Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about emotions as signposts, or how we can use parties expressed emotions in conflict to clarify and point out needs and concerns within the conflict.
In conflict, parties will display emotions. And these can be either a positive or a negative. And when we have a positive emotion, that means that the parties are feeling that their needs are met or satisfied.
And this could look like being happy, confident, and content within the process. Or, like I said, they can also present negative emotions. And that typically means that the parties feel that their needs are not being met or satisfied.
And so they may be expressing emotions such as being depressed, confused, or angry. And we really need to watch out the intensity of the emotion that is being displayed. Because typically when the displayed emotion is really intense, that means that the need that is not being met, let's say, if it's a negative emotion being displayed, that means that that need is really significant and important to the party. So we need to recognize that.
As the conflict intervener in conflict resolution process, it is our job to recognize these emotions that are displayed, whether they are positive or negative, but really touch on those negative emotions. Because if we don't recognize the emotion, then we typically will not have a sustained resolution. So remember that unrecognized emotions will equal unsustained resolution in the end. So let's talk about a couple of strategies that we can use as conflict interveners to recognize emotions and really stay with them in the conflict and help the parties through.
First strategy is when we experience or the parties experience emotional outburst within the process. It could be they're raising their voice, they're yelling, or they're crying, those types of situations. We really want to acknowledge that and say, what was said or unsaid that made you yell, cry, et cetera. So we want to ask the parties directly why they are expressing their emotion in that way.
Secondly, another strategy to use for unexpressed emotions. Sometimes, people do not show any emotion at all on the outside. But they could really be feeling some intense emotions on the inside. And so we really want to pull those out.
And so a way to do that is asking or stating a situation such as this-- I'm interested in hearing how you felt in the situation. As a conflict intervener, it's our job to ask these types of questions or try and have the parties really pull out what is not being said here in terms of the emotional aspect surrounding conflict.
And a third strategy is to acknowledge or acknowledgment for all emotions in the room. There can be a lot of different emotions happening in the room with the conflict. And it can get heated, people can get sad. It really can be a whole line or a string of emotions going in and out. And so as a conflict intervener, it's our job to acknowledge all these emotions in the room.
And what I may do, or another conflict intervener may do, is to say something like, there are a few different emotions present. Let's break them down for each of you. So you can say something, I noticed that you were crying. What made you feel so sad? Can we talk about that a little bit more?
Or you can say, I can see that you're really frustrated. What made you frustrated? We need to talk about this a little bit more. So break down each of the different displayed emotions so we can really dig down a little bit deeper to figure out why the parties are expressing these emotions and really get down to the bottom of their needs and interests.
So now that we've covered emotions as signposts, let's go over key terms. When parties display emotions in conflict, it can be positive, which means we feel that our needs are being met, or negative, which means we feel that our needs are not being met. And so we may express emotions negatively. As the conflict intervener in this process, we can help parties identify their needs by recognizing their emotions.
So that's all we have today. I want to leave you with our key terms, which is intensity of emotion and signpost. I really hope you learned something. Feel free to pause and look these over. I can't wait to catch you again next time.