For presentation at the 9th LEADR International Dispute Resolution Conference, Wellington, NZ later this month, Mediator Blah…Blah…‘s Geoff Sharp has scoured the internet and accumulated a great list of mediation and negotiation sites for his topic, 40 Sites In 40 Minutes, online here. You don’t have to travel around the world to get the benefit of his leg work.

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Check out this great post at Online Guide To Mediaiton titled Won’t get fooled again: negotiating with liars.

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The cost of conflict: what happens when we frame divorce as combat is the title of a nice post by Diane Levin at Online Guide To Mediation. She was successfully able to put into words (and much more politely than I could have) some of my thoughts when I read about the book to which she refers, Hit Him Where It Hurts: The Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Divorce–Alimony, Custody, Child Support, and More.

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Thanks to Kentucky Cases for giving the “heads up” on Navigating Emotional Roadblocks for Effective Mediation set for April 17, 2007 in Lexington, KY. It is bound to be a fabulous program, featuring Dr. Dan Shapiro, associate director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and author of Beyond Reason: Listening To Emotions As You Negotiate. The brochure is here.

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Settle It Now Negotiation Blog turns to Robert B. Cialdini’s Six Rules of Influence That Could Make Or Break Your Next [Commercial] Negotiation. The same principles apply to negotiation in any mediation and this post is excellent. Check it out.

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The AAML annual meeting in Chicago was filled with the best yet CLE. I often return from these meetings feeling the material is indispensable; this year was over-the-top fabulous. I am not unaware of the furor in some circles about blogging the content of paid seminars over the internet. Of more concern to me is the possibility that blogging could chill the candid nature of the discourse. From the outset we have decided to post a synopsis of seminar content only with the approval of the speaker.
I did not even ask two of the fine presenters for permission to post about their remarks because it was obvious I would not have time to do their material justice and we may try to land a couple of them in Louisville for our seminar in April. I did ask Robert H. Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director Harvard Negotiation Research Project, Chair, Steering Committee, Program on Negotiation, for permission to post about his talk, “Negotiation Techniques by the Expert”, Negotiating in the Shadow of the Law. A first for me, he asked me to email a draft to him and he said he’d email me back if OK. Since he is “in residence” in California for a year and is limited in his opportunity to travel, I will email him a draft and hope he OKs it. No point stepping on toes. It is exactly the negotiation and mediation content that we seem to desperately need in these parts.
P.S. If you think you missed a week of posts after this seminar was over on November 10, you are correct. Sick. Out for an entire week. Now swamped. Clients come first and there is catching up to do. In the spirit of this thankful season, though, doing the best you can is almost always good enough, and now I know to add health to the long list of things for which I am thankful.

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One of the reasons I like writing this blawg is that I learn so much. Just as teaching a CLE is the best way to learn a topic thoroughly, researching online resources and posting about them is a discipline that brings much more information across my desk than I would otherwise discover.
A printout of The Threatened Walk Out has been sitting in my inbox waiting to be blogged. As I went to Diana Mercer’s website, PeaceTalks, I found another gem, Impasse In Negotiation. In fact, the entire “for professionals” section of the website is useful and the concept of a combo lawyer-therapist mediation service is interesting.

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From Victoria Pynchon: “I just noticed this post & agree with what you say. I, too, feel the tension between negotiation and mediation. As my friend and mentor Ken Cloke says, there are 5 responses to conflict — conflict avoidance, conflict suppression, conflict resolution, conflict transformation, and conflict transcendence. As women, we are trained by the culture to avoid and suppress conflict. This is one of the reasons why we chronically fail to negotiate on our own behalf — bigger salaries, more time off, better working conditions, etc. In the case of marital dissolution, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that protecting the children AND the estranged partner often trumps being willing to engage in tough negotiation tactics that will ensure a better (not worse!) future for the children. I’d be interested in hearing anything you or your readers know about this. For more on women’s negotiating styles and reluctances, see http://womenlawnet.blogspot.com.”
I went to that site and found this great article from Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide.
Any takers on letting me and Victoria know what you know about this?

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