Consensus Building Concepts and Principles

Consensus Building Principles

Problem-solving v. position-taking. Some still view negotiation as a process in which each side takes a position, trades concessions, and agrees (sometimes) at a point in the middle. This “horse trading” approach, however, can become a battle of wills and create bad feelings. It can also take a long time, and agreements reached may not address the parties’ real needs and concerns.

Most current thinking about negotiation emphasizes a problem-solving, not position- taking approach that focuses on the interests or concerns that underlie the parties’ positions on issues. These principles were first articulated in the book Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury.

Issues, positions, and interests. One way to understand this concept is to consider issue(s) as the question(s) to be answered, a position as one party’s answer to these questions, and their interests as the reasons they hold that position. Fisher and Ury outline some very helpful principles for how to do this effectively, all of which shift the dynamics to more creative problem solving:

• Discuss and address interests. It is critical to ask why one side is asserting a particular position on the issues, to understand what they really need to achieve. Interests can be met in many ways; positions are much more rigid.
   
• Understand the role of interpersonal dynamics in negotiations and help people move on. Fisher and Ury call this “separating the people from the problem,” meaning that it is important to understand the role that emotions play in a dispute but not to allow those emotions to block one from addressing each problem on its merits. Personal prejudices and prior history need to be understood – they may constitute additional problems people want to solve – but people should not let themselves be so motivated by bad interpersonal feelings that this becomes a barrier to solving the policy issues at stake and achieving one’s other goals.
   
• Generate a wide range of options, minimizing judgments at first. People are less likely to hit an impasse when many options are being evaluated. This helps everyone shift (to some degree) to the same “side of the table,” evaluating the pros and cons of options more collaboratively. A common example of this is the technique of brainstorming.
   
• Agree on criteria by which to judge options for resolution. It may be easier at the beginning of a process to list the general requirements that a potential agreement must satisfy than to develop the details of specific options. Such criteria are also very helpful in maintaining the sense of common endeavor in evaluating options as they emerge, for two reasons. First, the legitimacy of each side’s needs is at least tacitly accepted – these criteria are often surrogates for parties’ underlying interests. In using these criteria together, parties find themselves dealing with how to solve others’ problems, and experience their own problems being treated as relevant by the others. Second, where parties agree on objective criteria, it can help break impasses.

These are good principles on which to ground constructive dialogue, but not every negotiation is entirely interest based – eventually the “pie” cannot be made any larger and parties are faced with deciding who will get what. For example, in disputes over water resources, a certain amount of competition is inevitable in dividing up a finite resource. Nor can the effect that politics plays in the dynamics of a negotiation be ignored. But these principles do allow participants in a consensus building effort to maximize the creativity needed to create more “joint gains” – an essential ingredient in sound resource management decisions.