Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Conflict and its Resolution

Cecilia Conde

Role play essay

Mathias Yánez (208896)

Role play essay
Sunday, February 26, 2023
 Role Play Essay

On Friday, February 24, our group participated in a ZOOM meeting in which we performed a
role play. The play consisted of the dramatization of a neighborhood meeting in which the
discussed topic what the impact of cigarette smoke on the neighborhood’s overall well-being. In
this meeting, I was a smoker, who couldn’t go over 10 minutes without having a smoke and got
nervous if I did so. In my group, the mediator was Katya, who tried to find common ground so
we could discuss our points of view and try to reach a solution, together as a community. The
other members of my group were Naomi, who has a strong case of bronchitis and couldn’t be
near tobacco smoke due to her health problems. Pedro didn’t care at all about the topic discussed
and just wanted to go home to continue his own life. And finally, José Luis, who hated the smell
of tobacco and couldn’t bear being close to it or smelling it due to personal motives. The meeting
started with Katya giving a brief introduction to the topics that we were going to discuss, and
then we went straight into it. All members were ready, and the discussion started.
There was a wide range of necessities, interests, and
positions that each of the individuals held. In my case, I just needed to keep smoking, I use the
word needed because it is an addiction, and in this case, it was something that I couldn’t
suddenly stop doing. In the case of Naomi and José Luis, they wanted to live in a smokeless
neighborhood, either for health or personal reasons. In the case of Pedro and Katya, they were
both neutral, Pedro because he just wanted the meeting to be over, and Katya because she was
acting as an impartial mediator. By using the iceberg model, we can see that even though the
issue (tobacco smoke in a neighborhood) seems apparent, there are a lot of factors that aren’t so
apparent. Naomi’s health issue could be severely incremented if she is exposed to tobacco, and
we don’t know the motives of José Luis's aversion to tobacco smoke, maybe he has had bad
experiences with tobacco in his lifetime, or maybe he has personally hidden expectations which
could be affected if he is exposed to tobacco smoke. Maybe even myself, I am a smoker but
maybe I have been fighting with that issue for a long time, and just can't seem to find the way out
of my addiction. These are all hidden factors that need to be taken into consideration when
mediating, using the iceberg model. These interests and needs were considered in the resolution,
as I will explain below, and we found a solution that considered all these factors. A few verbal
communication strategies that Katya used, both verbal and nonverbal were active listening (she
heard all our different points of view and replied based on what we said), she asked open-ended
questions to gather information, she spoke clearly in a non-threatening way which encouraged
conversation since none of us felt intimidated or forced to speak. She also had a calm posture,
which made all of us feel more secure and confident, and (while it was a virtual meeting),
maintained eye contact with the camera, she also was in a calm environment and didn’t seem in a
rush. All of this contributed to the fast and effective resolution of the conflict. It was a good
communication strategy. Not everything was perfect, since I can identify one big barrier which
hindered consensus for a while, and it affected all of us, which was communication. The whole
forum had to be answered in English, which isn’t our main language of us. We all speak and
understand English decently, but it being our second language, it meant that many ideas could
not be expressed in the same way that we were thinking them, or with the same amount of detail,
feeling, or freedom as we could have expressed them if we were talking in Spanish. This made
the mediation process a bit harder since we had to think twice and find the correct words for
what we were trying to say, all of this made the process a bit slow, but we managed to overcome
this issue and find an effective solution which satisfied the needs of everyone involved.
Some element that influenced our negotiation process was how willing we
were to resolve this conflict since José Luis and Naomi were very vocal about their beliefs and
expectations, but Pedro was completely neutral, and he didn’t even give his opinion on the
conflict. Other elements include ethics, even though I had a smoking addiction problem, I
realized that it could hurt the neighborhood’s children, and that is something bigger than my
addiction. Finally, another factor that influenced the negotiation process was language, as I
mentioned above, since it made our negotiation a bit trickier, since expressing ideas was a bit
harder and we couldn’t express them as freely as if we were talking in Spanish.
Finally, the resolution we found was that I
would smoke healthier alternatives than tobacco, and only when there were no people around
that I could bother with my smoke or nicotine devices. I will smoke only vape pens or consume
smokeless products such as nicotine pouches, chewing tobacco, or even nicotine toothpicks. This
resolution was reached when trying to look for alternatives in which the necessities of all parties
could be satisfied. The hardest part of this process was to find a solution that didn’t alter either
lifestyle, since the first solution we found (smoking cabins), would require an investment and a
designated space (or spaces since I mentioned that one would not be enough since I would need
these cabins all over town, considering I needed a smoke every 10 minutes), but we managed to
get over it and find a viable solution for all of us. Trust was extremely important since we
reached a verbal-only agreement, in which we all trusted each other on doing our part. I
promised to be true to my promise, and the neighborhood to stay satisfied with the agreement we
reached and don’t demand mode. There is no contract that legally ties any of us to this
agreement, only trust. I believe this negotiation was extremely successful, everyone contributed
to reaching a fast and effective solution, and we all felt happy with the outcome of the
negotiation. I think that it could not have been resolved more effectively realistically, since it
would’ve required either me to stop smoking completely, or the neighbors to accept my tobacco
smoke, neither of which are realistic solutions. Overall, I think we did the best we could and it
was a great activity to get to use the concepts learned in class in a dynamic and useful way.

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