A human resources manager recently asked me for a general list of reasons why a mediation might not settle. While part of me wanted to question the idea of settlement as the goal of mediation (see…
[Author's Warning: This entry involves references to and discussions about the system of Cartesian Coordinates and how it might assist mediators in reality testing and reframing. Readers with a Math…
Another new mediation venture in Scotland: last week saw the launch of University of Strathclyde Mediation Clinic (http://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/lawschool/mediationclinic/ ). While by no means…
As Ireland again, or still, struggles with its socio-political identity, its legal and moral values, and the role of the Catholic church in all of this, it seems like only yesterday the debate raged…
Most mediators I know graduated from the Facilitative School of Mediation – and we could spend much ink here debating exactly what that means but to my mind we were essentially taught to own the…
It is trite that one of key tasks of a mediator is to sort out what Patton, Stone and Heen in their book “Difficult Conversations” refer to as the “What Happened” conversation. Although they write…
I'm not often drawn to practical tips. I once discovered that I am an "activist" learner. This apparently means that I learn best when "thrown in at the deep end" and less well when "absorbing…
A new study of dispute resolution practices in Fortune 1,000 corporations shows that many large companies are using binding arbitration less often and relying more on mediated negotiation and other…
If I look back 10 years ago I can notice that mediation has had an evolution which at that time, we could but hope for. From the random pilot projects and the search “laboratories” of this activity,…
