The Tree Tool

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Del curso dictado por Emory University

Conflict Transformation

120 calificaciones

Emory University

Conflict Transformation

120 calificaciones

This course introduces you to the concept of conflict transformation and how it differs from conflict resolution, management, and prevention. We’ll see how conflict offers opportunities for constructive change, and we'll explore different tools and methods for engaging conflict constructively. Regardless of your familiarity with the topic, you'll get insightful tips, portable handouts, lively demonstrations, and personalized assignments to bridge and enhance your own knowledge and history within the conflict narrative. In any area of your life, you'll benefit from the practical techniques and transferable information offered throughout this five-week journey.

De la lección

What in the World Is Going On? Analyzing Conflict

This module explores conflict analysis and three analysis tools.

The ABC Tool3:32

The Onion Tool3:14

The Tree Tool4:46

Conoce a los instructores

Ellen Ott Marshall
Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Conflict Transformation
Candler School of Theology

So we've looked at two tools so far.

ABC drew our attention to attitudes,

behaviors, and context in a comparative way.

And this helped us to see how perception is playing a role in the conflict.

We were also able to identify some key needs for each party.

The Onion took us on a journey from the outer layer of stated positions,

through the middle realm of interests, and finally, to the hidden treasure of needs.

By comparing these images for each party, we were able to note some competing

positions, and interests, and then identify some shared needs.

Now both of those tools keep a tight focus

on the two parties to this brewing dispute.

Our last tool zooms out to get a broader picture of life in this neighborhood.

The conflict tree helps us to place this particular dispute at the bus stop,

into a larger context.

Using the imagery of a tree, we identify effects of the conflict, branches,

the core problem, the tree trunk, and then root causes, the roots.

This tool is most effective when a group of folks affected

by the conflict work on it together.

You can draw the tree on newsprint or a white board, and

give everyone sticky notes on which to identify key issues in the conflict.

They can use as many notes as they want.

In fact, the more insights, the better, on this exercise.

The next step is to invite people to place their sticky notes onto the tree,

in the proper places.

Now this becomes an excellent experience of collaborative study,

prospective sharing, and community discernment.

It also has an element of fun, as people figure out where to place their notes and

watch the tree fill out.

As a side note, I do find that having people get up and

move around in a exercise like this is incredibly helpful.

We need to do more than sit around tables and

talk when we're trying to think carefully and creatively.

An exercise like this one gets us up and

moving and interacting with people in physical ways.

So, let's try this out.

Draw a tree and label it.

Put the effects in the branches, the core problem on the trunk, and

the root causes in the roots.

Reread the story and create your own index cards or

sticky notes or just little pieces of paper.

You can certainly write these things directly on the tree, but

we recommend the pieces of paper or note cards because they enable you to more

easily move things around as you get clear about what key issues go where.

This is a great tool for thinking broadly about an issue.

It helps us to zoom out from the bus stop interactions to think more fully about

this neighborhood as a living organism.

This tool also helps us to get clear

about what the true contributing causes of a conflict might be.

And the exercise of zeroing in on a core problem

helps to bring clarity to very muddy situations.

There are some downsides.

It's likely that you had more difficulty using this tool with this case study.

That difficulty points us to one of the weaknesses of the conflict tree.

Because this tool gives us such a big picture, it requires a lot of information,

more than this little case study provided to you.

So, again, I hope you felt free to fill in the gaps a little bit

with your imagination, and/or your experience with neighborhood life.

But still, you can get a sense for

how much information is required to do the tree justice, and

how helpful it is to have many people working together on this tool.

The other downside of the lovely tree tool is time.

This tool takes a lot of time to do well, and

a lot of time to process with the group.

It's typical of collaborative work, in that way.

Collaboration simply takes time.

But it also takes time to figure out what to do with

the big picture that emerges here.

So if the neighborhood in our case study would pick up this tool and really use it

well, the Amadors and the Sanders would have to spend a lot more time together.

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