Reaching for Higher Ground : Creating Purpose-driven, Principled & Powerful Groups

Few groups harness the power of their members′ collective wisdom and aspirations to achieve something out of the ordinary. In fact, effective, powerful groups and positive group experiences tend to be the exception. How can groups go beyond the common experience and reach for higher ground? There is a simple, but not simplistic answer.

In Reaching for Higher Ground in Conflict Resolution, John Stephens, Frank Dukes and Marina Piscolish present an original approach to group problem solving and conflict transformation, demonstrating the value of setting up and maintaining deep commitments and broadly shared expectations as an integral part of effective group process. As the authors show, this practical approach can go a long way toward creating authentic community and sustainable agreements in group settings.

For everyone who works in and with groups–including mediators, managers, committee chairs, team leaders, consultants, teachers, and trainers–Reaching for Higher Ground in Conflict Resolution presents clear principles and proven techniques for productive group experience. The book includes a wealth of examples and practical advice on how to guide groups to: articulate the values they hold dear, develop the principles that will guide their efforts, and clarify the shared expectations that will be honored throughout their work. Here you will find the knowledge and learn the skills necessary to demystify and facilitate conflict transformation and successful group problem solving. Easily applied to a wide variety of organizations and group settings, these practical and flexible tools and techniques include:

• Advice for getting group buy–in to the need for shared expectations
  
• Directions for guiding a group′s development of context– and culture–sensitive shared expectations
  
• Ideas for determining the right level of attention to shared expectations given the group′s characteristics and needs
  
• Suggestions for working with problematic groups
  · Procedures for monitoring a group′s success and promoting growth and learning.

This inspirational and challenging resource teaches how to help a group engage in problem solving in a way that seeks reaching not just common ground but higher ground.

A hands–on manual for learning the leadership skills that take you beyond compromise or common ground to higher ground

In this visionary book authors Marina Piscolish, John Stephens, and Frank Dukes present their challenging, innovative, and principled approach to problem solving within groups. Reaching for Higher Ground is filled with the practical information and illustrative examples group leaders and conflict resolution practitioners would need to achieve extraordinary outcomes with any group.

"If the world will be transformed through the actions and commitments of individual groups,
which I believe to be true, this book teaches how to bring those groups into being and how to help them become both powerful and caring."
Peter Block, author of Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self–Interest and Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used

"Anyone who works with people–and that means all of us–should read this book. For educators, Reaching for Higher Ground offers crucial lessons to support consensus, community building, and lasting change within classrooms, in school decision–making bodies, and in the policy making by state and local school boards. This book could move us beyond the dance of the dichotomies that so often sidetracks meaningful reforms to a higher ground that focuses on the needs of children and the right to learn."
Linda Darling Hammond, author of The Right to Learn

"Have you worked with a group that just wasn′t working? Where unspoken rules kept the group from making progress? This book helps break through old uncomfortable ways of relating in organizations and groups, committees and families."
Sally Herndon Malek, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services

"Thoughtful reflections and practical tools dot the landscape of this well–organized, wise, and refreshing book. . . . for anyone who plans, conducts or participates in any kind of meeting where time is precious and the outcomes matter to those involved."
Laura Chasin, director, Public Conversations Project, Watertown, Massachusetts

"This is a valuable resource for people of faith who honor one another across differences and who want to live together faithfully, deeply, and lovingly. The authors beckon us beyond `common ground′ to `higher ground′." Bishop Marion Edwards, North Carolina Conference, United Methodist Church