Several weeks ago, The New York Times published an article about one of my favorite topics: Active Listening. Entitled “Practice Better Listening” by Kate Murphy,(Sunday, May 17, 2020, At Home section) the author notes that with life moving at a much slower pace these days, we have the opportunity and [Read More]
I came across an article the other day discussing a cognitive bias involving “familiarity” or truth vs. fiction. While the article (Seeing is Believing; how media myth busting can actually make false beliefs stronger” by Eryn Newman, Amy Dawel, Madeline Claire Jalbert and Norbert Schwarz posted on The Conversation, May [Read More]
Recently, I posted a blog about some of the ethical issues that might arise in mediating online using a video conferencing service. While I raised several issues, I did not address how to respond to the issues. The myriad of scholars in the Online Dispute Resolution Field have done so. [Read More]
"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]
