a mango tree growing between their respective boundaries. He asked the groups to think outside of the box and come up with a solution that would make both families fully satisfied.
Our group’s resolution involved not just both families, but the entire community by proposing the idea of coming up with a cooperative, the majority of which is owned by both families, and at the same time, involve unproductive members of the community so as to give them proper jobs. Once enough profit is generated, we proposed to further expand the business by planting more trees, thereby expanding the plantation, and venturing into related products where the mango fruit would be utilized, like making purees or drying the mangoes and selling them to nearby groceries.
That, for us, was our very own take on transcendence, where we aimed to go beyond simply dividing the mango fruits between two families. In doing so, we had hoped not only to make both families happy, but also to involve and benefit the entire community. Transcendence involves going beyond a simple compromise. It involves transformation which Mr. Villanueva described as the creation of a new reality. Quoting Johan Galtung, to transform means “means the discourse of the conflict has changed where vision has served as a reference point, a new anchor…. a new reality of the conflict is created.” From the simple mango tree problem, he hopes that we could translate our learnings into our actual practice as future Carolinian lawyers.
That being said, Mr. Villanueva cautioned us into being overly too eager and forcing transcendence and transformation even when the situation is not yet ripe for the said approach. According to him, there is always an appropriate time for everything. As future Carolinian lawyers, we should not force our clients to immediately solve the dispute, when both parties are clearly not ready. We have to wait until both parties are ready to face the issues and settle their dispute as there are times when either one or both of the parties are still too emotionally unstable to face the issue. He further said that forcing them to settle while at this state will only worsen the situation.
To further make his point, he told us a real life story which involved the lawyer of the person who was involved in a hit-and-run incident. According to his story, there was a boy who was killed in a hit-and-run incident. Later on, the perpetrator, who was a teenager, felt guilty and wanted to come clean to the authorities and talk things out with the victim’s family. The teenager and his family wanted to apologize to the family of the victim and make amends. As a mediator, he was requested to see the victim’s family and talk things out with them. However, since the incident was still fresh and too traumatizing for the family of the victim, they refused to talk and settle at that moment.
Mr. Villanueva, understanding the sentiments of the victim family, agreed to let it go for the moment to give them time to heal from that traumatizing and hurtful incident. He told us that it took more than a year before the victim’s family agreed to talk it out with them. He went further to say that the grieving period for the family might not be the same for others. What may take a year for one may only take a few months for others. It is, according to him, a case to case basis.
As future Carolinian lawyers and conflict mediators, we should recognize the fact that conflict exists in life, and that we should always show everyone respect. We must not be all too eager to win cases for our clients (and collect appearance fees in the process). We must always show compassion not only to our clients, but also the other parties that our clients are in conflict with.
“You may have won the case, but you have not resolved the conflict.” – Cesar H. Villanueva
The above quote is what struck me the most during our two-day seminar. Mr. Villanueva was just telling us about how a certain case involving two brothers and their inheritance that dragged on for twenty hears was finally decided, and how the losing brother killed his brother just days after the decision was rendered. Indeed, lawyers may win their clients’ cases, but not all lawyers are willing to actually take a proactive stand in resolving conflicts involving their clients.
As far back as my first day of class in Legal Profession under Judge Francisco A. Seville Jr., he always stood firm in telling us that lawyering is more than just an occupation, that it is a profession. The practice of law, as Judge Sevilla would always put is, involves “a group of men (or people, if we would like to be more politically correct) pursuing a learned art, in the spirit of public service.”
As law students and as future lawyers, we have the challenge of changing the mindset that some people have over lawyers, that lawyers are simply out to milk their clients of money, and that lawyers end up getting bad guys off the hook.
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