CHAPTER 1

Understanding High Conflict Personalities

This book is written primarily for professional mediators and mediators in training, but it can also be used by anyone who finds himself or herself in the middle of other people’s conflicts. While this is designed primarily forhigh conflict disputes, the simple tips and tools provided can be applied to any type of dispute. However, before attempting a mediation, one should receive sufficient mediation training.

Have you ever been in the middle of a mediation when suddenly one of the parties jumps up? “If that’s what you’re thinking, then I’m out of here!” And they gather their papers and storm out of the mediation room, permanently quitting the mediation?

Or have you had a mediation fall apart early on when the parties can’t even agree on signing the Agreement to Mediate? Or can’t even agree on the Agenda? Or have to fight over changing the Agenda in the middle of the process? Or respond to each other’s suggestions by saying: “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard.”

We have experienced all of these incidents, as well as cases with uncompromising parties, silent parties, yelling parties, cases with one very high conflict person, two, and even more high conflict people. We have often thought: “So, what do I do now?”

High Conflict

High conflict is a term that is becoming more frequently used in legal cases, family conflicts, workplace disputes and even political polarization. High conflict people unnecessarily increase or prolong conflicts, rather than making good efforts to manage or resolve them. It often means taking an adversarial approach to conflict resolution that could be handled in a cooperative manner. Essentially, high conflict means trying to turn a potentiallywin-win situation into a winner-take-allwin-lose situation. High conflict people undermine efforts to find interest-based solutions to their disputes.

Let’s take, for example, two friends. Most people would think of friends as seeking win-win, interest-based solutions to problems. In this example (familiar to many mediators from their training), both are interested in having an orange, but they only have one orange between them. A win-win approach (interest-based approach) would have each friend explain why they want the orange to see if both of their interests could be met. In this case, one friend wants it to make orange juice and the other wants