Disputes, Fallouts, and Underlying Motives: What's Really Going On?

In 26 years of working with conflict across the EU and beyond, it’s fair to say that mediation providers like us cannot resolve every dispute. Shock news, of course, but the reasons for non-settlement appear to be defined by three themes.

First, the person or organisation referring the case to mediation has left it too late. There is too much unaddressed resentment between the disputing parties that they have dug themselves deep into their separate trenches and are not going to come out. Mediators can do a lot with such situations, but the delayed referral frequently works against getting a resolution.

Secondly, people feel that they have been ‘made to’ take part in mediation. The process absolutely has to be voluntary, and when it is not, the participants will express their displeasure at being made to take part by disrupting, making unreasonable demands and otherwise sabotaging the process. They have to want to settle their dispute and must not be there under duress.

And thirdly, one or both individuals involved has an ulterior or undisclosed motive for coming to mediation. However much they discuss and negotiate, it feels like they are not going to come away with what they really need. It is this third one that I want to zoom in on.

An underlying motive could be in a workplace dispute where someone just wants to be transferred to a new site or role, or to work under a different manager. He or she is in mediation to ostensibly try and address an interpersonal fallout with a colleague or the existing manager, but however much ground they cover, it feels like they are not getting what they need. There is a lack of good faith: that sense of openness and honesty that really needs to be in place if mediation is going to succeed.

But there is another class of ulterior or undisclosed motive that goes a bit deeper. And this is where one party has an unmet psychological need, and what we are seeing in their negotiation is simply a mask for this. The mediation can fail if we only address the surface dispute and don’t take account of the underlying needs.

Take a dispute among senior managers in a European business that began as a family firm. The ‘old way’ was always that family members had the last say in any conflict: what they said goes. Within the larger, more evolved business, financially driven newer managers want to do things one way; the old school family team want them done another way. We could discuss profit margins, sales projections, market position, etc, but if we don’t also bring in the family members' need for acknowledgement as the founders (and what can even feel like being the ‘parents’) of the business, then we’re missing the mark. The skill of the mediator is identifying and addressing this unmet underlying need, and without losing their impartiality.

Likewise, there can be psychological drivers for just how people negotiate. Individuals can make what seem like excessive demands of others, which can be baffling until we pay attention where such behaviours might be coming from. I have resisted talking about Mr. Trump’s behaviour in recent weeks but forgive me a brief mention! His imposition of excessive tariffs on imports into the US, something which will have a profound and lasting effect on global markets, has left world leaders reeling.

The logic of his strategy does not add up or make sense to most, but where has it left him personally? In a place where he is calling the shots, where countries are now waiting for an appointment to go to visit Trump and see if they can negotiate him down from the tariffs that have been proposed. He is now the centre of global attention; he is the school bully who has taken everyone’s lunch money and now waits to see what they will offer him so they can get it back. And we have to infer that, for a man who has been assessed to be a malignant narcissist, that there is an underlying need of his that is being roundly satisfied!

So, the lesson for dispute resolvers is to accept that some situations of conflict cannot be resolved if the parties resist resolution or have simply left it too long. But that also, there is often more to conflict than meets the eye, and we have to look beyond the presenting issues to understand the real motives for people’s disputing behaviour.