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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Kristine Paranica, J.D., is the Director of the University of North Dakota Conflict Resolution Center (CRC), where she also serves as Adjunct Professor of Law in Alternative Dispute Resolution. She is a Fellow and Administrative Director of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation (ISCT), and a trainer and facilitator of transformative mediation, and conflict management. If you would like a copy of her interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Kristine Paranica in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

            

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.

            

This according to StarDate Online:

The next meteor shower is the Perseids on August 12. This year there’s no moonlight to interfere. The best time to watch is from 11 p.m. August 12 until dawn the next morning. The best direction to watch is wherever your sky is darkest. If you have a dark sky, you may see a meteor once a minute on average. The shower is also active for several days before and after its peak.

            

Victoria Pynchon, J.D., LL.M, panelist with the Southern California ADR firm Judicate West, is featured in the current issue of Engaging Conflits Today. She was awarded her LL.M Degree in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute in 2006 after 25 years of complex commercial litigation practice. Her Settle It Now Negotiation Blog is a leader in the field, and she also publishes the IP ADR Blog, and the Mediators Without Borders blog. If you would like a copy of her interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Victoria Pynchon in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

Victoria will also be presenting workshops using improvisational theatrics at the 2007 Being Human: Exploring Our Blind Spots and Biases conference. You can register now at http://santafeses.eventbrite.com.

I hope to see you there!

            

Yesterday’s New York Time’s Travel Section featured Santa Fe… read it for an indepth and interesting overview of one of the tensions here between past and future. I live in Santa Fe, and, since I’m putting it on, Santa Fe is home to the 2007 Science, Ethics and Spirit Conference, Being Human: Exploring Our Blind Spots and Biases, Sep. 26-28. It’s also home to the 2-day Pre-Conference Transformative Mediation Certification Training. Stephanie West Allen of Idealawg alerted me to the NYT’s article, and more (this, about regional food delights including Santa Fe’s, is also thanks to Stephanie):

Food’s “Blue Highways” - By Dylan Foley
Special to The Denver Post

For the past 30 years, eating on the major highways has become a grim affair with fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s, Burger King and Denny’s killing local diners and even pushing regional cuisines off the main roads. View Full Story

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John W. Cooley, former United States Attorney, Senior Staff Attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and partner in a Chicago law firm, is featured in the current issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. His most recent article at Mediate.com is “The Joke Model Of Creative Thinking.” The article got five stars from Robert Benjamin, who declared about it, “The creativity and quality of thought are obvious.” If you would like a copy of his interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me at gn@gnconflictmanagement.com with Jack Cooley in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

Jack’s article highlights the active role the joke or mediation recipient plays in cognitively processing the “punchline” of the joke or mediation, the “new information” that can be funny or cause an “ah ha!” moment, or fall flat on its face.

            

Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist (you may not have seen his work, he draws on the backs of business cards). I came across his article How To Be Creative while browsing ChangeThis recently. The article is from 2004 but as strong a piece now as then. He states on his GapingVoid blog website that the article is the most visited page on his website. The version there precedes and is longer than the version at ChangeThis. By the way, tomorrow’s edition of Engaging Conflicts Today features a “creative thinker,” Jack Cooley.

From Hugh MacLeod’s website:

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:

1. Ignore everybody.

… Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to change the world.

… The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibilty, will change the world far more than the work’s objective merits ever will.

3. Put the hours in.

Put the hours in; do it for long enough and magical, life-transfomring things happen eventually. Read more »