Once one starts to look at confrontations in this way, a great many other opportunities for transforming conflicts in constructive ways appear. The Constructive Confrontation Cycle Traditional problem-solving mediation is linear. It goes through a predetermined series of steps, in a prescribed order. First, the parties are contacted, background information is collected, a strategy is developed, and the parties' agreement to participate is obtained. A settlement document is drawn up and signed, the mediation is over, and the parties go home.
Constructive confrontation is very different.
There is no established beginning point, and usually no end. They can try to tackle all the problems at once, or they can take them one at a time. They can deal with misunderstandings first, and then procedural difficulties, or they can go the other way around. They can start down one path, and switch to another path as the need develops. Constructive confrontation is very flexible and adaptable to the problem at hand.