Reference: Fisher, Roger and William Ury. Getting to Yes.
A citizen received a call
from the town council chair. After that
call, he came to the town council meeting and demanded that the council chair
stop bullying and intimidating him. The chair had probably spoken to him about
a major economic development report that the council had approved. The chair response was that his call wasn’t
intimidating. Then he “double downed” and told the citizen should to file an ethics
complaint. Can these two ever
agree?
You sigh and say there is
not much that can be done. Well Fisher
and Ury who wrote Getting to Yes give us some ideas.
It’s clear that
personalities are interfering with a solution. And we really need to know what the problem is
rather than guessing. Find out what
might be helpful to both. In small towns
they will meet each other again.
What are possible
options. We need to have someone intervene that’s for a sure, in formal
parlance, a facilitator, but in this situation, it could simply be another
citizen. it may be that the citizen simply
needs an apology. Politicians aren’t very good at that. The political apology
I’m sorry if you feel that way. That may
be enough.
Let me give you another
example, resolving a conflict in your staff meeting. I’ve been in two staff meeting where the
solution was asking, what do you need? In
a staff I worked with we often had disagreements about what kind of information
to convey to the next level. The minutes
of the meeting weren’t enough. I was
chairing that day and asked what do you need to one peeved staff? He wanted to write a memo. Once stated I was fortunate enough to be able
to say you got it. Thanks for listening,
I hope you can get to Yes. I’m Carolyn
Ball
