Mediation training

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…

By the everyday miracle of Zoom, Carrie Menkel-Meadow spoke from her LA office to a Glasgow conference with a worldwide audience. Wrapping up 'Learning by Doing,' the UK's first conference devoted to…

  The Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON) has provided a life-changing experience for many of us. It certainly changed the trajectory of my life and triggered a life-long immersion in conflict…

"Racially discriminatory behavior may be reduced more effectively when racial issues are made salient rather than ignored or obscured." (1) This week I've been thinking about white privilege. Ok, my…

  [Picture credit: creative commons]  Court cases are an important source of guidance for mediators, disputants and their lawyers. They remind us that the law casts a long shadow even when a…

Quite often, we hear mediators and mediation trainers using the fable of "Blind Men and an Elephant", which is a story about several blind persons describing an elephant differently out of their own…

Morton Deutsch, the great social psychologist of common sense, explained the difference between competition and cooperation thus: "if you’re positively linked with another, then you sink or swim…

The Olympics have come and gone with all of the emotion and inspiration they bring. In our recent, fully-subscribed, residential Summer School on mediation skills for leaders, we reflected on the…

This post will be the first of a series focusing on individual aspects of regulatory robustness, as introduced in previous blogs by Nadja Alexander and applied in the context of Ireland by the two of…