From Conflict & Contract to Collaboration & Covenant

[Joseph Gill]

A contract is an agreement made in suspicion. The parties do not trust each other, and they set "limits" to their own responsibility. A covenant is an agreement made in trust. The parties love each other and put no limits on their own responsibility.

Today, in the secular fields of conflict resolution, this distinction between contracts and covenants is gaining attention. Consider the following article by Stewart Levine, Esq. , is a consultant, trainer, mediator and facilitator. He is the author of the award winning "Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration":

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From Conflict & Contract to Collaboration & Covenant
by Stewart Levine
May 2004

I was in Philadelphia when the idea of agreements for results emerged. I had a positive vision of agreements as "road maps" for people moving into unknown arenas. I saw lawyers as trusted advisors helping clients navigate major life changes and transitions using the vehicle of "agreements for results" that would help their clients develop a positive vision for their future. Working this way has been challenging. It's not easy to establish a new perspective. The dominant culture likes its' way of doing things. We collaborate by forming agreements, either expressed (spoken or written) or implied (assumed). Usually, the cause of conflict is the lack of a clear agreement. We did not take the time, or we did not know what we needed to talk about, to craft an effective, explicit agreement. It is surprising we were never taught this skill given that working with others is such a fundamental part of life, and given the huge cost of conflict that results from implicit, inartful, incomplete agreements that don't effectively express a joint vision generating collaborative partnership. The critical cause of the breakdown is seeing the negotiation process of forming agreements as an adversarial process you try to win.

People function in a "me vs. them" context, negotiating to advantage themselves, with little thought of the process as an expression of a clear joint vision with a road map to desired results. We could benefit greatly if we embraced the idea of creating agreements for results, and stopped negotiating agreements for protection. This thinking shifts the process of forming agreements from adversarial win/lose to joint visioning that articulates an inclusive vision of outcomes, a road map to the composite of desired results everyone agrees on, and a new relationship based on "Covenant." It is a fundamental shift from the traditional idea of agreements for protection that focus on providing remedies for what goes wrong, to designing agreements for results that express a joint vision that satisfies everyone—shifting our thinking from "you or me" to "you and me?"

As I started working with these agreements I noticed how excited people became, and how simple it was to create a new framework for any form of collaboration—partnerships, employment relationships, teaming and managing others. The shift in perspective had me thinking I had invented sliced bread. Agreements for results provided a new lens to view the world as I shifted my perspective from an adversarial orientation of "how can I win by protecting my client more than you protect your client" to the idea of "how can everyone get the results they desire from the collaboration." I came to realize that although creating a meeting of the minds was very important, it was also important to create a meeting of the hearts. That's what I was doing, and that's why people were responding so favorably.

Agreements for results minimize the adversarial element we bring to the negotiation process by shifting the focus from what can go wrong and fighting to protect against it, to a process of jointly visioning the results everyone wants to produce. These agreements are the tools for preventing and managing FUTURE conflicts by addressing PRESENT differences. The models I have developed for forming new collaborations to deal more effectively with differences of perspective, and the many unknowns of a partnership, so people can work together to create stronger long term collaborations, prevent hostility, and better manage conflicts that do surface. In the process of crafting an agreement for results people have the experience of true collaboration as they articulate needs, concerns, and fears. This leads to covenantal relationships, provides the foundation for enduring collaborations and results beyond expectation.

[Joseph Gill]

Here are some rather simple online definitions.

Agreement:


The act of agreeing.
Harmony of opinion; accord.
An arrangement between parties regarding a course of action; a
covenant.
Law.
A properly executed and legally binding contract.
The writing or document embodying this contract.


Covenant:

A binding agreement; a compact.
Law.
A formal sealed agreement or contract.
A suit to recover damages for violation of such a contract.

Contract:

An agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is
written and enforceable by law.
The writing or document containing such an agreement.
The branch of law dealing with formal agreements between parties.
Marriage as a formal agreement; betrothal.
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I propose that these definitions fail to acknowledge the distinct differences between covenants and contracts; some of these differences are recognized even by the secular world, whereas others are only realized through a Judeo-Christian worldview. Here I consider is the conflictive nature of contracts versus the collaborative nature of covenants. The following is ethicist Brad Kellenberg's take on the topic:

"The notion of "contract" has a long illustrious history in political thought. When the Caesars ruled the world, peace (pax) was achieved when a pact (pactum)—a treaty or contract—was formed between warring parties. As is well known, Thomas Hobbes saw the formation of a contract between conflictive strangers as the logical basis for the modern nation-state. Two observations. First, the contact he envisioned was that between strangers who only accidentally shared something in common beyond the mutual desire for self-preservation.

Second, the "peace" achieved was privative only: peace is the absence of war. No more substantive account of the commonwealth is offered than a barely tolerable balance of power that teeters on the brink but does not plummet into war.

Two millennia prior to Pax Romana there was living in Egypt a caste of slaves made up of foreigners from Canaan. Through a series of fantastic evens in the reign of Pharaoh Rameses II, this band of Hebrews escaped Egypt and was led by their charismatic leader Moses to the hinterlands of a country that would one day be theirs. Curiously, this socially backward bunch of former slaves wandered somewhat aimlessly around the desert for an entire generation while they practiced to be a people under the terms of a covenant that they had adopted as their own. This covenant became their constitution, it defined their very form of life. It told them what to do with their pots and pans. It told them, to cancel all debts every fifty years and return any land held as collateral back to the original owner. It told them when to work and when to party, whom to have sex with and whom not to have sex with.

This covenant was highly invasive; rebellious children as well as adulterers could be stoned to death for breach of this covenant. But it had one tremendous advantage: it was an agreement formed among friends that trumped all other considerations. When the Israelites spoke "Shalom!" to each other they were not merely wishing for the absence of conflict. They were wishing upon each other a more substantive good, the good of becoming together precisely the sort of people capable of embodying the covenant. In so doing they understood themselves to be the people of God.

I suspect that one must be an insider to a covenantal form of life to fully appreciate the fact that being such a community is a good greater and more substantial than the mere absence of conflict."

[from: Kallenberg, Brad J. "Professional or Practitioner? What's Missing from the Codes?" Teaching Ethics: The Journal of the Society for Ethics across the Curriculum 3, no. 1 (2002): 49-66.]