Jay Rothman, author of Resolving Identity-Based Conflict in Nations, Organizations, and Communities
A Middle Eastern man died, leaving 17 camels to his three sons. The first son was to receive 1/2, the second son was to receive 1/3, and the third son was to receive 1/9. They were unable to figure out how to divide the camels fairly.
After arguing among themselves, they consulted a wise old woman for a solution to this difficult problem. She offered to lend them her one camel. Of the now 18 camels, the first son took 9, the second took 6, and the third son took 2. One camel remained, so the sons gave it back to the woman.
Mediators call this kind of thinking “expand-the-pie.” Fixed-pie thinking results in blindspots because it assumes that for one person to have more of something, another person has to have less.
And we mediators know that in many, many cases, it just ain’t so.
Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.
Wonderful! I have never studied mediation but your blog fascinates me because I am very much interested in leadership and it just seems like these too are synonyms.
Daniel, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment. Yes, I agree, there’s a close relationship between great leadership and conflict intelligence.