Resolving Personal and Organizational Conflict: Stories of Transformation and Forgiveness

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Summary: Stories to resolve by...
Review: Resolving Personal and Organizational Conflict addresses the struggles we all go through, from one time or another, in our personal interactions with others. The authors guide the reader through conflicts they have mediated, from the organizational to the feuding next-door neighbors, vis-à-vis stories of these conflicts and how they successfully or not so successfully mediated them. Cloke & Goldsmith do not profess to have all the answers to conflict resolution and state this throughout their text. They offer that through conducting mediations, they themselves are learning more about the mediation process. It is in this spirit, the spirit of learning and discovering for oneself the possible answers/solutions to a problem or situation, that makes this book so worthwhile. Their insights range from mediations where true resolution simply cannot be achieved but new policies or guidelines can be implemented as an outcome of the conflict to prevent it from occurring again, to openly discussing potentially explosive issues (based on past experiences) in the early stages before they do in fact become full-blown conflict. Cloke & Goldsmith do not hold back any punches in this text, they tell each conflict story just as it was, no sugar coating here, and in so doing, bring the reader right into the picture with them. Chapter 5 in this book had just such an impact on me, so much so, that I made copies of it for several individuals involved in my own work situation to review. A picture may be worth a thousand words, and in the case of this style of text, that of learning through honest and real stories, then a story may indeed be worth a thousand pictures...