dougnoll’s posthaven

Have you ever considered what peace actually means? The word peace seems to evoke different meanings from different people. Take the workplace as an example. For some managers, peace in the workplace means the absence of conflict. No one is arguing or showing tempers. No fighting or overt violence occurs. Sexual harassment or other impermissible conduct is absent.  The company is in legal compliance with workplace laws. Therefore, the company is peaceful.  To me, this is depressing.  

For others, however, peace in the workplace means that employees feel respected, are cooperative with one another, are enthusiastic about what they do, and have a sense of teamwork. They love coming to work and value their friendships. I get excited about this kind of peace.

If peace means the absence of conflict, then both concepts of peace are accurate. But clearly they are not the same. One way of distinguishing types of peace is to consider the idea of negative peace versus positive peace. Negative peace is generally defined as the absence of overt conflict or violence. A ceasefire in Bosnia is negative peace. In the corporate setting, a negative peace may exist when all expressions of disagreement or conflict are suppressed. Employees put on their “happy” faces, pretend to get along, and avoid raising uncomfortable or difficult subjects for fear of angering the boss. The absence of conflict or violence does not lead to a positively defined condition. Hence, peace is characterized as negative. 

Positive peace, on the other hand, may parallel the ancient concept of shalom. Every person is valued and feels valued. There is a right relationship between each member of the work group.  Not only is conflict absent, but an esprit d’corps seems to exist. People are motivated by each other and strive for excellence. A balanced blend of personal, internal competition (How can I improve?) and external cooperation (How can I help the other person do better?) predominates. People are excited about their work. They feel privileged that someone is paying them for what they do.

Most workers would prefer to have positive peace around them. Yet most work environments are satisfied with negative peace. For example, I asked a company president if her company had a peaceful environment. She indignantly said yes and challenged my implication that her company’s environment was hostile. Of course, my question was purposefully unfair because I did not distinguish between positive and negative peace. I then asked her if the peace within her company was positive or negative. She was nonplussed by the question. When I explained the difference, she thought for a moment. To her credit, she admitted that her company probably maintained a negative peace.  

Why do most companies have negative peace? First, companies seek an interpersonal goal of absence of conflict. Absence of conflict is comfortable because anxiety is reduced and a sense of control prevails. After all, overt conflict means anger, loud words, and imminent loss of emotional and possibly physical control. One of our dominant cultural norms dictates lack of emotion, rationality, control, and repression of emotion so as not to be frightened with potential violence. Companies also seek a kind of corporate homeostasis or status quo. Maintaining status quo requires less effort, less thinking, less resources, and less creativity. Any strategy reducing difficult objectives appeals to many over-worked managers. 

Third, companies focus on the financial bottom line or the stock price. The payoffs from the efforts required for a positive peace are not easily related to the current value of stock options.  Thus, the minimum socially and legally required effort to maintain peace becomes the standard human resources objective.  

Imagine, however, how positive peace might operate on a company’s stock value. Employees would be easy to recruit because the company holds a reputation as good place to work.  Retention would not be as difficult. When restless employees compare their environment to other opportunities, positive peace wins. Since most companies have negative peace, the competition for retention favors the few who foster positive peace. Positive peace increases morale, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and increases productivity.  People are, to put it simply, happier.

So why don’t companies work towards positive peace? Probably for the same reasons most companies are average financial performers: unawareness, apathy, insufficient human and financial resources, and lack of commitment. Those companies that do concentrate on positive peace find that their investment is rewarded by huge multiples in terms of recruiting, retention, productivity, and valuation in the marketplace. In other words, wealth is proportional to positive peace. 

Douglas E. Noll, Lawyer to Peacemaker

Creator of Negotiation Mastery for the Legal Pro

California Lawyer Magazine, California Attorney of the Year 2012

Conflict escalation is a gradual regression from a mature to immature level of emotional development. The psychological process develops step by step in a strikingly reciprocal way to the way we grow up. In other words, as conflicts escalate through various stag  es, the parties show behaviors indicating movement backward through their stages of emotional development. 

Escalation is charted in five phases, each having its own characteristics and triggers.   Stage One is part of normal, everyday life. Even good relationships have moments of conflict. These can only be resolved with great care and mutual empathy. In this stage, people look for objective solutions in a cooperative manner. If a solution is not found, especially because one of the parties sticks obstinately to his or her point of view, the conflict escalates.

In Stage Two, the parties fluctuate between cooperation and competition. They know they have common interests, but their own wishes become more important. Dealing with information becomes limited to favoring one's own arguments. Logic and understanding are used to convince or win over the opposing side. At this stage, each party does everything possible to not show weakness. The temptation to leave the field of argument increases until the conflict escalates because of some action taken by one of the parties. 

By entering Stage Three, the field of concrete actions, the parties each fear that grounds for a common solution is lost. In other words, they lose hope for a reasonable outcome. Interaction becomes hostile. All logic is focused on action, replacing fruitless and nerve-wracking discussions. The parties each believe that through pressure they will change the other party. At the same time neither is prepared to yield. At this level, stereotyping is applied as a negative identification of the opponent. Power becomes important as empathy disappears.  

At Stage Four, the parties’ cognitive functioning regresses. One is aware of the other’s perspectives, but is no longer capable of considering the other’s thoughts, feelings and situation. How often have we remarked that parties in conflict are acting like children?  In fact, they are because of the escalation. Both sides feel forced into roles from which they see no escape. If the conflict cannot be halted at this stage, the escalation undergoes a dramatic increase in intensity. Escalation results when one side commits some action that is felt by the opposite side as a loss of face. 

At Stage Five, progressive regression appears in the form of a comprehensive ideology and totalizing of antagonistic perspectives. Sacred values, convictions, and superior moral obligations are at stake. The conflict assumes mythical dimensions. Sometimes the parties have fantasies of omnipotence, seeing no way that they can lose in court. In psychological terms, the escalation has reached a hallucinatory-narcissistic sphere. The entire self-conception is drawn into the conflict such that individual perceptions and evaluations disappear. By threatening and creating fear, both parties strive towards total control of the situation and thereby escalate the conflict further. To remain credible and to restrain the enemy from an act of force, the threatened party feels compelled to commit acts of force itself. This process continues until the parties reach financial or physical exhaustion, or the matter is decided in the courtroom.

At some point along the way, the parties may seek mediation. The difficulty of an escalated case is that the parties must be walked back through the stages of escalation.  If a mediator is not aware of the escalation cycle and assumes that the parties are at Stage One, the mediation is doomed to failure. Furthermore, working back through the escalation stages takes time and infinite patience. The parties may backslide and regress.  Oftentimes, the parties resist the mediator’s efforts to move them into more mature levels of escalation. This behavior is very similar to parents working with children who have temporarily regressed. Sometimes, one party will move to an earlier stage of escalation faster than the other, creating more complexity. Thus, the mediator’s function is to act as a guide for the parties, assisting them in finding their way to the common ground of Stage One. Only when the parties have reached Stage One will they be ready to find a common ground for resolving the conflict. 

Douglas E. Noll, Lawyer to Peacemaker

Creator of Negotiation Mastery for the Legal Pro

California Lawyer Magazine, California Attorney of the Year 2012