The Conduitao Podcast: Recent Episodes
Conduitao
At Conduitao, we help global development practitioners gain training in holistic responsiveness to complex and multi-dimensional issues. The Conduitao Podcast includes interviews with practitioners, consultants, and project managers who approach global development needs through integrated, flexible, and creative means and ways. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to learn more!
So, you led negotiations in the past and an agreement didn't emerge as planned?
This situation has confounded many people because even with the best intentions, best effort, commitment to the process, and despite hundreds of hours invested, they have found themselves unable to turn a negotiations train from its seemingly inevitable crash trajectory.
Maybe as a group leader, organizational member, project manager, or negotiator, this may sound like a familiar story. You may know why this happened, or you may not.
Among negotiators, there is a tendency to seek the quickest possible solution to the problem or issue. In order to arrive at quick solutions, people and organizations that are seen as problem stakeholders or who have difficult personalities tend to get left out of discussions. The belief is often that such people or organizations will just slow the process down.
What happens when those people and organizations are excluded from the process?
Does it make the solutions more or less likely to succeed?
Conduitao hosted a live talk from Dr. Eric Wolterstorff about why even the worst of the bad stakeholders need to be included. There is a way to include them and make sure the solutions aren’t derailed.
Dr. Wolterstorff has has 25 years of experience providing in-person trauma, conflict management, and complexity training in a host of different locations across the world including Northern Iraq, Syria, and Indonesia. He has created the Solution Accelerator as a multi-stage framework for convening local groups to address complex and inter-locking issues such as watershed management, common resources management, climate change, and post-conflict reconstruction. The Solution Accelerator is now available as a 4-part online course series on the Conduitao training platform. Sovereignty First will be rolling these courses out in 2020.
For more information about Sovereignty First's complexity management training, Course #1, Creating Fully Inclusive Negotiations, see: https://www.conduitao.com/sf-solution...
Together, with all of you, for a better world,
Melissa Finn, Ph.D Founder and CEO, Conduitao
Robb Herndon, a conflict management specialist, meets with Conduitao's COO and podcast host, Stephanie Gordon to talk about a method to build cooperation in the negotiations process with stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and why action MUST be collaborative to solve big problems. If you're involved in a project that is addressing big complex problems, such as climate change, migration or conflict mitigation in the workplace, this podcast is for YOU. Robb discusses how the Solution Accelerator, created by the organization Sovereignty First, will help you with the current projects or problems that you might be working on. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE so that you never miss a new episode of The Conduitao Podcast.
Watershed management, climate change, racism, mass migrations. Dr. Wolterstorff talks to Conduitao COO Stephanie Gordon about why people who want to solve complex problems need to be conveners rather than problem-solvers and how to build inclusion and voluntary agreements with stakeholders of different backgrounds. Eric tells the story of how he got into stakeholder negotiations and how the method he uses emerged from his work in Indonesia and Northern Iraq. Eric provides greater insight into why people who want to solve complex problems need to find ways to convene all stakeholders to an issue, even the stakeholders that they may not like, rather than try to solve the problem excluding core people or groups and using their methods and frameworks stemming from their own cultural reference points. He explains why, with reference to several examples, lack of collaboration will greatly increase the likelihood of negotiations to fail.
For more information about the Solution Accelerator as a method and to access a free masterclass on inclusion, click on this link: https://www.conduitao.com/sf-solution...
In this podcast, our host Stephanie Gordon interviews Dr. Alistair Edgar about different facets of transitional justice based on Dr. Edgar's research experience in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Uganda, and South Africa.
Dr. Alistair D. Edgar is Associate Dean of the School of International Policy & Governance, at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and Associate Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University.
From 2003-2018 he served as Executive Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) Dr. Edgar is also an Advisory Board member at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies. Outside of the University, he is chair of the Board of the Canadian Landmine Foundation, and a co-editor of Global Governance journal.
Dr. Edgar’s research examines transitional justice in war-to-peace transitions and post-conflict peacebuilding, with special interests in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Kosovo, and northern Uganda.
Dr. Edgar holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Queen’s University (1993). He was a John M. Olin Doctoral Fellow in Economics and National Security at Harvard University (1992-93) and was awarded a certificate in Russian Studies at Moscow State University (1995).
In this podcast, Dakota Durham discusses the political center, the far-left, the far-right, extreme ideologies and their impact on society. She also examines what is causing the deepening divide in society, looking specifically at why people turn to violent extremism, the role of social media and the echo chamber, political polarization and the effect politicians have on extremism. Lastly, she analyzes what a dialogue is, why it is important and how to start one, giving specific examples of groups’ work on this front, in order to show how to begin to bridge the two extreme groups in the west that have overtaken the political spectrum through divisive language and ‘call-out’ culture that pushes more people into the fringes of society. Her central argument is that empathy, for self and others, and an open mind are the most important things to politics. Without empathy for others, buying into divisive ideologies becomes easier; without empathy for ourselves and without an open mind, it becomes impossible to even fathom having a dialogue as ones’ beliefs become too ingrained to be changed. In these conditions, people will continue to see their ideologies as correct and avoid being held accountable for their effects. While there are many other steps that need to be taken to create a more just and equal society, dialogue helps break down preconceived notions, notions that people may not even realize they have. Conducting dialogue in a non-judgmental and open way is one of the best ways to initiate productive change.
In this podcast interview, Rajneesh Chowdhury talks with Conduitao host, Stephanie Gordon about his new book, Systems Thinking for Management Consulting: Introducing Holistic Flexibility. In this interview, Rajneesh breaks down the difference between cognitive, formative, and substantive flexibility and how holistic flexibility thinking can be used to create more effective outcomes for project managers. Much of this discussion is contextualized in relation to the challenges and opportunities posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.