Have you ever sat back with your eyes closed and listened to music or someone speaking? Why did you do it? Probably, to appreciate more fully and deeply what you were hearing. By shutting down one of our senses, we allow ourselves to hone in more deeply to the music [Read More]
As part of a book club, I just finished reading Difficult Conversations [How To Discuss What Matters Most] by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen (Second edition, Penguin Books, New York, 2010). While its advice is geared towards the layman, as an experienced neutral, I found some interesting nuggets [Read More]
Several years ago, I took a course with Douglas Noll who noted that everyone in a conflict is a victim, and every person in that conflict has six needs that must be met before the conflict can be resolved: vengeance, vindication, validation, need to be heard, need to create meaning [Read More]
In last week’s blog, I mentioned one paradox (competition and cooperation) discussed by Bernard Mayer in his book, The Conflict Paradox (ABA and Jossey-Bass, 2015). A second one is avoidance and engagement. Like the first paradox, on superficial glance, avoidance and engagement appear to be polar opposites. But, upon deeper [Read More]
Snap Judgments. We all make them … and how they can lead us astray! This obvious point is made in a blog posted on March 2, 2015 on the Harvard Program on Negotiation’s blog website ( entitled "How Snap Judgments Can Lead Negotiators Astray In Negotiation Conversations" ). The unidentified authors [Read More]
Once again, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School published an interesting article. This time it is about the "rules" that the New York City Police Hostage Negotiators live by to defuse the very stressful crises with which they deal almost daily. What strikes me about the "rules" is [Read More]
In their book, The Invisible Gorilla, (Harmony 2010) Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris discuss the notion of Inattentional Blindness or how when we are looking at a scene, we may become so focused on one particular aspect of what we are viewing that we miss the other objects or stimuli [Read More]
Last week, I posted a blog about the difference between "hearing" and "listening" and how the latter is intimately connected to "active listening".Well, it appears that while hearing and listening helps in everyday life, our senses of seeing and touching are more important! A new study reveals that our brain [Read More]
