Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today we're going to talk about the resolution and post-conflict stages. So let's get started. Resolution-- a deliberate action or group of actions to help parties meet their respective and mutual needs. Post-conflict-- the relationship between parties after a conflict has been resolved.
Conflict can be modeled as going through a number of stages, and these stages represent varying degrees of intensity within the conflict. And we can break these down into a lot of different stages, but all models look at pre-conflict, conflict, and post-conflict. And these stages represent varying degrees of intensity. Before we get started on talking about resolution and post-conflict, let's talk about escalation and de-escalation.
Escalation-- movement of a conflict from a less intense or harmful stage to a more intense or harmful one. De-escalation-- movement of a conflict from a more harmful or intense stage to a less or harmful one. So think of this as moving up through the conflict or moving back down through the conflict. So before we get in to the resolution and post-conflict stages, let's cover our previous stages of conflict.
First we have pre conflict. And our needs could be met here or they could not be met here, but we are unaware of that anything is going on with our needs. Next is discomfort. And here we become more aware that our needs are not being met, but we aren't sure exactly how or why that all fits in together. And there aren't any concrete details.
Next is the incident stage. And here the parties do become more aware of each other's roles in their needs not being met. And this happens through a concrete event. Misunderstanding-- here people or parties are communicating, but are adopting negative views of each other. And this is due to having differing views and interpretations of each other's messages, actions, beliefs, or motives.
Next is tension. And here our communication is difficult and maybe even impossible. And we're consistently attributing negative motives and traits to the other party. And we're doing a lot of blaming and demonizing on them. And here we try and get allies to help us in our conflict and to see our side. Next is the crisis stage. And here-- this is a point where we are intentionally acting in ways that are detrimental to the other party and we cannot communicate effectively at all.
And we have strong negative perceptions of each other. This leads us now to the resolution and post-conflict stages. So an intervention at any stage of conflict-- whether that's misunderstanding, tension, discomfort, any of the stages that we covered in the last slide-- that intervention results in resolution and post-conflict. So let's say that you cleared up a misinterpreted text message that resulted in some negative views of the other party during the misunderstanding stage and that clarification resulted in the resolution of the conflict.
Or maybe you were in the crisis stage and you had a mediation that was successful, and you ended the conflict in that type of intervention. In a resolution, we are deliberately making an effort to help the parties meet their needs. So here we are piquing our curiosity, I guess, you could say. We were asking a lot of questions. We're clarifying intentions, and so that we are actively trying to work through this conflict.
We are trying to come up with a way to resolve it. And so we are trying to be more open in our questioning, in our actions, et cetera. And so we are deliberately making the effort to come up with a resolution here. And in post-conflict, that's the relationship between the parties after the conflict has been resolved. So this is where we've moved past the conflict itself and our interactions with each other.
Maybe we have a lot more respect for each other here now, because we have a better understanding of how we communicate. Or we know what each other's needs are and we make deliberate actions to fulfill that or to foster that open communication. It's important to note that if there is a complete resolution of the conflict at any of the stages, this can cause the parties to restart the movement through the stages, positively through de-escalation or negatively through escalation. And so it's important that we try and make a complete resolution process here, so the parties don't have to restart the movement through the stages.
So now that we've covered resolution and post-conflict, let's go over our key points. First, all models of conflict resolution look at pre-conflict, conflict, and post-conflict. And conflicts may escalate or de-escalate through these stages. Each of these stages represents a varying degree of intensity through the conflict. And the resolution helps parties meet their needs. And post-conflict is what the relationship looks like after the conflict.
And an intervention results in resolution and post-conflict-- in an intervention through any of the stages of conflict, again whether that's tension, misunderstanding, or discomfort, any of those stages. And incomplete resolution of the conflict can restart the conflict. Thanks again for viewing this tutorial, and I hope to catch you again next time.