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Schools

School split could mend

Experts in resolving conflicts say the long-simmering dispute has a hidden cost.

By Thomas C. Tobin, Times Staff Writer
Published March 2, 2008

Although the public dispute between two high-ranking Pinellas school officials has been unusual, their attempt to make peace through a neutral third party is a commonplace strategy.

The field of "conflict resolution" has boomed over the past 15 to 20 years as more court systems and corporate executives have concluded that working it out is far better than having it out.

That growth has given rise to people like Daniel Dana, an author, speaker and former college professor with a doctorate in counseling psychology and a business that trains people to manage organizational conflict.

He goes by the name "the Conflict Doctor."

"I was in mediation before mediation was cool," said Dana, who has been helping people patch things up for 35 years.

He says he's seen "magical" results, including years-long disputes that melt away after a few hours in mediation, sometimes leaving the participants in tears. "There have been transformations," he said, "transformations that no one thought were possible."

With testimonials like that, there may yet be hope for Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox and School Board attorney Jim Robinson, whose ongoing conflict over workplace issues recently became public with an acid-tongued exchange of e-mails.

After Robinson took Wilcox to task for failing to consult him on an issue, Wilcox questioned Robinson's competence and said he would avoid seeking his counsel whenever possible. The School Board last week directed the two to find someone to help them repair a working relationship that apparently started to sour more than a year ago.

On Friday they chose Earl Lennard, who retired in 2005 as school superintendent in Hillsborough County. The venerable educator has no formal mediation experience but says he has refereed his share of conflicts between employees and community groups over the years.

Wilcox and Robinson have failed in one previous attempt at informal mediation, which sets up a messy scenario if Lennard's efforts don't work. Faced with two key employees who can't get along, the School Board's options start to narrow and the possibility grows that one of them will be forced to leave.

But the experiences of Dana and others in the conflict resolution trade show how a third party might help Wilcox and Robinson work through their differences.

"When people are in conflict, their emotions are high, and what they do is start taking positions and their positions get in the way of what the issues are," said Janice M. Fleischer, a veteran public policy mediator with offices in Tallahassee and Miami.

Fleischer and others spoke of a process in which the mediator sometimes speaks separately with each party in private caucuses, where candid and confidential discussions can release tensions and generate ideas. That can set the stage for face-to-face sessions with the mediator present in which both parties loosen up, figure out their common interests and start agreeing on solutions.

"It's kind of like talking to one another with someone else in the room," Fleischer said. "It creates a comfort level because you don't feel like either party can attack. ... You build on that comfort."

Gregory Firestone, director of the Conflict Resolution Collaborative at the University of South Florida, has used the story of the orange to illustrate how two seemingly intractable parties can come together.

Two people are fighting over an orange with the idea that only one of them will get it in the end. Then a neutral third party asks them why they want the orange.

One person says he wants it because he's thirsty. The other says he wants it because he's hungry. So, one gets the juice while the other gets the pulp.

"All of a sudden everybody's happy," Firestone said.

Resolutions can happen, he said, when people move away from positions they've staked out and start pondering what they need out of the situation. Often, he said, both sides can get what they need.

Dana, the Conflict Doctor, says third parties have different styles, be they mediators or facilitators. Some are hands-on and like to control the process. Others allow things to flow between the parties, a process Dana calls facilitative mediation. Allowing things to flow works better in emotionally charged disputes, he said.

The parties need to climb the "conflict mountain," Dana said. They start by blowing off steam.

"The mediator needs to allow that," he said. "They need to be able to get beyond that by going through it. That's the up side of the mountain."

At the peak, he said, is a breakthrough moment when the two sides stop attacking each other and start attacking the problem. The other side of the mountain is all about conciliation.

Dana's Web site offers an online calculator that measures the cost of workplace conflict. The Times put it to work on the Wilcox-Robinson problem, entering salaries $204,509 for Wilcox and $170,562 for Robinson and taking a conservative approach when it came to other variables.

For example, the calculation assumed that each man spends a total of one hour a week involved in unproductive participation in the conflict, and that the ordeal has reduced their job enthusiasm by 10 percent. The calculator also factors in what it costs the district to work around the problem, and assumes the conflict has lasted one year.

The device put the total cost of the conflict at $252,815.

"A facilitator is principally going to be about helping them to reach agreement on rules so they will play nice," said Christopher M. Shulman, a veteran mediator and arbitrator based in Tampa. The outcome, he said, will probably require both sides to stretch beyond what feels comfortable to them.

There's nothing wrong with conflict, Shulman said. "It's about learning to deal with conflicts as they inevitably come up. ... It's okay to disagree. It's how you disagree."

Thomas C. Tobin can be reached at tobin@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8923.

[Last modified March 1, 2008, 23:30:39]