Negotiation

In 2015, I retired as an American law professor. For most of my career, I used some of the basic concepts of our field such as negotiation, BATNA, positional vs. interest-based negotiation, and…

“All of humanity's problems stem from [one's] inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal, Pensées We have done a lot of walking in recent weeks. As we approach the end of the extended…

“The ground is so wet; it wasn’t like this in the past. We can’t get started on this year’s soil preparation.” In a recent mediation involving farmers, this was the response to my early inquiry about…

Recently, I had the privilege of facilitating a session at Scotland’s Citizens Assembly at which politicians from four political parties took the opportunity to discuss with the Assembly members …

  Photo Credit – Creative Commons At a lunch at Globe House, Temple Place in London in early 2006 on a balcony overlooking the Thames, the host, Michael Leathes, then an in-house corporate counsel…

“You’ve done what?” It took just a moment. The red mist descended. The words were out before I could haul them back in. “You’ve just gone behind my back and undermined what I set out, and we had…

  Photo credit: Creative Commons Jean M.Mas 2/2007 Although my mediation training made no mention of it, 32 years of mediating have taught me that mediations generally unfold over two stages: Stage 1…

O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion. Robert Burns Those of us at the 'Br' end of the Brexit negotiation find it…

“For nobody would understand, And you kill what you fear, And you fear what you don't understand.” Powerful words. As a progressive rock music aficionado, these lyrics taken from the song "Duke’s…