The Role of Facilitators, Mediators, and other Consensus Building Practitioners

The Role of Facilitators, Mediators, and other Consensus Building Practitioners

Conflicts grow out of diverse values, perceptions, and interests that exist within a community or organization. Examples abound. In Chelsea, Massachusetts, a long-submerged conflict over corrupt local politics erupted when the city government was put into receivership. In Atlanta, Georgia, historic preservationists repeatedly battled developers, disrupting redevelopment but failing to preserve historic properties. On the Haida Gwaii islands in British Columbia, a native people struggled with the provincial government over the future of their community. And in Hartford, Connecticut, affordable housing advocates clashed with local communities over the distribution and availability of lower-cost housing throughout the region.

In each of these communities, existing institutions were incapable of resolving the conflicts. Also, the disputants lacked the productive working relationships necessary for constructive decision making and problem solving. Impasse resulted. Despite this impasse, however, all four communities successfully resolved their disputes. Moreover, the residents of Chelsea and Haida [Page 200]Gwaii forged substantially stronger communities out of their efforts to build consensus.

The communities and the disputes in these cases differ a great deal; each story is unique. Yet the cases share two important elements. In each, the disputants chose (sometimes after much coaxing) to seek consensus solutions. Equally important, all four communities sought help from mediators.

Practitioners skilled in mediation and consensus building are frequently found at the center of visioning, decision making, and dispute resolution processes within communities and within organizations. Resolving conflict requires skill, communication, and trust. Experienced practitioners help stakeholders to build consensus by identifying existing barriers to effective negotiation and communication, assessing the structure and extent of a dispute, designing and implementing dispute resolution processes, and helping parties to develop options and reach consensus. In addition, practitioners help to build working relationships among diverse stakeholders, thereby encouraging communication across lines that traditionally divide disputants.

Consensus building requires its practitioners to promote dialogue under conditions of conflict, where communication and trust are weak. Consensus processes are therefore usually designed and implemented by trained individuals who bring experience and ability to the task at hand and seek to protect the impartiality and credibility of the process in the eyes of all parties. As can be seen in Chelsea, Atlanta, and Hartford, these individuals are most frequently professional mediators, facilitators, or dispute systems designers, affiliated with organizations that have no direct stake in the conflict or its resolution.

Yet, given the variety of conflict, occasions exist when an involved party, even one with a vested interest in the outcome, may serve effectively as a mediator. In Haida Gwaii, the consensus process was promoted and implicitly mediated by a planning consultant hired by federal and provincial agencies to act as their community liaison. The agencies, as the legitimate authorities designated to implement the program under dispute, designed a traditional planning process. They were to hand down decisions after receiving community input. These agencies did not envision convening a consensus building process when they appointed the community liaison, although he was a trained mediator. The liaison, therefore, was doubly suspect. To the local communities, [Page 201]he represented the interests of the “outside” agencies. To the agencies, he was potentially undermining their planning authority by promoting consensus building. Nonetheless, he worked effectively to bring parties to agreement and, in the process, transformed their views of each other.

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