Nearly everyone thinks of conflict resolution as focused on solutions, but exactly how this is to be done has remained something of a mystery – until now. Fredrike Bannink offers dozens of ideas, strategies and techniques that can be used by conflict resolution practitioners to improve their effectiveness. A very useful book.
Kenneth Cloke, mediator and author of Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism, president of Mediators Beyond Borders, USA
As usual Fredrike Bannink writes with clarity and knowledge. This book draws together proof from many sources to support her central teachings. The results of these discoveries will help you to use her suggestions in new ways and in new settings.
Alasdair Macdonald, psychiatrist and trainer in finding cooperation in the workplace, UK
With solution-focused conflict management a unique approach to mediation is presented that in the coming years will find its place along with other already existing models. What is special about it will certainly become clear in this book.
Friedrich Glasl, mediator, Austria
I am very impressed about the way Fredrike Bannink develops the ideas, tools and attitudes of solution focused conflict management so clearly and comprehensively. Especially the step-by-step track of presenting good solution focused questions, describe their effects and connect them with clear examples from many different areas of life makes it easy to follow. For those already acquainted to conflict resolution I see great potential for gathering new impulses and ideas that are easy to use and implement in their interventions.
Peter Roehrig, coach & mediator, Germany
Everybody knows now we need harmonious ways of living together on this planet more than any era in the past, but not always knowing how. This book gave me complete “know how” to make me realize that a conflict is only a chance to exercise our own ability to bring peace and satisfaction to our own life and to that of others. And it beautifully illustrates how we can experience the joy of developing ourselves into wiser human beings if we can cross the borders of difference with a positive shift in focus of attention. Many Japanese people might re-learn this spirit of harmony in our tradition with re-newed wisdom.
Yasuteru Aoki, president Solution Focus Consulting Inc., Japan
Fredrike Bannink’s “Handbook of Solution-Focused Conflict Management” is a valuable addition to the growing literature for mediation professionals, providing new and useful insights into the theory and application of the solution-focus approach to conflict management. Mediators, both new and experienced, will find this handbook an important resource for developing more effective techniques for assisting parties to resolve their disputes by achieving maximum non-zero cooperative outcomes while restoring relationships or ending them in a less hostile and confrontational manner. Coming from her experience as a clinicalpsychologist, Bannink cogently demonstrates why mediators should encourage participants to focus their attention on finding solutions rather than dwelling on the historical facts behind the problems as the preferred path to conflict resolution.
Myer J. Sankary, mediator-lawyer, past president of Southern California Mediation Association, USA
Fredrike Bannink’s Handbook of Solution-Focused Conflict Management offers an important guide to bending conflict situations toward improved ends. Few people enjoy dealing with conflict, but the options, leaving things unattended or pursuing litigation, are almost always worse. Bannink moves us beyond traditional approaches to solution-focused models that assist participants to be at their best. Solution-focused conflict management insists that participants maintain responsibility for finding their own best solutions. Bannink’s book moves us beyond barely sufficient dialogue and barely sufficient solutions to most capable dialogue and most capable solutions.
James C. Melamed, J.D., CEO mediate.com, USA
Wow! You have done a fantastic job! I am all impressed, really. Your book is great to read and I think it will be an important book. The mediators are receptive people I believe and the whole branch will benefit from your thoughtful way of writing.
Ben Furman, psychiatrist, Reteaming, Finland
After reading your book I want to say thank you – I think you have put together a nice package, and I got new ideas from reading it.
Kati Karkkainen, chairwoman Finnish Association for SF Methods
The Handbook of Solution Focused Conflict Management is a wonderful synthesis of integrating solution focused brief therapy concepts to the world of managing and resolving conflicts. The text is full of good case examples that blends the art and science of using a brief model successfully with which might seem intractable situations. Bannink has done a superb job of writing and organizing the text into sections that build on one another. Readers and practitioners who deal with client dilemmas at any level will find plenty of ideas in this text to make their work better. I highly recommend this text.
Review amazon.com
Fredrike Bannink sums up what her book is all about in the first chapter when she says Solution-focused (SF) conflict management no longer focuses on the conflict itself but on what clients want to change in their lives and how to make that happen. It is about their “best case scenario”, or even their “good enough case scenario”, instead of their “worst case scenario”. SF conflict management – focusing on hope, optimism, self-efficacy, resilience, competencies and possibilities – offers new ways to form or strenghten relationships, encouraging trust and respect or alternatively to end relationships in as pleasant a manner as possible. SF conflict management, sometimes called SF mediation, is applicable in all settings where there is a conflict and people decide to do someting about it, from divorce conflics, family and neighbour conflicts, team and labour conflicts, personal injury conflicts to international conflicts. This book then goes on to “teach” readers how to take an SF approach to mediating a conflict and how to apply such an approach to the varied settings mentioned above.
For those with an interest in theories, one of the early chapters introduces and discusses four theoretical issues that are connected with SF conflict managment and which provide a strong psychological foundation and underpinning to the SF approach. These links are:
1. focusing as soon as possible on developing a win-win situation (game theory)
2. focusing on positive goals (quantum mechanics and neuroscience)
3. focusing on hope and what difference it would make if the things hoped for would become a reality (hope theory)
4. focusing on positive emotions (broaden and build theory)
Fredrike has clearly carried out an amazing amount of research and the book is liberally peppered with references that give strenght and credibility to her proposed approaches. While I’m not normally a great one for theories I found the references fascinating and will find them a valuable resource for explaining the approach to others of a more academic mindset. For me, the real value of the book lies in the practical, step by step processes that are outlined together with the practical guidance and SF questions that any reader can immediately start using to put this approach into practice.
For those who are not familiar with SF, the book gives a good foundation of basic knowledge starting with an overview of SF Interviewing and SF Conflict Management. It then outlines four basic SF questions (questions about hope; questions about differences; questions about what is already working and questions about the next step or sign of progress) before progressing to more sophisticated, creative SF questions. These new ways of using scaling and looking at the conflict from a number of perspectives will form a valuable addition to any SF practitioner’s toolkit. I particularly liked the Interactional Matrix provided as an Appendix, which serves as a valuable aid and reminder to ask questions that help individuals see the situation through a number of lenses.
One of the main concerns for anyone challenged with helping resolve conflict is what they do if one or both of the parties involved isn’t a customor for change. FRedrike’s chapter on ‘Working Alliance and Motivation to Change” discusses methods for assessing individual’s motivation to change and cateforising them in terms of their relationship to the conflict as visitor, complainant or customer. She then goes on to ouline practical strategies and questioning techniques to help visitors and complainants become customers.
Another key concern for anyone in a mediation role is how to control negative emotions. Again, the book devotes a chapter on how to focus on positive emotions, as well as other SF tools that the mediator can use. I particularly liked the advice of allowing each party one chance to “say what definitely needs to be said”, having recently facilitated an informal mediation with a dysfunctional team where the repeated plaintive cry was “things need to be said”.
A number of chapters look at how to apply an SF approach to a specific conflict situation – Divorce, Neighbour Conflict, Teams, Family, Personal Injury, Victim-Offender. As is the case throughout the book, these situations are illustrated and brought to life with the use of real case studies. Fredrike uses stories in a wonderful way to reinforce key concepts and bring an element of lightness to what could otherwise be a dark subject. The book is written from a mediator’s perspective and includes some useful comparisons to other mediation models as well as practical tools for the mediator to use to reflect on and evaluate their effectiveness, including how to deal with “failures”. However, it is equally valuable to anyone who is not formally trained as a mediator but finds himself in the role of helping resolve conflict between others.
Review InterAction, The Journal of Solution Focus in Organisations
Das Buch is fur all jene hilfreich, die ein praktisches Interesse an der Losung sozialer Konflikte haben: Es gibt konkrete Anhaltspunkte und Hilfestellungen, wie der Fokus auf positive Aspekte im Verlauf der Konflikte gelegt werden kann.
Review Zeitschrift fur Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie 2011, 55, 2.
I’m reading such an interesting book “Solution-Focused Conflict Management” by Fredrike Bannink. It occurs to me that there is an intersting dichotomy between the legal system, which is “problem-focused” and the conflict resolution business which aims to be “solution-focused”. Clients bring their problems to lawyers and they help them to address them by going back and seeking damages from those who have injured them. When they come to the mediator, we can either assist in that endeavor, or meet them where they are and assist in “getting out of the conflict” by changing their future – without any promise or hope of changing their past.
Likewise, a client hires a lawyer to take action on their behalf in ways that they have been unable to do on their own. In solution based conflict resolution, the mediator gives the client back the responsibility and competence to make a decision which will affect change of their future. Bannink references a study which states that “a mediator can only mediate in the future tense”. What an interesting challenge to mediate without regard to “how you got here” or “what is the problem?” to “how can you make small steps that will help you achieve your future goals?” It makes me see the world of hope and possibilities differently already.
Blog Jan F. Schau, This week’s best blog posts, www.mediate.com nr 371 (March 2011)