A Review of Conflict Resolution: The Partnership Way
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Love Publishing Company; 2nd Revised edition (January 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0891083391
ISBN-13: 978-0891083399
The first step that can save us from a modern culture that over-emphasizes a belief in ourselves as autonomous and separate individuals is learning how to resolve interpersonal conflicts through empathic understanding and the willingness to respect the needs of others equal with our own. A mistaken belief of separateness allows individuals to navigate life without taking the risk to ask for help from others or considering that others might need their help.
It may seem like a difficult task to educate an increasingly diverse society to be more aware of the need to cooperate with each other. However, consider the role of mental health professionals who are asked to relieve the psychological pain and fallout suffered by individuals coping with interpersonal and societal conflict. What tools do they have to bring to the table in order to effectively help clients resolve their conflicts in today’s increasingly conflictual world?
From the perspective of master’s level students engaged in learning the craft of therapeutic counseling, they soon find that conflict resolution and mediation skills are essential components of an effective professional practice. Yet most university training programs spend very little time developing the theoretical literacy necessary to understand the concepts of conflict resolution. In addition, even less of their clinical training is devoted to creating competencies in the use of conflict resolution skills.
When the majority of graduate students in counseling and psychology embark on their practicum and internships in clinical settings they often are surprised by how much conflict is present in the lives of those they are charged with helping. Conversely, they discover how little they have been taught that might enable them to actually help their clients resolve the painful conflicts they are experiencing in their personal and family relationships as well as those in their school and work environments.
A new generation of counselors, social workers and psychologists can now benefit greatly from the work of counselor educators, Barry Weinhold, Ph.D. and Janae Weinhold, Ph.D. This breakthrough work in the field of conflict resolution, Conflict Resolution – The Partnership Way, represents a departure from the traditional texts that can be found on this subject. It lends itself well to developing theoretical literacy on this subject. More importantly, it places emphasis on creating clinical competencies through specific types of skill training, without which little can be accomplished in the area of mediation and conflict resolution. In this increasingly important area of therapeutic practice, professionals need to be able to walk the walk with clients seeking to resolve their conflicts more than just talking the talk of traditional talk-therapy. This is an area where a pill will not fix the problem and the competent use of a specific set of conflict resolution skills must come into play in order to effectively help their clients.
The Weinhold’s revised 2nd edition text addresses the theoretical literacy needs of students’ for understanding conflict and its sources by presenting an integrative meta-theory titled, Developmental Systems Theory (DST). DST utilizes a four-stage developmental model to explain why conflicts occur in all human systems. This includes intimate relationships, family, schools, organizations, legal systems, and the larger social systems of communities, cultures and nation-states. They then present practical skills to show people how to resolve the three major kinds of conflict that occur in all human systems: (a) wants and needs, (b) values and beliefs, and (c) intractable conflicts.
As alluded to above, just using a didactic approach to teaching conflict resolution will not work in producing professional competencies in this area of therapeutic practice. What is needed is a constructivistic approach predicated upon student involvement in their own educational process of discovery and experience. The Weinhold’s new book provides the instructor with resources to utilize this approach, including student self-inventories and writing exercises in each chapter that provide insight and direction for understanding strengths and areas of needed skill development. Finally, the book provides readers with a clear understanding of Developmental Systems Theory as it is applied to conflicts that occur in all human systems. Practical step-by-step processes for resolving the various types of conflict are presented throughout the book that include the development of dialogue and inquiry skills critical to helping practitioners work with clients and others in resolving conflicts.
The content of the book is laid out in four parts:
Part One
• Describes the Partnership Way and the Developmental Systems Theory that
supports it.
• Illustrates why we need a new paradigm of conflict resolution.
• Introduces new research on unrecognized and unhealed developmental trauma as
the primary cause of intractable conflicts.
• Helps readers examine their personal style of conflict resolution and to
determine where it is and is not effective.
Part Two
• Focuses on resolving conflicts of wants and need and values and beliefs.
• Provides step-by-step skill building worksheets and skill practice exercises
to help readers learn how to resolve their conflicts as well as how to help
others do the same.
• Teaches readers how to identify your own wants and developmental needs.
• Shows how to distinguish between a conflict of wants and needs and a conflict
of values and beliefs.
• Presents dialogue and inquiry skills to resolve conflicts involving values and
beliefs.
Part Three
• Focuses on identifying the often unrecognized developmental sources of
intractable conflicts and strategies for resolving them at their source.
• Shows how to resolve conflicts in individuals, couples and families.
Part Four
• Focuses on strategies for resolving conflicts in more complex social systems,
such as the mental health profession, schools and churches, the legal
profession, the workplace, and cultural, national and international
organizations.
• The last chapter describes how the authors have utilized these skills in
their own relationship.
The fundamental principles and suggested teaching methods laid out by the Weinholds in their newly revised book can help colleges and universities better prepare students entering the helping professions to assist clients in resolving their interpersonal conflicts. The material presented by the authors can serve as the basis for engendering the understanding, values, beliefs, and conflict resolution skills necessary for those who are increasingly looked upon to heal the pain and frustration of those involved in interpersonal conflict. The book presents a path toward developing a higher level of consciousness about the need for conflict resolution that can foster more peaceful relations among all people. It provides the information necessary to understand and settle disputes that represent the artificial divisions that separate us as individuals and community members in an increasingly diverse and conflictual world.
Information about the reviewer: Stephen Burton is currently a second year Doctoral student in the Counseling program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). He is also an experienced mediator in the field of conflict resolution and dispute settlement. During the 2009 first summer session, he co-taught the Advanced Counseling Techniques course required for Master’s level students enrolled in UNCC Community and School Counseling graduate programs. As a part of the course, he taught the segment that focused on mediation and conflict resolution techniques using material from the book, Conflict Resolution: The Partnership Way, by Barry Weinhold, Ph.D., and Janae Weinhold, Ph.D.
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