A farmer headed down a bumpy, pothole-ridden dirt road with a cart filled to the brim with freshly picked apples.

Passing a gentleman headed in the other direction, he asked, “How long will it take me to get to market headed this way?”

The other fellow looked at the cart full of apples, then down at the muddy potholes. “An hour if you go slowly,” he replied, “and all day if you go fast.”

Conflict resolution is like a carting apples on a bumpy road. It may seem efficient to hurry resolution along, but it’s usually much more effective to slow down and do it right.

Conflict Zen® by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.