Where The Bloody Hell Are You?

Advance Notice - fill in that whitespace for September '07 (get outta here! no one believes you're booked up already)

The Pacific Rim's most important gathering of mediators will take place in beautiful Wellington, New Zealand September 19th - 21st 2007.

Its LEADR's 10th Mediation Conference and its the main event for us Australasian (= New Zealand & Australia) mediators.

We'll have a MediationTech/into the future stream, a Government/Public Sector track and plenty more.

We'll meet with you at our iconic National Museum, Te Papa, overlooking the Wellington harbour.

More information when LEADR's got a conference site up



Come see us, talk with us - we've poured you a beer.

Out this month -The Negotiator's Fieldbook

Anything Chris Honeyman writes has me sitting at the end of the drive, waiting for the postman to peddle by with a familiar brown Amazon package.

This book is going to be good, very good. Just look at the preview .pdf chapters linked below.

The Negotiator's Fieldbook is the culmination of the Broad Field project, a national project headed by Honeyman...

'The Negotiator's Fieldbook is an ambitious effort to capture the full range of new knowledge about negotiation. This book features eighty contributing authors with many different kinds of practical and academic expertise. For teachers, the Fieldbook pulls together in readable, short chapters the relevant ideas on negotiation from law, psychology, business, economics, cultural studies and a dozen other fields which have not previously been available in any single textbook. For practitioners and lawyers and others alike the ABA believes The Negotiator's Fieldbook will immediately be recognized as the foremost reference work in the field'

Table of Contents
Contributors
Introduction
Appendix - the "why & how" of the book
Trust and Distrust (Roy Lewicki)
Strategic Moves and Turns (Deborah Kolb)
Crossing the Last Gap (John Wade)

Order Here - big savings if you are a ABA D/R Section member

Take a look at these from Honeyman, Five Elements of Mediation

and now a few years old but still it nails the issue: The Incredible Disappearing Profession

Some days its a mediator's job to be the only lamp post on the street

Like today

MediateInside

MediateInside is Mediate.com's streaming video site.

Am I the only one that didn't know it is free until August 31, 2006?

Just some of the content....

Previews
The Mediators: Views from the Eye of the Storm
Strategic Negotiation
Cultural & Gender Issues in Negotiation & Mediation
Mediating Divorce Agreement
Get Busy, Get Paid! DVD or CD
Improving Parent Child Relationships
The Craft of Collaborative Practice
The Lighter Side of Mediation DVD

Interviews from 'Eye of the Storm'
Adler, Peter
Bellman, Howard
Fisher, Roger
Gadlin, Howard
Kelly, Joan
Lederach, John Paul
Lewis, Michael
Lezak, Sid
Lincoln, Bill
Lowry, Randy
Meierding, Nina
Moore, Chris
Riskin, Leonard
Sander, Frank
Shaw, Margaret
Singer, Linda
Susskind, Larry
Wakeen, Teresa

This is not LA

OK, what would you do?

An otherwise elegant mediation yesterday but for the John Lennon sunglasses worn on a winter's day, inside with no natural light and on top of his head.

What is with that?

I didn't say anything.

But I thought about little else the whole day.

Its been a hard week, take a look at this before you go home...that Florida Judge who came up with the ADR Rock/Paper idea could learn a thing or two

How To Make Money as a Mediator (And Create Value for Everyone): 30 Top Mediators Share Secrets to Building a Successful Practice

Jeff Krivis and Naomi Lucks have a new book just out.

table of contents here

chapter 1 here

index here

author information here

"How to Make Money as a Mediator (and Create Value for Everyone) is an invaluable and inspirational resource filled with practical, proven, and down-to-earth information on how you can develop a satisfying and lucrative career as a mediator, no matter what your area of interest—labor and employment mediation, intellectual property, environment, personal injury, family and divorce, contract, securities, or international peacekeeping"

Psssst...wanna a deal? I think if you go here and enter code W779U in the Promotion Code field as you're checking out you will $ave $save, $save

Forget preparing for mediation, forget opening statements, forget the 12 hours sitting around a table on ergonomic seats...

Hey, Plaintiff Counsel !!

Just play them the DVD you got made, leave the room and come back in to hear their settlement offer.

Better still, just phone it in.

So it was, not so long ago, that I experienced my first video settlement documentary in mediation.

We took our assigned places at the table>I did my thing - after which this blog is named>they should have then done their thing, like, open; say we're here to settle; acknowlege there will be no winners>then let the games commence.

But NOOO...

Instead, plaintiff lawyer #2 dims the lights, pulls a screen down from the ceiling, cranks the data projector into life and lights/action...a compelling drama unfolded, may as well have been 60 Minutes tickticktick but it wasn't.

It was a video settlement documentary.

A what?

I like to think here in New Zealand we are 5 years behind y'all in most things except the quality of our scenery and ice cream.

So I'm assuming you know what I'm talking about - a professionally produced 30 minute, made for TV doco - that's intended to have defence attorneys reaching for their wallets.

Boston Media Group do.

Ha Ha

In an effort to keep this blog true to its beginnings, I continue to post on the minutiae of the mediation table.

Today, Monday, a hitherto reserved woman attending the mediation suddenly screeched at a suggestion by the other side that she and her company think seriously about such and such... then threw her head back and let rip a laugh that was earthy enough to plant spuds in.

The room was transfixed, then joined in - at her/with her.

Then we settled with more back slapping than usual.

'A lot of people want to be feared, nobody want to be loved - nobody want that piece'

In the Bronx there is a school where kids get killed for stepping on someone's tennis shoes - it's brutal.

In this environment there is a program that teaches about peace and non-violence.

Very cool little film

Worth a read this weekend...

Preventing the Death of Mediation by Los Angeles mediator Jeff Krivis, is a sobering message for those of us in less mature mediation markets than West Coast United States.

This piece, while a little black hat for my taste, reads well, especially in the context of the current debate around unpaid mediators in court connected programs.

'...What has happened in the last several years is that mediation has learned to need litigation to maintain its hunger for business.

In the early cycle of the mediation movement, the opposite was true. Litigation needed the process of mediation to decongest the court system, presumptively save money for clients and allow more control of the outcome to the parties.

Mediation has now become a commodity for litigation rather than a useful resource.

Due to the proliferation of mediators and the reliance on litigation to feed this animal, mediators are forced to conform their practices in a way that limits development of strategic techniques and creativity.

This conformity means that the mediation "product" has become a low margin commodity in many circles. Mediators copy each other in style and lose their ability to differentiate themselves.

Even the high-priced mediators begin to look like their litigation counterparts, basically offering the same service.'

'How to Attract All the Well-Paying Mediation Clients and Referrals You'll Ever Need for Your Practice, Even if You Hate the Idea of Having to Market'

The Mediation Business & Marketing Success System by Kristina Haymes from over at Mediation Marketing Tips Blog is now available.

Listen to Kristina introduce her new practice building 'system' and to Woody Mosten talk about his biggest marketing disasters...

Is that all there is?

Its late here and I just got in.

I'm bushed. It took too long.

The streets were quiet as I walked home and so is my house.

As the room emptied tonight, that familiar loneliness of a jobbing mediator stole under the door on the back of a thin winter draught.

But it was an oddly gentle conversation today and a satisfying (for them? for me?) mediation.

Actually, they were AWOL for a lot of it, going back to other times and other relationships, trying to accommodate the past.

All of them had moved in all sorts of ways by the end.

As I slowly wiped down the whiteboard Eric Galton's Texas drawl popped into my head "...so the next time your mediation ends, everyone leaves at 1.00am and that lonely feeling creeps under your skin.... if you listen very, very hard, we are cheering about that play you made in the extra innings that made resolution possible..."

Heuristic Theory

In a previous entry I broke the sacred blog contract that all bloggers enter into by their early posts - you know, when the future tone and direction is set for the blog - and for that I apologise.

...in my very first post I promised to leave lofty mediation theory to better equipped others and bring you only dispatches from the coalface of conflict.

But in a recent post I couldn't resist commenting on the impact of Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers theory.

Now for my second breach, I mention in passing the need to understand common heuristic theory such as - anchoring and adjustment, availability, self-serving evaluations, framing, status quo bias, contrast effects, and reactive devaluation.

In particular, contrast effects is interesting as a 'persuasion tool' and appears useful, especially if you are the kind of trigger happy mediator who puts forward mediator proposals at the drop of a hat (shame on you!).

An example of contrast effects might be:

A mediator proposal (or party offer) of $100,000 paid in -

1. two tranches on anniversery of settlement - $50,000 per year for two years, or
2. a lump sum today but NPV'ed (net present valued) over 2 years, or
3. monthly installments over 3 years starting next month

Research shows the receipient will likely take each of the options offered to them then compare it to the other payment options rather than comparing the $100,000 to their wish figure and wanting more.

This research has developed several interesting ways of using our knowledge of biases to influence party thinking....

But where's the line for us mediators on this stuff?

Worth a read this weekend...

Two quick reads this weekend, both fresh posts from a couple of blogging A listers...

First-Rate Mediators Are Worth Their Weight In Gold,

and

Do Mediators Sell Themselves Short?

InsideoutLegal

Take a look at this.

Its the result of a first class legal mind combined with the power of web feeds (RSS) where bits of the web come to you... if you just don't get RSS, you sure should now.

Take the time to see what the site is trying to do, especially if you are inside counsel.

Outside counsel can choose to share their know-how by adding new stuff to the site. They can create links to material on their own sites, add updates and articles or email audio files directly to the site.

...one feature is a stand out

InsideoutLegal has created a lens, the kind of thing Seth (riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread) Godlin bangs on about, sort of - it searches for content across a defined piece of cyber real estate, in this case the top 50 law firms from the EURO100 (for you US centrics, think Fortune 500 Legal but in Europe).

Other bits of cyberstate should make it to the search list as the site developes...search whatever topic you like - I plugged in 'mediation' and got everything the EURO100 firms had written on it, just like that.

A whole 4 hours of research in one hit. And it came to me, I didn't go to it.

Oh, the site's blog InsideoutLegal Blog lets you get bits of it as well, again by feed. Just click the and stuff wings it to your door!

Big Sky Thinking

Walking home yesterday, after visiting the Strangers Gallery in our New Zealand Parliament to hear my colleague Charles Chauvel make his maiden speech as a Member of Parliament, I contemplated, probably for the first time, the privilege of living in a democracy.

The e-Parliament is a democratic vision on a grand scale, big sky thinking as we say down here.

It's the sort of thing you come up with when there's absolutely nothing between you and the heavens on a starry night in the bush.

Only, apparently PON's e-Parliament was dreamed up in the confines of an English pub by Harvard's Bill Ury, but you know what I mean.

More than 800 legislators around the world and across the political spectrum, are already participating and this is set to rise in 2006.

You and I can also put in our two cents' worth The idea is to create: '...the first world institution whose members are elected by the people. It links democratic members of parliament into a global forum, combining meetings and electronic communication.

Organizations, companies, journalists and individual citizens are all invited to participate...[hey! that's you and me!]

Each parliament can be seen as a "laboratory" for solving problems that many countries have in common, and each should be able to learn from the experience of others'...and it 'contains an Ideas Bank of interesting problem-solving approaches that have been taken, or proposed, in different countries'

Log on to e-Parliament...have a go, go and have a say, say so, say something!