In impressing on their students the importance of acquiring negotiation skills, trainers will often say, “You may not realize it, but you’re always negotiating. It doesn’t matter whether you’re asking your boss for a raise or figuring out where to have dinner with your spouse. You’re negotiating, my friend.”

I know–I’ve said this to rooms full of people myself. Judging from the numerous heads nodding in agreement, many people accept this as true. However, I don’t think anyone ever acts as if they really believe it.

But what if in fact that were the case? What if you truly believed that everything–and I do mean everything– is open to negotiation?

Author Tom Chiarella decided to test this premise during the course of a three-month experiment. He writes about his experience in “Haggling for Hot Dogs“, an article that appears in Esquire. Lessons learned include “Never let them know how much you have to spend. Draw people into your life. Show your personality. Learn people’s names. Work your way up to the person who has a stake in the sale and the power to make a deal.” Also, don’t “think of money as the only thing…to offer. I found that trading favors proved relatively easy.”

The World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs added a negotiation podcast this week to its growing catalogue.

PONcast is produced by the Harvard Program on Negotiation. Posts include “First You Have to Ask“, on the impact of gender on negotiation.

Do you publish a blog on negotiation or dispute resolution? Let me know, and I’ll add it to the World Directory of ADR Blogs. (Please review these painless submission guidelines first.)

Every once in awhile, if we are fortunate, we meet an individual that intuition tells us is destined for great things.

My friend Ashok Panikkar is one of those individuals. Ashok, who left Boston and returned to his native Bangalore two years ago, founded Meta-Culture, Bangalore’s first center for dialogue and conflict transformation. When I interviewed Ashok in July 2005, he described his goals for Meta-Culture:

Meta-Culture is in the process of creating India’s first integrated conflict management group. The vision is to help people develop skills of discourse that are non-adversarial and built around the principles of dialogue rather than debate (even though there are situations where, for instance, Socratic debate can play a very useful part in helping to clarify ideas and challenge the mind). In doing so we can change the climate and culture of discourse so that individuals, organizations and societies can respond to differences with understanding and skill instead of doing so from anger, ignorance, fear, animosity or misplaced righteousness.Our mission is to engage in or promote activities that can help advance this vision. To this end we are engaged in consulting, research and education in the areas of ADR, especially mediation; facilitation; coaching; design of conflict and dispute management systems; and consensus building. Right now our focus is to establish Meta-Culture as a sustainable consulting practice. Very soon we will be setting up a separate division that will service the NGO and governmental sectors.

Unsurprisingly, Meta-Culture today is thriving, keeping Ashok and his staff busy. One of its projects, Meta-Culture Dialogics, a non-profit trust, recently attracted the attention of India media.

The purpose of this project has been to promote dialogue among Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist groups to discuss matters of importance over the course of 10 sessions. These sessions were not designed to get people “holding hands and singing Kumbaya” in the hopes of simply sweeping differences under the rug, as Ashok told me in a recent phone call.

According to Ashok, who was interviewed by The Hindu, “We are not into preaching peace, tolerance and harmony. Instead, we provide a platform for communities to talk about what is bothering them the most about the other community” and to ask each other the hard questions to give issues the healthy airing that honest dialogue can produce.

You can read more about this “Inter-faith dialogue for conflict resolution” as reported in an online edition of The Hindu.

For your reading pleasure, some links to news stories especially for mediators:

Can a surfeit of choices be too much of a good thing as far as effective decision making goes? That may just be the case, according to “Just Choose It!” from The Situationist.

They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but even smaller doses can be fatal. Bob Sutton offers “More Evidence that Getting a Little Power Turns You into a Self-Centered Jerk“.

When you say “I’m sorry”, surprisingly enough it may not matter if you don’t really mean it. collision detection discusses the results of a recent study that shows that “Fake apologies are as good as sincere ones“.

Finally, Law.com’s Inhouse Counsel considers “Arbitration’s Costs and Dangers” and explains that “in many respects, mediation offers all the benefits of arbitration — lower costs, faster results — without the limitations.”

(Photo by Sanja Gjenero.)

Charles S. Rhyne, who served as president of the American Bar Association during 1957-58, once observed, “Law offers the best hope for order in a disordered world.”

Given how integral the law is to our political, commercial, and social institutions, remaining informed about its influence on our lives is important.

And one of my favorite ways to stay informed about the law is by reading Blawg Review, the weekly review of legal blogging. Presented each week by a different host, Blawg Review shows readers the many faces of the law–sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, sometimes provocative.

And don’t forget fun.

Consider some recent hosts:

Blawg Review #123, presented by the Texas Appellate Law Blog in the form of a decision issued by the Supreme Court of the Blawgosphere. (Links include coverage of the shenanigans that followed when one law firm commissioned a really bad theme song–and word leaked out about it.)

Blawg Review #122, presented by David Gulbransen as a law school course catalog (which includes a post that asks “What’s Your Favorite Bad Legal Argument?“)

Blawg Review #121, hosted by The Inspired Solo which opted to forgo a theme for a plain vanilla (albeit very tasty) presentation. Worthwhile links include two posts on listening as life skills - here and here, along with Stephanie West Allen’s reflections on the Summer of Love)

Whatever you do, be sure to catch next week’s Blawg Review. This is the second time for host George Lenard of Employment Blawg, who burned up the charts when he hosted Blawg Review #15, the sixties rock ‘n’ roll edition (although if you remember it, you weren’t there).

(Photo by Ronald Schuster.)