"A house divided against itself cannot stand." Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, June 16,1858 Like most of you, I have been paying much attention to the protests by Black Lives Matter in response to the death of George Floyd ; as I write this, the protests have been occurring all over [Read More]
Thanks to “safer at home” orders, I, like many other mediators, have spent my time learning the intricacies of video conferencing and more specifically Zoom as it has become crystal clear that mediations by telephone or video conference will be the “new normal”. It will be many months if not [Read More]
One of the most important aspects if not THE most important aspect about mediations is that they are confidential. What is said by the parties and/or mediator during a mediation stays there. This is absolutely necessary to encourage forthright disclosure, build trust and rapport among the parties, trust in the [Read More]
In its February 20, 2020 edition, The Economist published an article entitled, “Do not rely on Facial expressions for how people are feeling.” Noting that both Aristotle and Cicero believed that “...the face was a window onto a person’s mind”, the authors commented that more than 2000 years later, we [Read More]
One of the issues that mediators learn about is power imbalance: one party may have more power during a negotiation than the other party. This may be due to any number of reasons. One side may have more money to fight the good fight, may have more information, expertise or [Read More]
An important tool in any mediator’s toolbox is knowledge of cultural diversity. Early on in any training session, this topic is explored and discussed. What do I mean by “culture”? As explained by Ellen Waldman in her book Mediation Ethics (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2011): UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and [Read More]
An unknown author on the Harvard Negotiation PON Blog staff posted a blog on April 9, 2020 entitled “How Mood Affects Negotiators” which discusses “What …social psychologists [are] learning about the connections among emotions, negotiators and decision making.” (Id.) The blog post notes that researcher Jennifer S. Lerner of the [Read More]
I just finished reading a book entitled, Start With Why? By Simon Sinek (Penguin Group, New York, 2009) which posits a simple thesis on why some organizations are very successful and others are not. It all depends on whether they have maintained or lost their “why”- their vision, their cause, [Read More]
