Beware of anyone who says they have an answer for everything. They can fix it. This promise is false, and history is littered with people who said, “I alone…”
We don’t need to look to mythology or other legends to show the value of compromise. We have plenty of examples in real time.
Knowing how and when to meet near the middle is the real art. Collaborating, so progress happens, and parties leave the table without fury and feeling a measure of success is within all of us, says Kenneth Feinberg, a star mediator attorney who knows the algorithm of compromise.
He has run the play many times and sometimes under extraordinary circumstances. Feinberg was the special master of the 9/11 Fund; he was challenged to get most victims and victims’ families to agree to a payout from the federal government instead of pursuing individual lawsuits or joining class action suits.
In our era of highly polarized views, listening to someone like Feinberg is refreshing and feels like taking a giant step back from the edge. Feinberg says that, ironically, the edge is the starting point in resolving a dispute.
Getting people to consider the ramifications of failure due to a rigid position is the basis for mediation. “What is the alternative if we don’t resolve this dispute now?” Feinberg asks. “Where you have your own independent consent to a resolution you’re not held hostage; you are an independent. You control your destiny.”
This theory applies to everything from kitchen table disputes to political conflict. “Emotion is unreason,” he advises. “It is personal.”
In mediation with 9/11 families, Feinberg worked with people that lost loved ones on the hijacked planes or in the World Trade Center “who would come to me and vent to me about life’s unfairness and the anger and frustration that the government let this happen. It was part of my job to listen, and then the first order of business was to lower the temperature and lower the flame.”
We can all learn from this advice: Listen and dip the temperature, and, according to Feinberg, proceed with the concept that “perfect is the enemy of the good.”
This means that, ultimately, no one gets 100% of the outcome they seek. “If you insist on not budging, maintaining with rigidity your position, there is no compromise and well, you don’t need me,” Feinberg adds. “Nothing is 100% or even 50/50.”
Burning out with a world-class mediator won’t lead to progress. But we see that a lot these days. There are too many lines drawn. Incivility is often unleashed in our culture with those with whom we might disagree.
Feinberg says he entertains a lot of calls to help on a big scale: “How come you can’t get together with Senate members who are reasonable or work with the Israelis and Hamas?”
He’s done it before at critical times. He says timing is essential and the will, you guessed it, to compromise: “I am here to tell you why it is in your best interest to resolve this now. And that doesn’t mean 50/50. You may get 90 or maybe 10.”
Advice from a national treasure, someone who helps people remove difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible barriers. The Feinberg way begins with understanding no one can fix it alone. We need others to generate progress together. Expect nothing less of yourself and others.
Megan Giles Cooney is a columnist for the Traverse City (MI) Record-Eagle. Reach her at megan.cooney1@gmail.com
