Gini Nelson's Engaging Conflicts

I’m reviewing The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator, Christopher Honeyman & Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Editors (ABA 2006), through the rest of 2007 and into 2008 (it has 80 chapters, more than 700 pages of substantive text, and something for everyone, from novice to expert!). I’m reviewing the book because it’s hot, hot, hot. More about the book and its editors here.

Part I: Why Even the Best Get Stuck is comprised of three articles (annotations are from the book):

• Introduction: A “Canon of Negotiation” Begins to Emerge. Christopher Honeyman & Andrea Kupfer Schneider. (No annotation)

• The Unstated Models in Our Minds. Jayne Seminare Docherty. You’re an experienced negotiator. But when was the last time you examined your own pattern of thinking? And is your pattern the same as your counterpart’s? This chapter helps you work out what’s going on under the surface, and leads onward to chapters about framing, internal conflict of the negotiator, and the characteristic problems of teams. It also suggests which chapters in this book best address your real-world negotiation problems, and how to get the most out of negotiation research.

• Protean Negotiation. Peter S. Adler. What does it take to be really proficient as a negotiator? Adler argues that negotiators routinely allow themselves to be trapped by their own mental frameworks, unnecessarily restricting their own conceptions of what is desirable, or even possible. He suggests that you cannot do your best work as a negotiator till you absorb all of the often-competing theories that follow in this book, and develop a working competence at selecting which theory applies when.

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I begin today a promised series on The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator, Christopher Honeyman & Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Editors (ABA 2006). It is a highly acclaimed and innovative resource for all conflict specialists, and received the International Institute for Conflict Resolution and Prevention’s (CPR) Book Prize Honorable Mention for 2006. Here are the Editors’ bios from the book:

Christopher Honeyman is a consultant, mediator and arbitrator based in Madison, Wisconsin and Washington, DC. He has advised firms, nonprofits, government agencies, universities and foundation throughout the U.S. and in other countries on dispute resolution infrastructure issues, quality control and ethics. His specialty is managing interdisciplinary teams of experts to address complex conflict management problems, and he has led a fifteen-year series of large-scale conflict management research and development projects funded by the Hewlett Foundation. He has served as mediator, arbitrator or in other neutral roles in more than 2,000 cases since the 1970′s. Honeyman is also author or co-author of more than 50 articles and book chapters; many have been republished electronically at www.convenor.com.

Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School. She has published numerous articles on negotiation and international law, and is a co-author of the recently published Negotiation: Processes for Problem-Solving, Mediation: Practice, Policy & Ethics, and Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model with Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Lela Love & Jean Sternlight. Her previous books include Coping with International Conflict and Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict, both with Roger Fisher. Andrea is also the author of Creating the Musee d’Orsay: The Politics of Culture in France. She received her A.B. from Princeton and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She also received a Diploma from the Academy of European Law in Florence, Italy.