One thing my experience in mediation has taught me is that understanding a dispute and understanding the people involved in it are two very different things.

We can spend time establishing what happened, working through the facts, understanding each person’s position and exploring possible solutions. These are all important, however, it doesn’t always bring us any closer to resolving the conflict.

What keeps people stuck isn’t always the issue they’re arguing about.

It might be a feeling of betrayal, or a sense of injustice that has grown over time, or feeling humiliated, dismissed or that nobody has really listened to their side of the story.

These feelings can become so intertwined with the dispute that even when a practical solution is available, people aren’t necessarily ready to consider it or act on it.

We can explain the different perspectives, work through the options and identify what seems like a reasonable way forward…but just because someone understands the logic of a solution doesn’t mean they’re emotionally ready to accept it.

I think this is where we sometimes get conflict wrong. We treat emotions as something that needs to be managed or put to one side so that people can focus on finding a solution.

Emotions are often an essential part of understanding it.

It means being prepared to look beyond the positions people are defending and understand what makes those positions so difficult to let go of.

Sometimes, the most useful question is ‘what is making it so difficult for these people to move forward?’

That’s a very different starting point.