CADRE Resources

Dynamic Conflict Management: The Wisdom of Mary Parker Follett

Albie Davis

Albie Davis delivers her speech, Dynamic Conflict Management: The Wisdom of Mary Parker Follett, at the "Beyond Mediation: Strategies For Appropriate Early Dispute Resolution In Special Education" conference held by CADRE in Washington, DC (2002).

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Please also find the transcript of this speech below.

Transcript:

FOLLETT ON SPECIAL EDUCATION

1. What a pleasure to be here with you in Washington DC!

1. In my later years, I spoke primarily to businessmen.
2. Over and over, I called for greater study of the creative resolution of conflict. Sometimes I feared I was not understood.
3. How amazing then, today, to find myself in a room full of people dedicated to creatively resolving conflicts in the educational setting. I must tell you how pleased I am.
4. “Special Education?” When we talk later, do tell me more about that term.
5. I see I have not mastered the art of “dressing for the occasion.” Where I have come from, clothes not a priority. Limited choice. Black or White. However, I did insist on a hat!

2. As I begin my talk today, I am reminded of a comment by Virginia Woolf, as she began a talk on the theme of Women and Fiction.

1. Virginia Woolf, whom I had the pleasure of dining with in 1932, shortly before my passing, said “the first duty of a lecturer is to hand you, after an hour’s discourse, a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece forever. (VW, 3)
2. On this point I totally disagree, however, she redeemed herself, by continuing to say, “All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
3. On this point, I agree! Money and a room of one’s own! Still a luxury, I imagine. Nevertheless, I always made sure I had a room of my own!

3. May I offer another view on the duty of the lecturer.

1. “The duty of the speaker is not to hand the listener a “nugget of pure truth,” a passive activity at best, but instead there is a reciprocal duty between the speaker and the audience.
2. The reciprocal duty calls for a greater relationship, for it is to spark one another’s’ minds into fresh thinking.
3. For I never react to you, but to you-plus-me; or to be more accurate, it is I-plus you reacting to you-plus me. “I” can never influence “you” because you have already influenced me; that is, in the very process of meeting, by the very process of meeting, we both become something different. (CE, 62)
4. Today, I will pick up the threads of my thinking where I left them in 1933, at the time of my passing.
5. Then, it is your duty to see whether my past thinking meets the needs of today’s world. Where it does, tell us how. Where it does not, it is your duty to express your doubts and together we begin a search for a better way.
6. I hope to complete my prepared remarks in 30 minute of so. Afterwards, you are to ask questions, make comments, what have you, and you can be sure that I shall do the same!

4. I would like to begin by exploring that nature of conflict.

1. As conflict--difference--is here in the world, as we cannot avoid it, we should, I think use it.
2. Instead of condemning it, we should set it to work for us. Why not?
3. The friction between the driving wheel of the locomotive and the track is necessary to haul the train. The music of the violin we get by friction. We left the savage state when we discovered fire by friction. We talk of the friction of mind on mind as a good thing. All polishing is done by friction. (DA, Metcalf, 30-31)

5. How do we currently respond to conflict?

1. There are three main ways of dealing with conflict: domination, compromise and integration.
2. Domination, obviously is a victory of one side over the other. This is the easiest way of dealing with conflict, the easiest for the moment but not usually successful in the long run, as we can see from what happens after war. Sadly, my generation’s “War to end all Wars” did nothing of the sort, but merely left the seeds for future conflict, which your generations inherited.
3. The second way of dealing with conflict, that of compromise, we understand well, for it is the way we settle most of our controversies, each side gives up a little in order to have peace, or to speak more accurately, in order that the activity which has been interrupted by the conflict may go on.
4. Compromise is the basis of trade union tactics. In collective bargaining, the trade unionist asks for more than he expects to get, allows for what is going to be lopped off in the conference. Thus we often do not know what he really thinks he should have, and this ignorance is a great barrier to dealing with conflict fruitfully.
5. But, I certainly ought not to imply that compromise is peculiarly a trade union method. It is the accepted, the approved way of ending controversy. Yet no one really wants to compromise, because that means a giving up of something.

6. Is there, then, another method of ending conflict?

1. There is a way beginning now to be recognized at least, and even occasionally followed: when two desires are integrated, that means that a solution has been found in which both desires have found a place, that neither side has had to sacrifice anything.

7. Let us take some very simple illustration.

1. In the Harvard Library one day, in one of the smaller Rooms, someone wanted the window open; I wanted it shut. We opened the window in the next Room, where no one was sitting.
2. This was not a compromise because there was no curtailing of desire; we both got what we really wanted. For I did not want a closed Room, I simply did not want the north wind to blow directly on me; likewise the other occupant did not want that particular window open, he merely wanted more air in the Room.

8. I have already given this illustration in print

1. and I know it is familiar to many of you. I repeat it here because this instance, from its lack of any complications, shows my point at once I think. (DA, M, 32)

9. Thus, when two diverse interests confront each other,

1. The task, before deciding that they are mutually exclusive, that a duel for right of way is inevitable, is to try to integrate them.
2. Diverse interests often are initially expressed as demands--the union demands an eight-hour day; students demand shorter school hours; I demand to use the automobile this evening, and so forth. Today, I understand, many of you would call these “positions.”

10. The first question is then always: what is the demand a symbol of?

1. Someone, on a certain occasion, a philosophical conference, said that he would like to ask me a question. He asked it in triumph as if it would certainly floor me.
2. He said he lived with his mother, and quite amicably except on one question. His mother wished the dining-Room table in the middle of the Dining Room and he wished it in the bay window.
3. And, “I don’t believe,” he ended by saying, “even you could integrate anything as solid as our dining room table.”
4. As unfortunately the conference ended at that moment, and I have never seen him since, I have not been able to pursue this further. (CE 169)

11. What I should have liked to say to him was: “What is dining-table-in-middle-of-room symbol to you and what to your mother?”

1. Or, the question might be put: “What did you and your mother really want?
2. Perhaps not table-in-window or table-in-middle-of-the-Room at all.
3. Perhaps what she really wanted was to have it where it would be near the butler’s pantry, where it would be easy to walk around, or where it would be near the radiator.
4. Perhaps what you really wanted was more light, or the view of the river.

12. The integration might have been to take down the curtains.

1. That would not have been a compromise because neither would have lopped off a part of his desire; both would have got what they really wanted.
2. I like his using the word solidity; it is the solidity of symbols which make them a danger to us.

13. The first step in integration is to break up wholes:

1. To analyze, differentiate and discriminate.
2. I can best explain this by an illustration, given by my good friend and social worker, Mrs. Ada E. Sheffield telling of the case Jessica, an unmarried mother. Incidentally, T.S. Eliot was proud to call Ada his sister!
3. Most of the people who knew Jessica’s case dismissed it with: “She’s a prostitute, what more need be said?”
4. But Mrs. Sheffield, for a few years a probation officer in New York, broke up this whole. She said: “You say she’s a prostitute because she lived with two or three men, but that does not necessarily make her a prostitute.
5. A prostitute is one who takes any man; Jessica took every time the man she wanted: in each case there was a selective process.

14. Then, Mrs. Sheffield went on to reintegrate the “facts” about Jessica.

1. If we want to compare Jessica’s sex conduct with the sex-conduct of someone else, we shall never understand it by comparing it as a whole, but only by breaking it up into its several aspects or conduct patterns.
2. Her wish for success in her work, for a good time, for what she considered a higher social position, her maternal attitude: these are what have to be considered.
3. It is equally true, to be sure, that Jessica’s case could not have been understood by any atomistic method of study, for her “whole” activity was constantly influencing each separate activity.

15. “The calling of Jessica a prostitute was an example of:

1. Using a mere epithet (ep a thet’) to explain a situation: the people who called Jessica a prostitute without further consideration simply had the block notion of goodness and the evangelical idea of the soul. (CE, 166)
2. I’m sure you can all think of examples in which an epithet (ep a thet’) was used to sweep away all opportunity for fresh and creative thinking . . . “What more need be said!” The signal that minds are about to snap shut!

16. How important to remember that “The confronting of diverse interests,

1. each claiming right of way, leads us to evaluate our interests, and valuation often is evolved into revaluation; not in the sense that sour grapes hang high, but a genuine revaluation.
2. It also draws into the field of attention other values, which otherwise might not be taken into account, for our choice is a choice of activities in which all the values have a stake.
3. Many conflicts could, I believe, be prevented from ending disastrously by getting the desires of each side into one field of vision where they could be viewed together and compared. (DA, 230)
4. Values when put together look different from the same values considered separately, for in the act of comparison there is a simultaneous view of all values. (CE 171)
5. We can never understand the total situation without taking into account the evolving situation. And when a situation changes, we have not a new variation under the old fact, but a new fact.” (CE, 69)

17. Probably the main reason why we do not have more integration is that it requires much more thinking on the part of arbitrator, mediator . . . or negotiator..(DA, Fox, 206)

1. Integration requires a high order of intelligence, keen perception and discrimination, more than all, a brilliant inventiveness; it is easier …to fight . . . than to suggest a better way. (DA, Metcalf, 45-48)
2. In my day a careless newspaper reporter spoke of a labor mediator’s job as “meditation.” Putting that one extra letter in “mediation” got him pretty near the truth of the matter. (DA, Fox, 206)

17. The concept of the “one field of vision” reminds me my beloved teacher at Thayer Academy in Braintree, Massachusetts—Anna Boynton Thompson.

1. Miss Thompson, Oh My, such a brilliant and dedicated teacher. I was only 11 when I entered Thayer, and she, my teacher, 29.
2. Her curiosity knew no bounds. Why once she traveled alone for weeks on donkey-back through Greece in order to experience the country in a timeless way.

18. She published a monograph on the German philosopher, Fichte (Fi g ta: 1762 - 1814), whose ideas she found compelling, but whose writing style she loathed.

1. To help her readers understand his philosophy, she created her own powerful, dynamic metaphor, which I first heard from her as an eager young student.
2. This requires some concentration on the part of the listener. Perhaps you might close your eyes and imagine and create a moving picture in your mind as I speak.

19. “Imagine a glass globe whose circumference is filled with:

1. millions of eyes all looking inward. All the eyes see the same content, though each from its own special point.
2. And into the view of each eye the view of the others is received, though from its own particular angle.
3. Now, suppose that the substance of the globe, instead of glass is merely the sight projected from each eye, that without the eyes and their sight nothing whatever of the globe would exist.

20. We then have in the globe a unity of blended individualities

1. where the individualities may be look upon as essential, for without them there is nothing;
2. individuality is all that there is, and the ultimate reality is a blending of all individualities.” (ABT, 71)

21. During our discussion, I would like to use Miss Thompson’s crystalline sphere imagery to gather many points of view on various topics. Before doing so, I’d like to touch lightly on a few points I feel vital to our exploration of the work that you do in “Special Education.”

22. Experts.

1. The present glorification of the expert, the ardent advocacy of “facts,” needs some analysis. The question of democracy is often discussed on the assumption that we are obliged to choose between the rule of that modern beneficent despot, the expert, and a muddled, befogged “people.”
2. If the question were as simple as that, most of our troubles would be over; we should have only to get enough Intelligence Bureaus at Washington, enough scientific management information into the factories, enough specialists (on hygiene, transportation, etc.) into the cities, enough formulae from the agricultural colleges into the country, and all life would become fair and beautiful.
3. For the people it is assumed, will gladly agree to become automata when we show them all the things, nice, solid, objective things—they can have by abandoning their own experience in favor of a superior race of men called experts. (CE, 3)

23. Facts

1. We need experts, we need accurate information, but the object is not to do away with difference but to do away with muddle.
2. Suppose at lunch we walk outside these conference rooms together and suddenly see something in our path. If I think I am looking at a black snake and you think it is a fallen branch, our talk is merely chaotic.
3. But, after we have decided that it is a snake, we do not then automatically agree what to do with it.
4. You and I may respond quite differently to “black snake;” shall we run away, or kill it, or take it home and make a pet of it to kill the mice?

24. Differences and Diversity

1. Difference based upon inaccuracy is meaningless. By agreeing upon the facts, that this is a black snake, we have not done away with difference, but we have provided the possibility for fruitful difference. (CE, 6)
2. We could not have an enemy unless there was much in common between us. Differences are always grounded in an underlying similarity. To disagree as well as to agree with people brings you closer to them. I always feel intimate with my enemies. It is not opposition, but indifference, which separates men. (NS 39)
3. I can’t emphasize enough the value of diversity. What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should not be considered the same. We must face life as it is and understand that diversity is its most essential feature
4. Fear of difference is dread of life itself! One of the greatest values of controversy is its revealing nature. The real issues at stake come into the open and have the possibility of being reconciled. (CE 300)
5. As long as we think of difference as that which divides us, we shall dislike it; when we think of it as that which unites us, we shall cherish it. (NS 39)

26. Power.

1. Now, here we have a boundless topic! I once gave an hour and a half talk to businessmen on the subject, and we had just begun our exploration, but for today let me just say in less than a minute:
2. Whereas power usually means power-over, the power of some person or group over some other person or group, it is possible to develop the conception of power-with, a jointly developed power, a coactive, not a coercive power.

27. Teaching.

1. This phrase, “special education,” was not in use in my day, but the goal of helping every child meet his or her potential, that motivated many, if not all educators.
2. One of the most marked characteristics of present-day teaching is realizing that the teacher is not one who has lived and the student is one who is going to live, but that both are living now, in the present, that it should be fresh life meeting fresh life. There can be no more false dichotomy than a teacher with past wisdom and student with present experience. (DA 306)

28. Disintegration

1. In my emphasis on integration, it must not be supposed, however, that I ignore the part of disintegration in the creative process.
2. We should always see the relation between disruptive and creative forces; disruption may be a real moment in integration.
3. This point ought to be much further developed, for it would prevent us from too superficial an optimism. (CE 178)

29. Experience.

1. I have been interested to watch how often disagreement disappears when theorizing ends and the question is of some definite activity to be undertaken.
2. To put this still another way, integration, the resolution of conflict, the harmonizing of difference, must take place on the motor level, not on the intellectual level.
3. We cannot get genuine agreement by mere discussion in conference. (CE 150)
4. We need to experiment together. To try things!
5. Experience may be hard, but we claim its gifts because they are real, even though our feet bleed on its stones. (CE, 302)

30. In this troubling time where talk of war is in the air, may I share my thoughts from a talk given in the mid-twenties.

1. In making a plea for some experiment in international cooperation, I remember, with humiliation, that we have fought because it is the easy way. Fighting solves no problems. The problems which brought on war will all be there to be settled when the war end.
2. But, we have war as the line of least resistance. We have war when the mind gives up its job of agreeing as too difficult.
3. It is often stated that conflict is a necessity of the human soul, and that if conflict should ever disappear from among us, individuals would deteriorate and society collapse. But the effort of agreeing is so much more strenuous than the comparatively easy stunt of fighting that we can harden our spiritual muscles much more effectively on the former than the latter.

29. We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living.

1. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences.
2. From war to peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective.
3. ,from the stagnant to the active,
4. from the destructive to the creative way of life.
5. We may be angry and fight; we may feel kindly and want peace—it is all about the same.
6. The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above both these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree.. (NS, 358-359)

32. YOU are those heroic people. I am eager to hear your views!

References

(ABT) Thompson, Anna Boynton, The Unity of Fichte’s Doctrine of Knowledge, with an introduction by Josiah Royce. Boston: Ginn and Co. 1895.

(CE) Follett, Mary Parker (1924), Creative Experience. Longmans, Green and Co. Reprint, Peter Smith, New York. 1951.

(DA) Follett, Mary Parker (1940), Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, edited by Henry C. Metcalf and L. Urwick, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, London & New York.

(NS) Follett, Mary Parker (1918). The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government. London: Longmans, Green and Co.

(VW) Woolf, Virginia (1929). A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Copyright renewed 1957 by Leonard Woolf.