Cognitive Bias

Neutrality is often held up as the cornerstone of mediation, a beacon of fairness ensuring balanced outcomes. Yet, this hallowed principle might not be as straightforward or as beneficial as it seems…

"Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears." Surely some mistake, I thought; shouldn’t it be the other way round? Swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks?…

Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel prize for economics, died in March. He described himself as the grandfather of behavioural economics, which provides so many insights into how…

Tribalism is often referenced as a significant factor in much of the conflict we see around us at the moment. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising when we look back at the story of human evolution as…

  It is no secret that the time I spent studying and working with the Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON) was the start of a love affair that has endured.The material from Fisher and Ury’s ‘Getting…

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog just about mediation practice. Other things always seem more important! However, as I was mediating this week, a thought occurred to me about a rather…

Mediators are well acquainted with parties blaming one another for problems.  Scapegoating in particular can get in the way of coming to terms, instead leading to an escalation of bad feelings and an…

For readers who are new, the “Neuro-Linguist’s Toolbox” series is an ongoing series focused on using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) in our practice of amicable dispute resolution. The first…

Erisology has been defined as the study of disagreement - where people are no closer to understanding each other at the end of an exchange than they were at the beginning. Sound familiar? Eris was…