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This is Part 3 of my review of The Eight Essential Steps to Conflict Resolution by Dudley Weeks, Ph.D.

In Part 3 I go through the Appendix which has even more practical examples of situations that you may run into during conflict resolution. I found these to be helpful and could relate to almost every setting described here.

I recommend reading Part 1 and Part 2 before diving into Part 3 to give you some background on the following discussion.

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There are many problem areas described in the Appendix. I will do a deep dive into those that are bolded:

• Dealing with Anger
• When one party thinks there is no conflict
• When you feel unsure about confronting someone
• When the other party seems not to want a resolution
• Deal with people who only want things their way
• Dealing with conflicts involving injustices
• Dealing with seemingly unresolvable conflicts

Dealing with Anger

There are two sides to this coin: your anger, and the other person’s anger. The author illustrates in both cases that we have the power to decide how to respond when anger comes up.

“Part of our self power comes from being in charge of how we express anger.”

Our self power is a theme that came up throughout the book and seems to always pop up when dealing with strong emotional responses. The author then describes common thoughts and responses that people share after they get through a yelling match.

“We often give away that power: “They made me angry, so it’s their fault I attacked them!” Well, they got angry at me so I got angry at them!”… The fact of the matter is that “they” may have done something that made it very easy for me to choose to feel angry and express myself in a damaging way, but in the final analysis, I chose to feel angry and express myself in a certain way.”

The fact that we allow others to dictate how we feel and then how we express ourselves gives away our self power, our self-control. In my experience, self-control is my superpower. It keeps me in charge and gives me the strength to determine what I want to do and how I want to act.

When someone is coming at me with hot-headed rage, I have two choices: meet negative energy with more negative energy, or accept that emotional force and turn it into constructive power. The author sums this up perfectly by saying:

“… I refuse to allow my own behavior to be captured and controlled by the anger of someone else, that I am in charge of how I react to another person’s anger, and that I refuse to let their negative behavior become more powerful than my own positive behavior.”

Boldening is my addition. Making the ­choice to refuse the negative behavior is immensely constructive to dialing down the tension and allowing the conflict resolution steps to be successfully employed.

Dealing with People who only want things their way

This goes back to a previous point made in Step 4 detailed in Part 2 of the review. The “If you win, I lose” mentality. This toxic thought process is a zero-sum approach to conflicts and life in general that doesn’t allow for win-win scenarios.

The process in this book has been all about a conflict partnership. Two people or sides to a relationship cannot improve when one party always seeks to get her or his way. This, again, goes back to self-control and the ability of an individual to check their own thoughts and actions.

“In other words, be careful not to think that because they are trying to get their way, you have to be just as obstinate in trying to get your way.”

This detrimental seesaw action only drives the conflict into more polarizing solutions that ends up with one side winning and the other losing. In healthy, productive relationships, neither side should feel like they lost to have a successful partnership.

Dealing with seemingly unresolvable conflicts

Sometimes conflicts can seem so tense, heated, or stressful that the parties involved can’t even talk to each other much less work to find a resolution. People might not listen to each other, or have dug in so deep that they won’t budge on their stance. There is no way these conflicts can be solved, right?

Well, the author disagrees. He believes that no conflict is unresolvable. He states what he means clearly:

“The reason some conflicts go unresolved is not because they are irresolvable; rather, they go unresolved because one or both of the parties involved in the conflict either goes about conflict resolution ineffectively or does not want to resolve the conflict. But the conflict itself is resolvable.”

Boldening is my addition. This makes total sense. If people don’t effectively communicate with the steps laid out in this book or simply don’t want to resolve the conflict, then of course it is unresolvable. But that doesn’t describe the conflict itself.

In my examples above, I used tense, heated, and stressful words to describe what parties bring to the conflict. People that won’t change their views. These are talking about the individuals in the conflict. They don’t effectively communicate but then pass the blame off from themselves to the conflict as a whole, or even to the other people.

Case Studies

The very last section goes through 2 different examples of people using all 8 steps of conflict resolution. The author can dissect each back and forth through an analysis section after the situational dialogue.

Each paragraph is numbered so that the analysis section clearly corresponds to the example conversations. This in-depth analysis is a great way to learn the steps described in this book.

Conclusion

I highly recommend reading this book. I have used these techniques in my life all the time. It helps keep some disagreements small and prevents large conflicts from being destructive.

Overall, I’d say there was one central theme throughout the whole book. That was communication. If we don’t talk to each other, how are we supposed to know what the other person thinks, how they feel, what their concerns are, their perspectives, and what their wants are?

Everyone knows what happens when you assume… Communication helps to clear the air and really understand how the other party thinks and feels. This book helps teach us how to best communicate with someone else in tough situations.

These are invaluable skills that help prevent me, and you, from becoming a… donkey. 😀