Hi. I'm Julie Tietz and welcome to Conflict Resolution, Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to discuss the stakeholder process and what that all entails and involves for conflict resolution processes.
In a stakeholder process, we are using this process in large scale conflicts or where large decisions are going to be made. And it involves people or groups directly affected by the decision or conflict that is going to go through this process.
And through this process, we are trying to seek consensus. So in consensus, what we mean by that is we're trying to find a general agreement from the group on what the right direction or action is going to be taken in resolving the conflict or going ahead with the decision. So through this process, we're going to utilize conflict resolution techniques. And that's why it's a part of conflict resolution processes in general.
And also, we see this in public policy matters, So Where decisions are going to be made regarding policy in government or public policy conflicts as well. A really common public policy conflict that utilizes stakeholder processes involves environmental conflicts and concerns.
So in this process, we have our stakeholders. And those are the individuals that are directly affected by the outcome of the conflict, or a group in some cases. And so that's the first step is we want to identify all of our stakeholders to make sure they're included in this process.
And as I said earlier, we're going to use our similar conflict resolution techniques or mediation steps and techniques. So we're going to come up with some ground rules. And this is important before we even begin the process. So we're going to have ground rules on how the parties are going to set up and make their decisions and process who's going to be involved and how we're going to approach each other and have communication with each other throughout this process.
Then, we're going to identify the interests that are involved in the parties and we involve all of these different stakeholders, because we realize the impact that this outcome or the process or the decision that we're making of this process rather is going to impact a wide range of individuals. And so we need to find everybody's interests in the process and what they need from the outcome.
And we're also going to do some brainstorming to find our solutions. And we're going to have a wide range of perspectives in this process. And we're going to take all of these perspectives to come up with some solutions that will reach consensus of the group and make sure everybody has a general agreement on the outcome.
But once the group has exhausted their brainstorming list, we're going to then evaluate our solutions that we have. We're going to check for feasibility to make sure that whatever solution the group wants to go ahead with is actually possible. Can everybody agree and meet the expectations of our solution?
An important thing to know is that mediation and stakeholder processes are very similar in the steps that we are taking. But stakeholder processes are generally a longer process. So it's going to take quite a bit more time than a mediation. It's going to take multiple sessions, multiple meetings, that could last weeks, months, maybe even years, depending upon the complexity of the issue.
And we're dealing with multiple parties. So again, this is another factor in which creates a longer process, because we are taking into consideration a lot of different perspectives. And not everybody is going to agree right away on the best solution. So again, we're going through that consensus building process so we can find a general agreement for the parties.
And just as we had learned through mediation processes, stakeholder processes as well are going to require quite a bit of repetition. So we may be going back and forth through the various stages as we move along in this process. And so it's important that we left the parties know that it's going to take some time.
We need to set a time aside, so we can really thoroughly go through this process and come up with a really agreeable solution. And it's going to be an iterative process as well. It's going to go back and forth and we're going to go over a lot of the same things again and again.
Let's take a look at our key points on stakeholder processes before we go. Stakeholder processes are utilized when we have large scale decisions to make or we have large scale conflicts. And the stakeholders involved are the people and groups that are directly impacted by this decision. And it usually entails or utilizes all of these stakeholders, because we want to have a full understanding and have the parties' influence on the wide impacts that will come from the decisions that are made.
And we're going to utilize our conflict resolution techniques throughout this process. And it's very similar to the mediation process, in that we are identifying the interests, trying to meet the needs of all of the parties. We're going to do some brainstorming and finding possible solutions that will meet the needs of everyone in the group.
So we're going to have a consensus building process through this, where we're trying to find general agreement of everybody involved. Here are your key terms before we go. Feel free to pause and look at them a little bit closer. Thanks for taking the time out and I can't wait to catch you again next time.