Glossary

A process involving a good-faith effort to meet the interests of all stakeholders seeking unanimous agreement. (Lawrence E. Susskind, Sarah McKearnan and Jennifer Thomas-Larmer, The Consensus Building Handbook, [Sage Publications, 1999], 6) … Read consensus building

The long-term management of intractable conflicts and the people involved in them so that they do not escalate out of control and become violent. (from http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/glossary.htm) … Read conflict management

The impartial management of meetings designed to enable participants to focus on substantive issues and goals. (Lawrence E. Susskind, Sarah McKearnan and Jennifer Thomas-Larmer, The Consensus Building Handbook [Sage Publications, 1999], 207) … Read facilitation

Back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement between two or more parties with some interests that are shared and others that may conflict or simply be different. Negotiation is an intrinsic part of any kind of joint action, problem solving, and dispute resolution, and may be verbal, nonverbal, explicit, implicit, direct, or through intermediaries. (Michael … Read negotiation

A negotiation between two or more parties facilitated by an agreed-upon third party. Skilled third-party mediators can lower the emotional temperature in a negotiation, foster more effective communication, help uncover less obvious interests, offer face-saving possibilities for movement, and suggest solutions that the parties might have overlooked. (David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius, 3-D … Read mediation

The name given to the interest-based approach to negotiation set out in the best-known conflict resolution book, Getting to Yes, first published in 1981 by Roger Fisher and William Ury. The book advocates four fundamental principles of negotiation: 1) separate the people from the problem; 2) focus on interests, not positions; 3) invent options for … Read principled negotiation

The process of defining what a problem is about. Just as a frame can be placed around a photograph, including some portions of the picture, but cropping other portions out, people can define some aspects of a problem as important, while they ignore (or are unaware of) other issues that do not concern them. … Read framing

The process of resolving a dispute or a conflict, by providing for each side’s needs, and adequately addressing their interests so that they are satisfied with the outcome. … Read conflict resolution