This week’s quote comes from Lynn Johnston, creator of one of my all-time favorite comic strips, For Better or For Worse, which recounts the day-to-day joys and challenges of life in an extended Canadian family. (This is one of those rare comics which unfold in real time and in which children actually grow up and adults age.)
An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything.
Posted in Mediation Quotes
Yesterday’s posting concerned Jobvent.com, a web site designed to give employees a chance to anonymously rate and post comments about the companies they work for. For those of you who didn’t catch last night’s World News Tonight on ABC, the Internet may not be the safe and anonymous place everyone seems to think it is—as some bloggers have learned the hard way.
Blogging has swept the globe—by some estimates there may be as many as five million blogs out there, and that number grows daily. And any number of bloggers write about their jobs—recounting tales of workplace woes, insufferable bosses, and annoying co-workers.
Unfortunately in some cases bloggers have been “dooced”—fired over the content of their blogs.
Personally I’m not convinced that firing bloggers for writing about their jobs online is necessarily the right approach. Blogging may be symptomatic of a widespread internal problem that companies need to take seriously—a kind of corporate malaise that needs to be diagnosed and treated.
There are some tough questions companies should be asking themselves. Why do employees feel the need to vent online? Are there no mechanisms in place for employees to raise and address issues? If there are mechanisms, why were they not used in this case? How adequate are they? Does the company encourage or discourage open and honest communication between management and employees? What does the company do to promote dialogue and joint problem-solving?
Firing bloggers doesn’t eliminate the issues that prompted the blogging in the first place. Instead, it leaves them unresolved.
Wouldn’t surprise me if blogging doesn’t become the hot new topic in workplace mediation…
Posted in Blogs and Bloggers, Workplace Issues
Like music, mediation hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to paraphrase English dramatist William Congreve.
In Missouri the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has announced that management and musicians will sit down with a mediator in an effort to resolve a pay dispute that led to a strike by symphony employees. Concerts have been cancelled for several weeks as a result of the work stoppage.
Let us hope that mediation will help orchestra management and musicians transform cacophony into harmony.
Posted in Mediation
Anyone who’s ever earned a paycheck has stories to tell of their worst job or boss ever. (I certainly have a few of those myself. ) And a few lucky souls are able to boast about jobs they love and colleagues they enjoy working with. Job satisfaction is important to many of us, but it can certainly be elusive.
Jobvent.com gives employees a forum for letting it all hang out and sharing their reviews of the companies they work for. This web site allows visitors to search for companies by name or click on the list of top 10 best and worst companies to find out what people have to say about bosses, benefits, pay, working conditions, and other concerns.
A brief glance at the gripes posted about the 10 Worst Companies is most instructive for anyone who is interested in conflict as a phenomenon in the workplace. Poor communication and lack of respect are evident, and result in low employee morale, decreased productivity, absenteeism, and attrition. Many of these reviews are imbued with an embittered sense of “us versus them”.
Companies could learn some lessons here—a kind of “How Not To Succeed In Business”. Being proactive never hurts either—implementing conflict management systems, as well as providing training for h.r., managers and employees can make a difference.
Employers take note. (Especially my old manager Bob, who always stuck me on the closing shift on Saturday night.)
Some of us just can’t stop thinking about football–after all, the next Super Bowl is only 363 days away. (Especially here in Boston, where fans are jubilantly celebrating the New England Patriot’s third Super Bowl victory in four years.)
And those of us mediator types who also happen to be football junkies sit up and take notice when a news story combines our two passions. Seems that the Cincinnati Bengals and the National Football League have just agreed to mediate a federal anti-trust suit filed by Hamilton County, Ohio. They’re working on selecting the mediators right now.
Stay tuned, sports fans.
Posted in Mediation
To continue with the topic from February 5′s posting concerning the power of the apology in reducing litigation over medical errors, today’s Boston Globe carries a story unnervingly captioned “The horror of awakening during surgery“. (Yikes.)
The advice to anesthesiologists in the event this befalls a patient on the operating table? ”If a mistake was made, the doctor should apologize.”
Moral of the story: Never mind malpractice reform.
Just say you’re sorry.
Posted in Health Care and ADR
Bertrand Russell, the influential philosopher, mathematician, political activist, and prolific writer, was a tireless advocate for peace and social justice. His words, such as those that follow, continue to hold relevance and meaning.
For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute cooperation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family.
Posted in Mediation Quotes
The Sri Lankan Daily News reports that the Legal Aid Commission in Sri Lanka has requested that a special mediation law be extended to cover all tsunami-related disputes that will inevitably rise in the aftermath of December’s disaster. The goal here is to ensure that indigent victims would have a speedy and affordable means of obtaining redress for their losses. Mediation is certainly an effective way to accomplish such a goal, particularly in light of the fact that there will undoubtedly be numerous claims and disputes resulting from the resettlement and reconstruction process.
While litigation can help plaintiffs recover damages or obtain injunctive relief, there is one type of relief that a judge cannot order one party to bestow upon another: a sincere apology. Mediation, on the other hand, promotes dialogue and helps parties engage in perspective taking. This often leads to recognition of impact of one’s actions on others, acceptance of responsibility, expressions of regret, and even the long-sought-for apology.
As a mediator, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard plaintiffs say, “Listen, the only reason I went to court is that they never even said they were sorry. If they’d told me they felt bad about what happened, we wouldn’t be here now.” Evidently, the power of those three magic words—“I am sorry”—cannot be underestimated.
University of Michigan hospitals put this premise to the test in a two-year study and concluded that apologies may be the best medicine for reducing medical malpractice suits by patients against doctors.
Click here for the full story from National Public Radio.
[Update: For a follow up to this story, please read "PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF: Apologies found to reduce medical malpractice litigation".]
The ABA Journal honored Mediation Channel as one of the top 100 legal blogs for 2009. Readers, thanks for inspiring me!
