INKOVEMA Podcast „Well through time“
#208 GddZ
Digital tools for selecting the conflict management procedure
Conflict prevention in practice: DiReCt & KOMPASS
In conversation with Dr Jörg Schneider-Brodtmann and Dr Felix Wendenburg
Felix Wendenburg, Doctor of Law and Mediator BM®; studied law at Bucerius Law School and Boston College Law School. From 2011 to 2020, he was Academic Director of the Master's degree programme in Mediation and Conflict Management at the European University Viadrina and, as part of his work for the Institute for Conflict Management, accompanied the Round Table Mediation and Conflict Management of the German Economy as a researcher from 2008 to 2020.
Well through time.
The podcast about mediation, conflict coaching and organisational consulting.
Contents
Chapter
0:08 – Introduction to conflict resolution
10:26 – Choice of procedure and its challenges
18:37 – The Direct and Compass tools
27:56 – The educational function of the tools
36:54 – Application of the tools in the company
45:40 – Mediation as the preferred procedure
54:18 – Conclusion and outlook for the future
This episode of „Well through time“ deals with the crucial topic of the Preventive measures in conflict managementI, Sascha Weigel, together with my colleague Jörg Schneider-Brodtmann, will be discussing innovative digital tools for selecting procedures. These tools, which we will discuss with Dr Felix Wendenburg, offer support in the selection of suitable conflict management procedures and can therefore help to tackle conflicts in a structured and efficient manner.
We start with a general introduction to the topic and highlight the relevance of preventative measures. In doing so, we explain that there are a variety of procedures that can help in conflict situations, but that they are usually only used when a dispute has already arisen. What we want to address in this episode is the Proactive approach to conflictsto prevent escalation. This concept is supported by so-called Interlocking clauses which can be contractually agreed in advance in order to facilitate an appropriate choice of procedure.
An important part of the discussion revolves around the digital tools that DiReCt and COMPASS.
Felix Wendenburg explains their development and functionality.
- DiReCt is specially designed for the B2B area and works like a choice-o-mat for conflicts, showing the different procedural options and their advantages and disadvantages.
- COMPASS on the other hand, is aimed at internal conflicts and takes into account the specific circumstances and constellations of the parties to the conflict.
By answering a series of conflict-related questions, the tools enable legal and HR departments to find out which procedure (court proceedings, arbitration, mediation, conciliation, etc. or group coaching, team development, mediation, clarification support, etc.) best fulfils the procedural interests of the parties involved.
We discuss the importance of clearly defining the procedures and taking into account the interests of the parties involved in order to find the best possible solution. We also talk about the challenges organisations face when it comes to systematically implementing conflict management systems. There is often limited knowledge of the approaches and alternatives available and a lack of a culture of open communication about conflicts. This is where the tools come into play, as they have an educational function and raise awareness of the wide range of procedures available.
In the course of the episode, we reflect on practical experience and the development of the counselling landscape in conflict management. Felix reports on the feedback that has been received on the tools so far and draws a comparison between the legal perspective and practical implementation. It becomes clear that it is not just about the choice of procedure itself, but also about the acceptance and trust that those involved need to develop in the processes.
Finally, the possibility of how these digital tools can be integrated into everyday business life and the role AI could play in the future of conflict resolution will be discussed. In this context, it becomes clear that there is a need to continue the discussion on preventive conflict management and to promote the diversity of conflict resolution methods.
With the topics addressed, the DiReCt and COMPASS tools offer a valuable resource for mediators and organisations to manage conflicts more effectively in future and thus promote more harmonious communication in companies.
The tools have been very well received by the professional community and are available for free use on www.rtmkm.de available.
Links to the digital tools
- DiReCtDispute Resolution Comparison Tool (LINK to DiReCt)
- COMPASSConflict management process selection assistant (LINK to KOMPASS)
Chapter
0:08 – Introduction to conflict resolution
10:26 – Process selection and its challenges
18:37 – The Direct and Compass tools
27:56 – The educational function of the tools
36:54 – Application of the tools in the company
45:40 – Mediation as the preferred procedure
54:18 – Conclusion and outlook for the future
Contents
Complete transcription
[0:00]
Keyword: educational function. If I then take note of the individual process options, I will probably realise that no one process covers all the requirements.
[0:08]
Introduction to conflict resolution
[0:08]will solve my problems. But the processes with their different approaches are perhaps more or less suitable for offering me support in conflict. Welcome to the podcast Gut durch die Zeit, the podcast about mediation, conflict coaching and organisational consulting, a podcast by INKOVEMA. I'm Sascha Weigel and I'd like to welcome you to a new episode. And today it's all about anticipatory preventive measures for the situation that we then call conflict. And when it comes to this topic, I'm not alone, I'm never completely alone, but I always have my colleague Jörg Schneider-Brodtmann here with me in the podcast studio. Hello Jörg. Hello Sascha, nice to be here again. Yes, you've travelled a long way. You're on sabbatical, so to speak, but you're available for this topic here in the podcast and we can talk in detail today about two digital tools with a mediator who helped develop them. We'll get to that in a moment. But first of all, what are these tours generally about, which are there to select conflict management procedures? What does that have to do with prevention? It doesn't prevent conflicts, that we find an entry point.
[1:25]Exactly, that fits in a bit with the series that we have been doing over the last few months, where we have also concretised the topic of prevention in terms of certain clauses, contractual regulations, regulations on how the parties who are in dispute with each other can come to a good procedure. And we also talked about this, as you mentioned in the title of the podcast, about the so-called interlocking clauses.
[1:50]Yes, in other words, clauses that do not yet lead to a specific procedure, but first open up the possibility to see which is the appropriate procedure for our legal dispute. And this is the issue we are dealing with here and there are approaches to automate such regulations, such choice of procedure clauses. And we once said that we would like to talk to an absolute specialist about this. It is worth thinking about this question of procedure selection long before the conflict arises. And the best person to ask why that is is Dr Felix Wendenburg. Hello Felix. Hello Sascha, hello Jörg. Nice to be here.
[2:34]Felix, first a few words about you. You also call yourself a mediator. You've probably been involved in this topic for decades and helped to develop this automated procedure selection, which runs via a digital tool. How did it come about that you became so involved with the topic? Thank you Sascha for the question, I'll take a moment to explain. I'm a lawyer, but I've never worked in anything other than mediation. At the very beginning of my mediation career, I started working at the Institute for Conflict Management at the European University Viadrina, one of whose tasks was to provide academic support for the Roundtable on Mediation and Conflict Management in German Business, which was founded in 2008. That was one of my first tasks.
[3:27]And the core question that this roundtable has asked itself is the question that Jörg has just mentioned. Which procedure is suitable for which case? And this has been discussed for many years. I was first able to listen to this and then accompany and help shape this discussion more and more.
[3:43]The Roundtable for Conflict Management and Mediation, that was in the noughties, right? That's right, it was founded in 2008. And basically, there were a lot of mediation enthusiasts in companies who often did mediation training at their own expense and on their own responsibility and then said, I should use these skills to benefit my own company.
[4:07]And some of these representatives met at conferences that took place at Bucerius Law School at the time, for this series of studies on conflict management in business. That's when the initiative was taken to set up this roundtable as a pure user forum. So there are no providers of conflict management in this forum, but purely company representatives who meet at regular intervals, every three or four months, in turn at the various member companies, to think together about innovations in the field of conflict management. That's interesting, Sascha. You remember conversations we've already had with conflict management, people who were already involved back then. I remember Jürgen Prim from SAP, Professor Thomas Knobloch, who looked at these conflict management systems. That was also a building block that was developed, also with the RTMKM. And that's why I think it fits very nicely into our series here. And this roundtable systematically dealt with a wide variety of issues that arise in conflict management in companies or in the workplace or between companies. And one of them was procedural ID cards. In other words, a very practical question.
[5:21]That's exactly how it is, yes. The fact is that these different people who were there all played a pioneering role in their company in one way or another. Because in 2008, and ultimately still today, the establishment of conflict management in companies, if you want to do it systematically, is still a somewhat unoccupied field in many places. And the idea in this roundtable on mediation and conflict management was that you don't necessarily have to copy the mistakes that others make on the way to establishing conflict management. And if you know them, you can avoid them.
[5:50]It's always a bit difficult to copy success stories. It depends on certain situations, time frames and people. But you don't have to copy mistakes, which is why there is a very open dialogue about the pitfalls and hurdles you have to be aware of if you want to establish conflict management. You say that this is still an open field. So that's something that fits in with the experience of mediation, so to speak, which also involves other fields of work, mediation fields. Side question on this, what image do you have of the fact that this may not be as originally hoped? I think today we are much more advanced in our assessment of what is fast and what is not fast. But back then, I don't think it was expected that we would be saying in 2024 that this is still an unoccupied field. Yes, absolutely. So the picture I have in my mind is the result of this series of studies that I just mentioned briefly. It ran from 2005 to 2016, five studies.
[6:47]The first one, which was called the discrepancy study, was about determining which processes are rated how highly, how well and which are actually used. And the result was that, roughly summarised, the German economy is not doing what it wants, so to speak. In other words, that it considers alternative procedures to be very positive with regard to many criteria, but is very reluctant to make use of them. Ten years later, this study was repeated. The findings were not a revolution, but at best an evolution. Alternative procedures are being used significantly more, but not revolutionarily more.
[7:22]And the idea was not just to put these somewhat sobering findings on paper. As a scientist, you have to be honest and say that's the way it is, even if we would have liked it to be different. So this somewhat sobering finding, but also to ask at the same time, are there qualitative developments that can be described alongside these rather hesitant quantitative developments? And then we distributed many questionnaires and conducted many interviews. The result was that there are definitely qualitative developments that can be traced. In other words, managers describe their management style differently, employees are more involved, the opportunity to address conflicts, including systematically placing them on the agenda, exists in many companies and there is another clear difference between companies that take care of this, in the sense of being a member of the roundtable, actively addressing the issue, and companies that take less care of it. But overall there are qualitative steps that can be clearly observed in the sense of more, a more varied range of conflict management procedures. I think that also coincides to a certain extent with what we found out, Sascha, in the discussions when we talked about conflict management systems. That was also a component of the series of studies back then. And the findings were rather sobering as far as the formal establishment of such config management systems was concerned. Eight years or ten years after the series of studies, so to speak.
[8:47]So formalised systems were probably not so widely accepted in companies, but as you say, Felix, there is also the qualitative element. There are people in every company who take care of the issue, perhaps not so formalised in a uniform system, and awareness is simply more advanced. That was also our impression.
[9:07]Exactly, and in the end, conflict management seems to me to be a competitive issue. So anyone who tries to position themselves in the new German War for Talents and so on, and then writes conflict management on their banners, must also deliver when it comes to conflict. And they will do this better if they are well prepared. It also seems to me that there is a parallel problem to a classic two-person-three-person mediation. So this hurdle of getting into mediation is the big task and the big problem. And once you've done that and, I would now assume, at company level, once you've dealt with certain issues, half the work is already done. Then you can also achieve good results. After all, this has been well researched in mediation. But the question of how to get there, how to overcome the hurdle, how to steer a company, so to speak, towards dealing with the issue of conflict management systematically, that seems to be just as difficult as the question of how to get conflict parties into mediation. Exactly. And that brings us to the core question that Jörg mentioned earlier. How do you eliminate the element of chance, so to speak, from the moment of choosing a procedure?
[10:19]Because at the moment it still seems to be the case in many places that there is a conflict, then there is some kind of negotiation and if the negotiation
[10:26]
Choice of procedure and its challenges
[10:24]fails, then we do what we have always done. And that's in different companies. What is different is often the court proceedings or nothing at all. The conflict is simply allowed to run its course. I think that's the most common variant if you look at the number of conflicts. That's exactly how it is. And the question that was asked at the roundtable was, can we approach this more systematically? In other words, from the point of view of those involved, who realise, or also realise with their managers in the individual committees, that we really do have a problem, we have to do something now. What do we do? That the multitude of possibilities are systematically taken into account and not ironed out or escalated to court. That's the initial problem for the two tools you've built. That's how it is. In other words, the moment a conflict arises, there must first be an opportunity to talk to the other party about which procedure you would like to choose. Then there must be different procedures that you need to know about. Then there should ideally even be some experience with the procedures. And then this moment of selection should actually be successful.
[11:30]And you can probably just fire it up a bit, give it some wings, this moment of choice. Maybe we can define it again. In the last few rounds, Sascha, we talked about clauses, dispute resolution clauses. That's a slightly different starting point, because the parties have already thought about what should apply later if we have a dispute when concluding a contract, for example. And then there may already be a choice of procedure, depending on when you don't just have an open clause, but a specific clause that says mediation. But that's often the problem: when you sign a contract, you don't yet know what kind of conflict you'll have in the future. So, and I think today we are talking about the situation where we now have the conflict, so to speak, but we don't know which procedure. Or maybe we even have a clause. So we have a really great arbitration clause in our contract and both parties somehow realise that they are uncomfortable with it or realise that it is not a jurisdiction clause. How are we actually going to find something else, something better perhaps?
[12:34]That's exactly how it is, Jörg. It's a dilemma because there are two moments for choosing the right procedure. One is the moment you describe. It's the moment when the contract is concluded and that's actually ideal, because at the moment when the contract is concluded, as the word says, we can still get along and agree on everything, including what happens in the event of a conflict. But we don't yet know what will trigger the conflict and whether arbitration is really the most suitable option at that moment or something else. We try to deal with this with staged and dynamic clauses, but in the end it's always a leap in the dark, so to speak. And then there is the second moment and that is the moment of conflict. And that's actually ideal, because now we know what it's all about. Unfortunately, we can no longer agree on what to do because this strange psychological phenomenon of reactive devaluation sets in. So you suggest mediation and I say no mediation under any circumstances. And that is ultimately not a reaction of a substantive nature, but a reaction to the fact that it is the other party who is making the suggestion. And that means we have two moments, both have something in their favour, but neither is ultimately considered and that's why we often end up with random or path-dependent procedures that are then chosen.
[13:39]In other words, if we have the mediation clause in mind, which is agreed at the conclusion of the contract, then it is this procedure, that if he says, come on, we've said we'll do mediation, let's do it. But we don't know at that moment whether mediation is really the best procedure for this. In other words, we first need a brief overview of what procedures are available in a situation like this. I think this is different for E2P than for internal conflicts. And then we can, I think, introduce ourselves to the two tools in more detail. Firstly, the tool that I think you mentioned directly.
[14:15]From Digital Resolution Comparison Tool, i.e. for the B2B sector, to Kompass, the tool. We've already mentioned that it's about these two things. And if the listeners still have a hand free, they can google it directly on the internet, so to speak. I think that's the idea behind your two tools. Yes, to advertise them. They are free of charge. No adverts, no other data is tracked and they can be accessed at rtmkm.de. This is roundtablemediation-und-konfliktmanagement.de. You can of course also find the show notes there.
[14:47]Yes, perhaps I can briefly outline the history of how it came about. It actually started in this B2B area that you mentioned, Sascha, business-to-business disputes, where the observation was also that there were numerous procedures in addition to arbitration, conciliation, mediation, court proceedings and hybrid proceedings.
[15:06]Adjudication, combinations of mediation and arbitration and so on, mini-trials, even very exotic procedures that were hardly ever used. And the idea was to present them clearly and then choose the second of these two moments. So not the moment when the contract is concluded, but the moment when the conflict arises. Now we know what the conflict looks like. However, the selection of the most suitable procedure should then be organised independently of the people involved. In other words, to put it in the hands of a third party, so to speak. The forerunner of this was, perhaps on a small side track, the conflict management rules of the German Institutions of Arbitration. They drafted a set of rules that can be included in a clause, so to speak. And then you can say in the clause that at the moment of the conflict we will sit down with a conflict manager, the DISS, German Institutions of Arbitration and there are others, who will advise us on which procedure would be best suited to resolving the conflict. This is also an attempt to take this moment out of the hands of the parties to the conflict and place it in the hands of a third party who is not subject to this reactive devaluation. Jörg, this is your home. So you're already there.
[16:17]Do you have any practical experience with the clause? Did you or your former clients ever use it? Of course I'm familiar with the DISS conflict management regulations. We've talked about it a few times. I've never used them. I've also never seen a contract in which it was agreed. The question would now be for you, Felix. Do you have any practical experience? Do you have any clues as to how often it was actually used? Or was it perhaps the fact that, according to this regulation, according to these rules of procedure, I first have to select a third party? So it's practically like an upstream procedure. This is relatively time-consuming, and of course it also costs extra, whether this is perhaps even an initial hurdle for the parties to the dispute, and if this is why the idea has arisen within the framework of the RTMKM, let's simplify it, let's automate it, so that the first hurdle, the first mini-mediation, so to speak, is not required here, yes. Yes, that's how it is. So my figures are not entirely new, but the ones I heard about ten years after this conflict management organisation was created were also rather sobering, the usage figures. However, this was also attributed to the fact that the conflict management regulations existed. They had to be incorporated into contracts and then the contracts first had to be disputed. Sometimes they only do that after five or ten years.
[17:38]Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, it often takes so long. Yes, what a pity. But it's good to know that it's not just because it's in the contract that it's also a case. Yes, exactly.
[17:52]And paradoxically, with such clauses there will also be less conflict escalation because a high tolerance range has been built up anyway. I believe, Jörg, that we have already at least put forward the theory that such clauses have this paradoxical effect, that they do not have to be used by the very things that they bring in. Exactly, anyone who has an interest in using such clauses is already thinking about conflict prevention and is unlikely to slip into an escalated conflict so quickly. Therefore, if the clause is used relatively little or if you don't see these procedures at DIST as often as you might have hoped, these reasons may also be quite valid.
[18:32]Yes, at least that's what made you think about it,
[18:37]
The DiReCt and KOMPASS tools
[18:36]How can we approach the issue differently? And then I think that's where we are now. Now we are at the point. Honour to whom honour is due. The people who came up with the idea were Ulrich Hagel and Alexander Steinbrecher from Bombardier Transportation, who built this tool that you talked about, this Direct, in a small form for Bombardier itself. At the time, it was called the Dispute Resolution Recommendation Matrix and contained, I think, five procedures and various questions. And ultimately the idea was to build a kind of Wahl-O-Mat for conflicts. I think everyone can well imagine that everyone has used Wahl-O-Mat before. Ultimately, it's about comparing your own political preferences with the political programme that parties publish in the run-up to elections. And then you can use questions to compare these political preferences, get closer to them, outline a kind of profile and then see if what I want to vote for corresponds to what the party I want to vote for is offering, so to speak. Yes, and then we thought it would be very similar in the area of conflict. Because there are also procedural interests to consider.
[19:36]For example, do I want my conflict to be resolved quickly or do I perhaps even have a strategic interest in delaying the resolution of the conflict because I know that the other party won't be able to hold out that long? Or do I have an interest in this conflict being treated confidentially or not being publicised? Or do I want to signal, simply by choosing the conflict resolution procedure, that I am someone you can always talk to again, someone who is very conciliatory, someone you can approach? Or, on the contrary, someone you shouldn't mess with because it will escalate immediately, so to speak. So there are a variety of procedural interests that you can pursue by choosing a procedure. That was the approach. And it has nothing to do with the actual conflict management, but first of all finding a form. Precisely. And that only becomes clear when you really look at it so closely that it makes sense to give it extra thought.
[20:31]Exactly, exactly. Yes, and then there was this forerunner at Bombardier and in a working group, in the roundtable, we then got together and considered whether this could be built for all companies, so to speak. And that took several years of work, several years also because there were only a few face-to-face meetings. This resulted in an overview, which at the time was very ambitiously called 17 times 42. 17 stood for 17 different processes in the B2B sector. So there were definitely a few exotic procedures among them. And 42 stood for 42 different selection criteria according to which these procedures could be assessed. 17 times 42. And you have to imagine that with regard to each criterion, let's take the criterion of publicity, each procedure collected four points on a scale of 0 to 10. 0 publicity means a procedure that is completely confidential.
[21:26]10 points was the name of a procedure in which the public could not possibly be excluded, usually the court proceedings. So, you could compare the different procedures with each other, but you always had to base your judgement on a basic idea of what exactly we are talking about when we mean arbitration proceedings, one arbitrator or three, what we are talking about when we mean court proceedings, one instance or several, and so on. And these scoring decisions, whether I say in court proceedings or whether I say in mediation, zero publicity because it is always confidential or I say ten publicity because it is always possible to create publicity in mediation, these are judgement calls that were then discussed at length in a working group and this was also given in a kind of sounding board, i.e. with people from practice and academia.
[22:13]From companies, from politics, from consumer protection and so on, who have considered whether they can go along with these scoring decisions. And to a certain extent, this is the engine room behind this Valomat that has emerged from it. And that means that if I use it today as an entrepreneur, I don't have to use it together with my conflict partner, but I can do it for myself, then I know, so to speak, that all these questions have been dealt with in the background and have been included in the evaluation and I then get a result where I would say, based on this experience, the procedure is the right one for me with my preferences. Exactly. Of course, I'm immediately faced with the question of what everyone does for themselves. And one person, as you described earlier, Felix, is perhaps someone who is conciliatory from the outset and says that you can talk to me too. And the other one says, let's show a real edge here, let's not give an inch. And then one comes out with the procedure, I don't know, one comes out with the court procedure, so does the procedure selection machine, then comes out with the court procedure and the other ends up in mediation, of course, because he is then agreement-orientated, solution-orientated.
[23:28]So, there's not another tool, is there, where you can throw the two in and then at the end it throws out a new method from 17 times 42 possible combinations, is there? No, at some point it's finished. Maybe one step before that. It's possible that the two parties to the dispute already have a choice of procedure clause in their original contract. It says court proceedings. And now she's using this tool to make other recommendations. You might ask yourself, is that a bad thing? No, not at all. That's private autonomy, a clause that's there. We can take it into account, but we can also disregard it by mutual agreement and do it differently. If you now arrive at different recommendations as a result of your different answers to the questions in the tool, then in my view this is simply an opportunity for dialogue. A reason to talk about why one person says that, in my view, arbitration would be particularly appropriate for resolving our dispute and the other says mediation. And, as we all know, interests are much easier to talk about than positions. And interests can be verbalised, so to speak.
[24:30]You say that because, as you said earlier, I found it interesting that the procedural interests are reflected in the procedural voting machine. So it's an interest-based procedure in itself, so to speak. If you then perhaps even disclose this to each other, how did I actually come to my arbitration proceedings and the other person? For example, you could also look at question 12, how did we each answer it, if you are prepared to disclose that. then you would have a basis for a discussion and would not simply be facing the positions head-on again. It would have been nice if there had been someone back then, Jörg, who had asked this question like you did. Because the Direct tool, B2B Conflicts, does not yet include this option to disclose your own judgements. But because this option is so useful, it has been built into the second, more recent tool, the Compass tool, which is there for internal conflicts.
[25:22]Ultimately, the approach we have here is very similar to mediation, because we take the position. I want court proceedings, full stop. Then this tool makes me think about my interests. What would be the good thing about court proceedings? Or, to put it more bluntly, what is important to me when choosing a suitable procedure to resolve the conflict? And then the tool leads me back to options. So first mediation, court proceedings, arbitration or whatever. And what you're saying now, Jörg, makes it possible to go back to the interests. What was actually behind the choice of each option? And, as I said, we can then discuss interests. But that means that this direct tool, we're going to finish this very briefly, so to speak, it has no, so you say, it's a conversation opener, but it doesn't open that up itself.
[26:09]So it doesn't moderate the conversation, but at best you come up with the idea. I now get in touch with the other person again. It seems to me that the most important thing now is that, as a non-specialist in conflict proceedings and conflict management, I understand the issues, the range or even the complexity of my situation. In other words, that publicity is an issue when I go to court. Well, not everyone imagines that, unless they're a lawyer or have been there before, that it's an issue, that people can listen and the press etc. can hear it.
[26:46]Yes, exactly. There is also the question, for example, of who can prove their point of view better? You also have to think about that when it comes to proceedings in which a third party will ultimately make the decision. So, that's exactly how it is. And ultimately, you've also addressed the question of who these tools are aimed at. And in the case of the B2B tool, Direct, these are in particular representatives of the corporate legal department and the law firms advising them. And the tool, it must perhaps be made very clear once again, has no binding function whatsoever. The result is a recommendation. You can follow it, or you can leave it alone. In my view, the function is more of an educational one, so to speak. There are more procedures than the ones we have always done and perhaps there are even procedures that correspond better to my procedural interests than what I intuitively wanted to do at first glance. That's the idea. Now I really have a handle on it. So this educational function, if you deal with it in the context of a specific conflict, then that opens up the possibilities that I might also have as a representative,
[27:56]
The educational function of the tools
[27:51]which doesn't have to be emotionally involved, but I still have it because of my profession. That seems to make a lot of sense to me. And with 17, I couldn't list 17 right now. Can you do that, Jörg, 17 of? Yes, of course, but unfortunately time doesn't allow it now. Yes, okay, well, let's leave it then, right.
[28:10]Then we look at this newer tool, the more recent tool, Compass, for internal conflicts. Exactly, this direct tool was on the market for a while, so to speak, there was no market for it, but it was published and usable. And then the Roundtable received more and more feedback saying, B2B, all well and good, so to speak, but the majority of conflicts that we experience are conflicts in the workplace. It would be nice to have a tool for this. You would only have to modify a few questions, so to speak. The latter was not the case. It had to be completely redesigned. But of course, there is a demand for it and it was also a nice feeling to be able to fulfil it. So we set about building this tool during the coronavirus period. It was released in spring 2023. It's called COMPASS. COMPASS is a nice acronym for a very unpleasant name. The name is Conflict Management Process Selection Assistant. Nothing that a normal person can remember, but somehow you had to find something that could be translated into a compass. Exactly, so compass. Oh right, it should definitely be called Compass. Yes, exactly. Or was it then, after the term was chosen, i.e. the detailed one, that then Compass… That's it. A bit of putting the cart before the horse. But you have to be able to remember such names somehow. That's why it's called a compass. I wrote it down today and thought to myself, how long someone must have been sitting there that they could read out these letters Compass. It should be called Compass.
[29:36]Hey, you who listen to this podcast, don't forget to rate it and give feedback. Thank you very much and now it’s on.
[29:48]Exactly, so you can remember it. Yes, Kompass. And Kompass has now become even more multi-levelled than the original B2B Direct tool, because we tried to understand more precisely what the situation actually is and what the constellation is from which the conflict has arisen before these questions come up, analogous to the Valomat. In other words, when you click on it, you first have to click on a disclaimer because lawyers have designed it. And once you're through that, the first important step so to speak, you can choose between different situations that cause the conflict. So it's simply about a bad atmosphere in the team, sexual harassment, other forms of discrimination, dismissal, transfer, lack of motivation, management issues and so on. There are 17 different situations to choose from. You can also select several. Sometimes a conflict like this is multidimensional. The fewer you select, the more precise the procedural recommendation becomes, so to speak. First step.
[30:48]Then exactly the situation is, I skipped the first step, the first step is the constellation and not the situation. The constellation means who is facing who? Are they committees, are they individuals, are they hierarchically superior to each other or are they on an equal footing? The second step is the situation. What situation do we find ourselves in? And behind the answers to these questions in the engine room of this tool, so to speak, we are already sorting out which of the maximum 13 procedures are available for selection. Because in certain situations, for example, court proceedings are out of the question because it is a non-justiciable situation. Then that's out. To clarify this again, I understand that Kompass goes beyond Direct in that Direct is actually completely independent of the specific legal dispute and its subject matter and the parties, but is really only about the pure, naked choice of procedure, if you like, and the procedural interests. And Kompass actually also looks at who the parties are, i.e. who are the parties involved and what is actually at stake, at least in a generalised form. Exactly. Yes, and then it looks like direct, then there are twelve questions. Twelve questions about possible procedural interests.
[31:59]Several interests are bundled into one question so that there are not too many. And when you use this tool, these twelve questions appear in a different order to rule out any sequencing effects. In other words, I can use this tool twice, but the questions are not presented to me in the same order so that the order alone does not predetermine any kind of answer. And the same applies to the answers to the individual twelve questions, which are always swapped around in their order so that a kind of social desirability does not play a role in the order of the options and their answers. I may have had a quick look behind the scenes to see which procedures might be considered. Conflicts take strange paths, not just the procedures that were created for them, so to speak. So, the company doctor is told the stories by those involved in the conflict and then there are all the authorised representatives. Are these all the contact points, so to speak, are they taken up as procedures in the Kompass tool? Or are these, I think, 13 procedures or 12 that you mentioned?
[33:06]Really conflict management procedures with both sides and then saying that this is the best procedure for you? Rather the latter. We have tried to differentiate between procedures and institutions. So the company doctor that you mention is not in there, but there is, for example, a negotiation consultation that could possibly also be conducted with the works council or with the works council or whatever. It's more about procedures, for example mediation, employee appraisals, negotiation, escalation, but also mediation in the style of clarification support, group coaching, individual coaching, supervision, organisational development, things like that. Yes, okay. So I started from the practical question, so to speak, of which points of contact there are where conflicts can go and if you don't look at the original function of these centres, but where people who are in conflict in companies actually go, then you have a huge number of conflicts. Exactly. Service providers. Exactly, that's it. Of course, you could have done it that way. That's also an interesting idea. And maybe that will be the idea in 20 or 30 years' time. Please contact the ombudsperson or the works council or something. It's just that the understanding of what an ombudsperson does or what a works council does, how it sees itself and so on, is still very, very different in many companies.
[34:31]In this respect, this recommendation would probably not have helped much today. And we wanted to recommend procedures. This raises the question of who would use Kompass? In the case of Direct, we said that it would be the parties and, more specifically, the legal department of a company, if the company has a legal department. With Kompass, it could be these conflict resolution centres, for example, who then use this tool. So it could be the works council or an HR department. How did you think of that? Yes, both as well as. So both the parties to the conflict who want to make a choice themselves and the conflict contact points, as you say, the staff council, the works council.
[35:15]The tool also offers the option of simply skipping the twelve questions. And this tool also gives you the option of simply skipping the twelve questions. To say, I have this and this situation and this and this constellation. I'm not going to go through all these questions, I'm just going to click, I just want to find out more. And then I get a list of the 13 procedures, including advantages and disadvantages. To understand a bit more precisely, for example, what is the difference between mediation and mediation in the style of clarification assistance. I mean, Sascha, you can also listen to your podcast from about a year ago. Yes, that's where we really clarify things. So we know, in this programme we knew where the difference lies. Exactly, with Kirsten and Tillmann. Tillmann and Kirsten. Exactly, but so very briefly at a glance, if you just want a quick overview, what is the potential of different processes? Then you can say, I just want to get some information and then this tool briefly explains it to you. I just had this saying in my head: software eats the world. So if you want to systematically deal with internal conflict management in your company, you can also take the approach of using the compass to find out what procedures it makes sense to include and enable.
[36:27]Because conflicts also take side paths where you can say, well, the person is being helped, but the conflict is not being handled well. So with the company doctor, burnout counselling, etc., of course it's buffered somehow, but it's not really very clever or sustainable in terms of the conflict system.
[36:54]
Application of the tools in the company
[36:51]So that would have a retroactive effect, so to speak, not just in the sense of.
[36:55]I use it when we are in conflict, but I can also have an educational effect by informing myself about the compass tool. Yes, and perhaps it's also important that conflict management, like the conflict itself, is always a form of imposition. As a party to the conflict, I often expect a process to somehow relieve me, to take the burden of conflict management off my shoulders. And some conflict resolution procedures want to fulfil this, but then they come at a price, so to speak. Then a third party decides in my favour and perhaps decides against me. And other conflict management processes often do not fulfil this interest. They take the burden of conflict management off me. I'm still in it myself. But they give me a structure within which I can navigate. Keyword: educational function. If I then take note of the individual process options, I will probably realise that no process will solve all my problems. But the procedures with their different approaches may be more or less suitable for offering me support in the conflict. A little bit about what you said earlier, Sascha, that in some cases I realise that the best way to resolve this conflict is for us to do some kind of disentanglement and for me to walk out or for the other party to walk out or for us to somehow try to resolve this conflict by not dealing with it. That is also an option.
[38:08]That brings me back to the question of who uses the tool? We had this thought earlier at Direct. Everyone uses it and arrives at very different results. Then we already have the first reason for a mediation to find out which procedure to choose.
[38:23]Here we have said, or you have said, Felix, that the company's internal conflict resolution centre, for example, could apply this. And that could perhaps even be done in a transparent procedure or question, could that be done in a transparent procedure? So practically, he sits down with both parties. In other words, as per the conflict management regulations, a procedural advisor, procedural choice advisor sits down with them and then applies this tool. Would that also be an option? Absolutely. That is an option that was also considered when creating this tool. And in a way, it also has a subtly empowering function. I look at this tool as an internal or perhaps even external procedural consultant, as an ombudsman, HR department, external mediator, and perhaps even go through it together with the parties. And organisational development always comes out of it. Yes, perhaps there should be an organisational development. Maybe I should make this request to the company. Or it comes out, mediation in the style of clarification support. Never heard of it, never done it. But if that really is the best procedure for our company, then perhaps I should ask whether the company would be willing.
[39:31]Taking a bit of money out of my pocket to commission an expert to do this and, lo and behold, I have positive experiences and suddenly this procedure becomes established. In other words, this is also about simply making the diversity of these procedures visible and encouraging greater use of this diversity. That's exactly where we are with this topic. How is a tool like this used in the company? Who decides that the tool is used? On the one hand, it could of course be a party, a participant, who finds it somewhere. Or it could be the conflict resolution centre, the staff council, who finds the tool. But if, let's say, procedure 13 comes up afterwards, then it turns out that the company doesn't offer it at all. It only offers one procedure at all. Then that could lead to frustration. It occurs to me that there should actually be a kind of self-commitment on the part of the company to say, A, we use this tool in our organisation.
[40:29]Similar to a corporate pledge in the B2B sector, we use this tool and B, we are also prepared to offer the process that comes out of it to those involved. It would be great if there was such a thing. I haven't heard that there is such a thing. But actually, by using this tool, you enter into a kind of voluntary commitment to support the outcome if the parties want it. It would be that you integrate it into the conflict management organisation, that it is used as an institution or as a dynamic referral, so to speak. But I can also see the value, so if I now work a lot with individual officers, i.e. bullying officers.
[41:13]Works councils and those responsible for BEM can also use the tool for self-supervision and self-management. And whether it then really comes to a recommendation in the sense that the digital tool has recommended this or I stand there with my functional authority and say, as a staff council or as a conflict officer, I actually recommend that you approach this with team development. Can I present this in a more secure way if, for example, I have used the tool to obtain further confirmation or a self-assessment? The question, so to speak, you said earlier that the tool is used more frequently. There are definitely a lot more people who are interested in using this tool. Do you have any figures or overviews that show that more conflict parties use it, more conflict officers or managers use it, i.e. those directly involved or rather those who are still affected by conflicts? Unfortunately not.
[42:18]At most anecdotally through feedback at conferences or similar where the tool is presented. Otherwise, the Roundtable stands by this promise that no data will be collected. And that of course deprives us of these findings. Quite right, but this is intended to promote trust. Perhaps a brief word on mediation, because I think that might also be of interest to our listeners. In the Direct tool, we played through x number of cases before they were brought to public attention and then saw time and again that mediation was recommended relatively frequently. Yes, and then you could ask yourself, well, the Roundtable Mediation and Conflict Management of German Business publishes a tool that was designed to stimulate procedural diversity and then mediation always comes out of it. Yes, what could be the reason for that? And should we perhaps formulate the questions a little differently in order to generate a higher hit rate for the other procedures? And we were just about to reformulate the questions when a colleague said, wait a minute, wait a minute, maybe that's the wrong analysis. It could simply be that mediation is a fairly suitable procedure for many conflicts and that the tool therefore spits out mediation for many conflicts.
[43:22]And that is indeed the case. So we tried to ask questions with both tools that don't necessarily always lead to mediation. And with the Kompass tool, it's actually more common for non-mediation to come up. With the Direct tool, non-mediation also comes up here and there, but often mediation. Perhaps that's one thing, and for me it proved once again in a very interesting way that mediation is suitable for a wide variety of processes because it can be organised in this way. Yes, of course.
[43:52]So it also corresponds to the desire of all of us to be able to clarify things. So we have the idea that we have to come to a solution in a rational dialogue. That's the fascinating thing about mediation as an idea, to bring in a third party to organise the discussion. But it's obviously not what the parties to the conflict want. My heart sank when you said that conflict management is an imposition. I always like to say that mediation is an imposition. It is an imposition for the parties to the conflict. Conflict parties are the least favourable clients or customers for a mediation request. They have to be the person beforehand. In other words, those who are not yet in conflict and say to themselves, I'm committed, yes, if we're in trouble, we'll talk to each other and if necessary we'll get someone together. So this, we always say, Odysseus idea or this self-nudging.
[44:49]I will then, when I am out of my mind, still do what I wisely believe is the right thing to do at a moment when I am not yet convinced that the other person is the problem. That's why mediation is so great, of course. You can't say anything against mediation. Yes, so to bring it back to the criteria. There are a few criteria that clearly point in the direction of proceedings. So is the issue that is being disputed justiciable? Can a court decide on it? Yes or no? If yes, then the court is in. If not, the court is out. But whether yes or no, mediation is in. I would like to handle the conflict resolution publicly. The court is in. But mediation is also in. Yes, I want an enforceable result. The court is in, mediation is in. I want as little time as possible. The court is out, mediation is in.
[45:40]
Mediation as the preferred procedure
[45:37]Interestingly, mediation scores highly in relatively many areas. And I think that shows once again in an interesting way why the process really has great potential in many directions and why it is so enthusiastically propagated by many, and rightly so. That's actually what I take away from today's discussion, also with regard to these tools, that it is actually criteria-based and not missionary.
[46:00]Of course, the underlying idea is that mediation is a good procedure and is also suitable for many conflicts in the B2B sector. But the whole thing is then rationalised to a certain extent and balanced on the basis of the procedural interests. I actually see a lot more progress in this than when someone comes along and says, a mediator, I've got a really great process here and I'll solve all your conflicts. So I don't mean that the question leads him there, so to speak, because they were mediators or something. I believe that the basic actions on which the tool is based, namely conflicts, can be shaped. Conflicts are not something that we are helplessly at the mercy of, so to speak, but we can shape them and we can actively confront them. That is, so to speak, what mediation must also consider as a prerequisite, so that it makes sense at all to bring in a third party who is not involved in the decision-making process. So it really is a highly presuppositional idea.
[47:07]It is completely counter-intuitive for conflicting parties to bring in someone else, but not to get them on their side, when they have clearly experienced the other party and themselves as separate entities. The interesting thing is that when you ask the conflicting parties if they want to bring in a third party, they often assume without thinking about it that the third party would agree with them in case of doubt. And that's why, for example, there are… I'm also right. Yes, of course, of course. You can't see the world any other way than the way I see it, because that's the way I'm right. It's right, exactly. Yes, and that's why there's a question in this compass tool that is aimed at this and says, if you wanted to commission a third party to make the decision now, would you be prepared to do so, even in the event that the third party decides against you, just so that the conflict is finally resolved. And if so, then the third-party decision procedure scores a few points at that point. But you have to face up to this imposition at this point, so to speak. But I think that's a great question to ask yourself.
[48:07]How far along am I in my conflict? Exactly, exactly, yes. And then it's also the stage where you say, then I'll go to court. So then I don't care. There's now a decision and I think that's really a value that's often underestimated in mediation, which this court judgement brings with it. Yes, although of course that's often a fallacy. At first it's a relief, I give it to my lawyer and then the case is decided in my favour and goes through. But when I'm in the third instance in the fifth year and I've somehow paid tens of thousands of euros, that's when disillusionment sets in at the latest. And what happens at the very end of the court proceedings? Most of the time? Some groups. Exactly, from exhaustion.
[48:57]Exactly, the circle closes again. I might have another somewhat provocative thesis, perhaps it's too much for today. I'm already thinking ahead, maybe we can have a second conversation. Sascha is actually going in your direction. Do we still need such tools today, now that we have AI? I can actually enter my conflict and my interests into the AI and then you throw at least 17 procedures at me, because I probably know them even better than I do. So I would say, in any case, especially now in combination, because you have built this when there was not yet this breakthrough and not yet this wave of AI tools. And certainly the classic AIs, the ChatGBT and so on, have access to these, so they have probably scanned and processed these things. But the combination, i.e. what this is based on, is already structured. And something that we have to do with internal conflict management systems or systematic approaches.
[50:01]It's like a constitution that is based on the fact that you can utilise this and then also really underpin it with AI powers and data processing options. So I don't think this work will become obsolete, but you no longer have to make it AI-free, you have to use it. And you could create comparisons by questioning an AI that is built in a conflict-oriented way, that you have already heard of or been fed with the procedures, and then you could scrutinise the programming that you have built in the decision tree, so to speak. I believe that there would definitely be further possibilities. At 17 to 42, I think you can again rely on pattern recognition that you wouldn't see as a human.
[50:54]Totally interesting question. I still have a very layman's answer to it, because I've dealt with it less than you have. But I believe that generative AI ultimately processes statistical probabilities in letters and word sequences. And so, at least on first access, it's about generating the most probable linguistic answers to a question that I enter as a user. What we have tried to do with these tools is to focus on the less likely, less common methods. And I believe that AI could only do this if it is programmed to be very specific to conflict procedures and fed with these less likely procedures and the interests that lead to them. Or if the spread, i.e. the temperature, has been set broadly, so to speak. Dear AI, please also spit out results that are not obvious from the outset or that many others do not also spit out.
[51:50]Then I believe that an AI can do pretty much exactly what these tools can do. Perhaps an AI is already ready. I haven't seen it yet, but I can certainly imagine that it already exists or could exist.
[52:01]The problem with mediation and other alternative procedures in particular is that we have no experience of them. So we haven't collected any data, no empirical values. And that's exactly what we need. We need mediation discussions that have been recorded. We can only do this on a mass scale, which is what we have with court proceedings, but we need to have this and then be able to feed these new machines accordingly. I believe that one of the most important tasks at the moment if we want to make progress with mediation is to ensure that mediation discussions are recorded and then made available as digital data. We don't even know how we work. There are four of us mediators, but Jörg, Felix and I don't know how you work in mediation. Of course we do, and that's how it should be. So of course we're in massive conflict with the principle of confidentiality, which we also saw earlier and which is very much in favour of mediation or arbitration, for example. It's the same with arbitration proceedings. They are not published either, although it would certainly be very interesting to know many arbitration awards. Not only for educational reasons. So it doesn't have to be about us finding out how you work, that we have digitised how you work, so to speak, and can process it anonymously. We need this for mediation, for many different issues, but also for tools like this.
[53:30]We know that from, I don't know, other therapeutic contexts or other secret procedures, we still have the records.
[53:41]So what People with their Computer discuss, because them itself very Confidential with him entertain, the becomes Yes also utilised and is available. So the is at least that, what we through the early technological Developments Yes learnt have. So I would say, there are we in the Mediation actually in one very unfavourable Starting position, because it even a Procedure is, where both Pages agree must, the straight not on each other good to speak are.
[54:10]So there is so to speak a Coaching or a Therapy setting whole different. So good, so all the more better, that it such Tools gives, like the both,
[54:18]
Conclusion and outlook for the future
[54:17]about the we today spoken have. Since must we not so very on the Music of the future set and the Uncertainties, the the AI brings, but there gives it concrete Tools, the can applied become. Felix, you have Yes also said, where one it finds. Sascha, you lay the probably again in the Shownotes on the Access. I have it played through with the Direct-Tool. It is really very simple, it is very user-orientated. On Conclusion also the Representation the Procedure, then one Kind graphic Representation, where then the statistical Results even then accordingly analysed becomes. So it is really low-threshold Applicability and I believe, there have we but good seen, which Advantages these Procedure form. Yes, many Thanks to on you both. Felix, whole especially on you, that you us the Tools so presented have, also a little to the History and to the so to speak, what there in the Engine room happens is. The is always still times also Helpful to understand, what there everything also inside stuck on Considerations, that her there also much played through have must, at Dead ends to Avoid and inner Contradictions.
[55:21]Yes, many Thanks to on you both for the good Conversation. Me has the much Fun made. Many Thanks to also from mine Page. I had me very on it pleased on the Conversation, also with you, Felix, whole especially. And I am happy, that it realisation come is, although I here straight wide away from the Home am. We grab the Idea on, one second Conversation, one Continued. The Topic becomes us still more employ, Preventive and Anticipation measures. Since have we still long not everything named and become a little in the Practice sniff, what there made was. As far as first from here. Thanks to you Felix. Good Time on you both. Jörg, until soon. Bye bye.
[56:01]DiReCt and COMPASS, two Tools to the Process selection for Parties to the conflict, as but also for Conflicted parties, Conflict officer in Company, the with the Tools work can and itself also one Overview procure can, what at all everything on possible Process types in Question comes and so that accompanying also, what everything to note is, when one the Conflict concerns and to one Solution lead wants.
[56:30]The have I with mine Colleagues Jörg Schneider-Brodtmann, with the I these Themes here already in this small Series frequently addressed have, continued. The have we with Dr. Felix Wendenburg discussed, from Troy Partner from Oldenburg, one Mediation services company, the nationwide known and active is. The shall it for this Paint been be. Many Thanks to, that you again with thereby were, here at the Podcasting to the Topic Conflict counselling, Mediation, Coaching. When you the please has, then leave behind but with pleasure a Feedback on Apple Podcast or Google Business. Recommend the Podcast more and subscribe of course, when you the still not done have. The Helps us and this Podcast continue, with this Service known to become. For the Moment say goodbye I me with the best Wishes. Until to the next Times. Comes good through the Time. I am Sascha Weigel, yours Host from INKOVEMA, the Institute for Conflicts and Negotiation management in Leipzig and Partner for professional Mediation and Coaching training programmes.
Leave A Comment