Abstract
Most of what we do “at work” these days is organizing (Addleson 2011). We spend our time—face-to-face, texting on mobile phones, or by email—in conversation about what we are doing; offering and taking advice, negotiating, and deciding what to do, when, and with whom.
The “ordinary” work of organizing may not be as dramatic as that of the mediators whose experiences and voices comprise the “dramas” at heart of Dealing with Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes, but like their work, it is all about talking and listening. More often than not it also turns out to be a tricky process of give and take among participants aligning for action. While the mindset we know as “managing” treats work as a technical phenomenon— attempting to regulate and control what people do with job descriptions, incentive schemes, plans, directives, and structures—organizing is actually what Ron Heifetz calls “adaptive” (Heifetz 1994). Adaptive work revolves around attitudes, values, beliefs, interests, and relationships. As ordinary work mirrors the substance of the extraordinary work Forester writes about, clearly his book has a much wider potential audience than mediators of public disputes. Anyone interested in “getting things done effectively,” as planners surely are, can learn a great deal from this book.
What does Forester offer? The book takes us “inside” dramas of public disputes that have little to do with “facts,” “data,” or “objective circumstances.” The “differences” in his title—the sources of the disputes—are people’s values and their feelings about and attitudes to one another and/or situations. Unless we get past these differences, with participants finding some common ground around which they can align and agree on a course of action, nothing is resolved. The work of mediators is to help participants accomplish this. The emphasis is on helping, for, as Forester notes wryly, they “don’t make agreements any more than midwives make babies” (p. 175). And it is tough work, not least because, wherever there are differences, success depends on comprise. For the stakeholders, compromising means giving up something, perhaps a position they value, and necessarily involves a sense of loss.
If you, like me, have been fed a steady diet of management, including negotiation skills, this insider’s perspective, which puts participants’ attitudes and relationships center stage in solving public disputes (or, for that matter, in any organizing activity), is “new theory.” While the ground may be shifting, I suspect that another perspective, akin to a management mindset, still has the upper hand in the field of planning, including dealing with disputes that inevitably arise in the course of planning or while turning plans into action.
This standard approach, used, for example, by consultants doing development work, military advisors “rebuilding” a foreign country, and in much of the evolving policy-work around climate change adaptation, relies on an “outside view” (“inside” and “outside” views are this reviewer’s terms). On the premise that there is a right answer to every problem, the object is to discover what that is, or who has it, then “get buy-in” from stakeholders whose roles are defined and stakes are determined by other people (outside “experts”), who have the authority and/or power to define the problems and make the policy. To find answers, they focus on circumstances, conditions, organizations, regulations, and legislation, gathering then analyzing data. Underpinned by competition or brinkmanship, the process produces winners and losers, with the outside experts’ criteria determining which is which.
It was a pair of planners, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, who, nearly forty years ago, explained why this standard (“empirical” or “scientific”) approach doesn’t work for solving problems in the field of planning (Rittel and Webber 1973), by implication in the cases outlined by Forester, and, this reviewer would argue, in almost any situation where interpersonal differences are in play. These are “wicked” problems. A standard approach treats them as “tame,” or technical, problems.
With Forester’s book we understand much more about the nature, or source, of wicked problems and what it takes to resolve them. As far as solutions are concerned, even though there is a lot of practical advice in the book from mediators themselves about their practices—how they actually deal with differences—the author is the first to admit that following their footprints, even using some of the “tricks” each has learned in years of dealing with differences, is no guarantee of success. Just as the sources of wicked problems are the attitudes and relationships of the people involved, the same people hold the key to either figuring out a solution, or not. Will they listen to one another, appreciate their differences, recognize “the others” as having legitimate concerns, interests, fears, . . ., and, seeing their futures as closely intertwined, negotiate, bargain, compromise, and agree? Or, will they have none of this and walk away?
Readers will appreciate that this book, which Forester says “addresses public cynicism and the failure of political imagination in every chapter” (p. 10) is not a “how to” in a conventional sense. It begins with a fairly short, very useful introduction. Here, with headings like “Calling a Process ‘Collaborative’ or ‘Participatory’ Does Not Make it So” (p. 12), the author sets his agenda, both for the book and mediation practices he is going to describe and evaluate.
The main chapters are arranged thematically in four parts, each containing two or more cases dealing with different kinds of “help” (this reviewer’s term) mediators bring to their efforts to resolve public disputes. These range from “expecting that more is possible. . . ,” to “respecting value differences. . . ,” to going from “presuming to enabling action” (p. 1). As these cases could be organized in a variety of ways, more important than the structure is the approach Forester adopts for taking the reader “inside” each, to see and understand a mediator’s particular mediating efforts (practices) in relation to his or her assessments of and perspectives on the incredibly complex personal and interpersonal (i.e., social) considerations at the heart of each dispute. The cases are stories, told by the author and, as they are based on interviews with highly experienced mediators, in part by the mediators themselves.
Each section follows the same format. “I tell them what I’m going to tell them, then I tell them, then I tell them what I’ve told them” is how the noted Victorian essayist and public speaker, Hilaire Belloc described his formula for success. While some readers may find the narrative repetitive in places, repetition is appropriate bearing in mind that this “inside” view will be new to many readers. First, it means coming to terms with the fact that the work of dispute resolution (and of organizing in general) is all about the participants themselves—their motives, attitudes, values, and relationships and their willingness and ability to engage one another and themselves around these considerations. Then, there is the question of how meditators can help. The answer to “how” in this case is not “follow these steps” but talk and listen—“probe, explore, and reflect—to discover and appreciate what is going on and learn how others do the work of mediating-helping.”
The book is full of little gems both from Forester and his “panel” of mediators. We learn from one, for example, that “interviewing is partially information gathering, but it’s sixty percent relationship building” (p. 46). My own experience, on the periphery of the process that brought apartheid in South Africa to an end, is borne out by the author’s advice. “We must not dismiss but really take advantage of a cup of tea here, a walk on the site there, the diverse conventions and rituals of meeting and listening, talking and eating, walking and working together, through which we usefully learn about one another. The work of inclusion and participation happens not only in words but in deeds together as well” (p. 56).
When it comes to mediating disputes, inclusion is paramount. Inclusion rests on conversations, hence on our ability—together—to create and hold spaces for both deep listening and speaking openly. While doing this may sound simple, clearly it is not easy. The book ends with an excellent set of summaries plus appendices containing checklists of questions to explore with stakeholders and elements to consider during different phases of mediation. Intended as a “guide” to tackling complex social issues, Forester’s book will serve as a very useful starting point for mediators and organizers alike. Many readers will benefit from reading it carefully to savor the message and reflect on the lessons, then, looking for advice and inspiration, returning to it again and again.