Theme 4 - Communication
Dealing with Community Conflict
Residents of a community may face a variety of difficult challenges such as school consolidation, hospital closure or loss of a physician, business closures, and environmental issues. The debate that surrounds these challenges may lead to disagreement and stress within the community and may lead to open conflict.
Community leaders who have the best interests of their community at heart may be at the centre of the conflict and will be called upon to manage it. Dealing with conflict in a constructive way is actually about dealing with our own reactions to it.
The conflict that develops around the solutions is usually much deeper than just an economic or environmental or demographic problem. When community residents begin searching for the answer to "what do we do now?" they may not find it by focusing on the problem (eg. school closure, loss of medical services, local business closure).
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