I "don't know" and I'm going to run with that

  I felt crappy even before the face-to-face mediation began, this week.  Fighting some seasonal bug, I was hoping the mediation would be a short one, no matter the outcome, and I would soon be on my way home, to a hot apple cider and a bed. It was not a short one.  Yet, what […]

The Cloud and Mobile are the Mediator's future office

I mediated a trans-national business dispute last week.  The mediation took place over several days, and was conducted online, over the Internet.  There was zero physical paper exchanged.  I worked from my laptop, from my home office.  Essentially, all the software I used was based in the “Cloud”, and either free or low-cost.   I’m grateful. […]

Silence: Pattern Interruptus

When conflict is all around, resolution seems distant, and the voices ring loud, sometimes the best way forward is to say nothing silence. As a mediator, I’ve found silence can be an effective pattern interrupt technique, a way to break impasse, especially if the parties in a dispute aren’t listening well, are locked onto negativity, […]

CIIAN: Helping Nations build their conflict resolution capacity

I had a great long-distance conversation with Evan Hoffman this week.  Based in Ottawa, he is Executive Director of the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation (CIIAN), a Canadian NGO, as well as being a Faculty member with the School of Peace and Conflict Management at Royal Roads University. Initially connecting with Evan through Twitter […]

10 Diverse ways to build your capacity to appreciate the Other

My first blogging inclination this week was to write a glorious followup to a post I wrote a year ago, on strategies to reduce the income inequality gap.  Getting into it, I quickly discovered I may have overstretched myself.  Rather than snap, I humbly offer this alternative…   It is through our shared disconnection, that […]