Conflict resolution strategy #1

Success Problem

Recognize that all of us have biased fairness perceptions.

Impact

Both parties to a conflict typically think they’re right (and the other side is wrong) because they quite literally can’t get out of our own heads. Our sense of what would constitute a fair conflict resolution is biased by egocentrism, or the tendency to have difficulty seeing a situation from another person’s perspective as came out of research.

Recommendation

When part of a conflict, we need to try to overcome our self-centered fairness perceptions. We might do this by jointly hiring a mediator who can help us see one another’s point of view, or by enlisting another type of unbiased expert, such as an appraiser, to offer their view of the “facts.” Many times it may give us a new pespective.

Category

• Conflict & Crisis