Mediators and negotiators must know themselves well — to guard against biases that can affect neutrality for the former or influence decision making for the latter. I’ve therefore encouraged readers to get to know themselves better by taking one of the Implicit Association Tests (IAT) available at Project Implicit.

A new IAT is now available, one which tests for implicit associations about policy, the government, and the market. You can access the Policy IAT at the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard University or via The Situationist, a social science blog that provides a forum for exploring the effect of situational forces on human behavior.

Bond University professor and world-renowned authority on mediation John Wade generously shares a useful technique for teaching conflict resolution and negotiation in “Re-inventing the Pyramid: A Process for Teaching and Learning in Mediation and Negotiation Courses” (available as a PDF download). Professor Wade describes the process, provides logistical hints, discusses its benefits, and alerts readers to its disadvantages to enable mediation and negotiation trainers and teachers to use this technique effectively in class.

A big hat tip to Bill Warters at the Campus ADR Tech Blog, one of the best sources online for tech news and tools for conflict resolution teachers and trainers.

Gender bias persists.  Its influence casts a shadow over the negotiating table, where social conditioning and cultural expectations produce significant economic costs for women, following them from their first paycheck to beyond retirement.

But stereotypes and assumptions about gender may reach women on the other side of the negotiating table as well — the women who work as mediators, according to a research paper titled “Males and Females as Mediators: Disputant Perceptions“. From the abstract:

Third-party mediation is a popular means for resolving conflict in a variety of contexts. We investigated the extent to which a mediator’s gender may influence the disputing individuals’ view of the mediation. An examination of existing studies indicated that in general male mediators were perceived more favorably than their female counterparts were. Different perceptions could be the result of either behavioral differences between men and women or the stereotypes that disputants may hold regarding males and females. These results provide yet more evidence that additional barriers and challenges exist for women, compared to men, in the world of work.

(A hat tip to Geoff Sharp for sending along the link.)

As anyone knows who has awakened in the sober light of dawn to regret an email sent in haste the night before, electronic communications can be lethal. Be too quick on the trigger with the “send” button and you may find you’ve initiated DEFCON 1 in your workplace or personal relationships. (And forget about negotiating by email, as Victoria Pynchon cautioned readers recently — its very nature seems to encourage anti-social behavior, including lying and deception.)

Google, understanding full well the dark side of human nature (particularly that side of human nature that responds to its email after too many Jell-O shots in the wee hours of the morning), offers a solution: Mail Goggles. Here’s how it works:

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you’re most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it’s active in the General settings.

Mail Goggles may prove to be one of the world’s most powerful conflict prevention tools yet. It’s available on all Gmail accounts. Simply click on “Settings”, then “Lab”, then scroll down to “Mail Goggles” and select “Enable” to protect yourself from further embarrassment.

On Monday, October 13, I’ll be hosting Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging. I’ll be taking the opportunity to salute International Conflict Resolution Day, celebrated this year on Thursday, October 16. This marks the fourth time I’ve served as a Blawg Review host — readers may recall that last year I teamed up with Geoff Sharp to deliver a double-hemisphere edition of Blawg Review.

Blawg Review itself is a weekly miracle, a monument to dedication and perseverance. Under the guidance of its anonymous editor, Blawg Review presents the many facets of legal blogging, refracted through the lens of each week’s host. Kaleidoscope-like, at each turn Blawg Review reveals new patterns as it shows us the life and art of law. With each host, the colors shift and new shapes emerge.

Blawg Review, in short, dazzles. Consider the efforts of these recent hosts:

• This week, Andis Kaulins, an American expat, hosts the exuberant Blawg Review #180 at his blog Law Pundit based in Germany and celebrates German-American Day in style.
• Securing Innovation, an American intellectual property blog, found delight in the commonplace by honoring the invention of the ballpoint pen with Blawg Review #179.
• The innovative Peter Black presented Blawg Review #178 from Australia at his blog, Freedom to Differ, becoming the first host ever to use the social networking service Twitter to deliver Blawg Review throughout the day to his readers.

As usual, I have very tough acts to follow.

You’re invited to submit a post for inclusion in Blawg Review #181. Or, perhaps, you may decide you’d like to play Blawg Review host yourself one day…

For many years I have used the following exercise in trainings and workshops on conflict resolution, communication, and negotiation. Known as “The Cash Register Exercise”, it is adapted from “The Uncritical Inference Test” created by William V. Haney, Communication and Organizational Behavior: Text and Cases.

To complete the exercise, read the following story. Below it are 12 statements about the story. After you read the story, determine whether each of the 12 statements is

• T - true;
• F - false ; or
• ? - you do not have enough information to determine whether the statement is true or false

Allow yourself no more than 5 minutes to complete the exercise. On Monday, October 13, I’ll reveal the correct answers. (In the meantime, please try to resist the temptation to google them ahead of time.)

Ready? Here goes:

The Cash Register Exercise

The Story

A businessman had just turned off the lights in the store when a man appeared and demanded money. The owner opened a cash register. The contents of the cash register were scooped up, and the man sped away. A member of the police force was notified promptly.

12 Statements about the Story

1. A man appeared after the owner had turned off his store lights.
2. The robber was a man.
3. The man did not demand money.
4. The man who opened the cash register was the owner.
5. The store owner scooped up the contents of the cash register and ran away.
6. Someone opened a cash register.
7. After the man who demanded the money scooped up the contents of the cash register, he ran away.
8. While the cash register contained money, the story does not state how much.
9. The robber demanded money of the owner.
10. It was broad daylight when the man appeared.
11. The story concerns a series of events in which only three persons are referred to: the owner of the store, a man who demanded money, and a member of the police force.
12. The following events in the story are true: someone demanded money, a cash register was opened, its contents were scooped up, and a man dashed out of the store.

To pique your interest further, I should warn you that in all the times I have used this exercise, only twice has anyone gotten all the answers right. If you’d like to print out a copy so that you can write your responses down, click here to download a PDF version.

Good luck, and check back on Monday, October 13, for the answers.

C.C. Holland, writing for Legal Technology, laments the lack of strong female voices among legal bloggers and asks, “Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers?”

Holland may not have looked very hard.

There’s a bunch of us — loud, proud, and outspoken — right here in the ADR blogosphere. We include:

Me, Diane Levin, here at Mediation Channel

Vickie Pynchon, Settle It Now Negotiation Law Blog

Stephanie West Allen, Idealawg and Brains on Purpose

Gini Nelson, Engaging Conflicts

Nancy Hudgins, Civil Negotiation and Mediation

Dominique Lopez-Eychenie, her eponymous French language blog

Jan Frankel Schau’s Mediation Insights

Phyllis G. Pollack, PGP Mediation Blog

Paula M. Lawhon, San Francisco Mediation: A Better Solution

Dina Lynch Eisenberg, Mediation Mensch

Andrea Schneider, Nancy Welsh, and Sarah Rudolph Cole, ADR Prof Blog

(I’m also going to make dispute resolution professional and blogging role model Tammy Lenski an honorary lawyer since no list of women who blog about mediation would be complete without including her and her two blogs, Conflict Zen and Mediator Tech.)

Last night marked the start of the celebration of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. In anticipation, several days earlier, I began rereading a book I’d acquired several years ago, Nothing Sacred, a controversial work by media critic Douglas Rushkoff that seeks 21st century meaning in the traditions and texts of Judaism.

Rushkoff argues that Judaism is “a religion dedicated to media literacy” — an approach to deconstructing, analyzing and questioning media’s messages — which offers digital-age lessons in participatory democracy for the secular world.

He points to Judaism’s core practices:

Judaism is a religion dedicated to media literacy. The initiation to adult practice is not an act of faith, but a demonstration of literacy called a bar (or bat) mitvah…Jews have to be able to not only read the text, but also understand what it means…

Further, Jewish rituals require community participation. The Torah scroll cannot even be read unless ten people — a minyan — are present. This was a safeguard against isolation and its destructive impact. If only such priorities were used in the media space, where an isolated, self-doubting viewer is considered the most valuable target for markets selling on TV or the Web.

In an undated interview with the Jewish Public Forum, Rushkoff observed,

The fact that Jews are not supposed to read the holy texts alone – we’re not even supposed to read the Talmud by ourselves – is also fascinating. It forces us to be social and interactive with our stories and laws, rather than alone with them. It’s more like participating in a chat room or newsgroup than sitting passively on a Web site. We can maintain some critical distance. We are invited to think and comment. The text is kept alive. Transparent.

In Rushkoff’s world, Judaism’s traditions translate into lessons for 21st century citizens.  We all bear responsibility to remake ourselves into knowledgeable, literate consumers of modern media who can analyze and decode its messages and gain resistance to propaganda and distortions of fact. Discussion and constant questioning, not blind-faith acceptance, are essential to uncovering truths and debunking false claims, whether in spiritual practices or political ones.

Today, as a new year begins, as the U.S. faces financial chaos, and a presidential election looms just weeks away, I pause for a moment to consider how Rushkoff’s insights on Jewish traditions apply to the secular texts that are the foundation of American democracy — our Constitution, our laws — as well as to the cacophony of messages through media — TV, radio, print, web — that seek to sway us.

Rushkoff of course is right: to participate fully, to be engaged citizens, we must demand media literacy of ourselves (and also, I would hasten to add, of those who would lead us).  We must be literate enough to decipher the messages that shape our lives and our decisions — at the moment, the choices we Americans will make in the voting booth in November.

As negotiators and mediators know from experience, knowledge and information are power. That’s true for all of the negotiations in life we face — the political, the transactional, and the personal.

What better way to celebrate access to information than by honoring Banned Books Week, which celebrates the freedom to read, and is sponsored by the American Library Association?

Curious to learn what books have been challenged or banned here in the U.S.? The Forbidden Library lists some of the titles.

Banned Books Week events take place this year from September 27 through October 4.  Join the celebration of intellectual freedom.

A friend recently sent me the following joke:

During a visit to a mental asylum, a visitor asked the director how to determine whether or not a patient should be institutionalised. “Well,” said the director, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient, and ask him to empty the bathtub.” “

Oh, I see,” said the visitor. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup.”

“No,” said the director, “a normal person would pull out the plug. Do you want the bed near the window?”

What I love about the joke — apart from the fact that it’s actually clean and therefore suitable to repeat in the presence of clients — is how neatly it illustrates an all too common problem: sometimes, when we are presented with several options, they may blind us to other choices — including the simplest and most sensible one.

When you’re looking for solutions or preparing to negotiate, are good ideas going down the drain?

At The Pigs, a pub in Norwich, England, locals can trade food — produce they’ve grown or game they’ve caught — for beer. According to the sign posted in the pub, “If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, then bring it in and let’s do a deal!”

That’s the story according to a video posted by ABC News this evening. (To view, click here and then on the link for the September 16 story titled, “Bartering for Beer”.)

No word yet on whether pub owners will also trade beer for professional services. Accountants, lawyers, mediators, and others, stay tuned.

Bartering is on the rise elsewhere in the world, including here in the U.S., as small business owners and others swap goods and services to cope with lean times and an economy in free fall. It’s a time-honored and creative way to continue to get to yes even when cash is short.

(Photo credit: Mike Johnson.)

Attorney John DeGroote has hit the ground running with the launch of his blog, Settlement Perspectives. Although his blog is just five posts old as of today’s date, John has already demonstrated the exemplary writing and skillful storytelling that are the mark of the successful blogger.

John tells readers the value he brings to the table:

I created this site to help clients and their counsel navigate the challenges that inevitably result from disputes, settlement efforts, impasse, and negotiation in general. The perspectives I bring are based on my experience, including more than 8 years as the Chief Litigation Counsel of a global company and the sometimes difficult lessons I learned before I got here.

In his first post, “Why Are We Here?“, John extends an invitation to readers to share their perspectives:

…it seems that a place where lawyers and clients can find new, and sometimes different, perspectives on how to settle disputes can save everyone time, money and risk exposure. With your contributions and comments, I think settlementperspectives.com can serve that purpose.

By the way, John has created a resources page for visitors to his site and was kind enough to include links to the World Directory of ADR Blogs and to Mediation Channel.

John, congratulations on the launch of what is already an impressive blog and one that I shall look forward to reading. It’s a pleasure to welcome you.

Anita Campbell, editor of Small Business Trends, an online publication covering trends and new directions that affect the small business owner, describes herself as “an entrepreneur at heart almost her entire life”.

Anita really understands that small business owners have big ambitions and wants to help them succeed.  Her enthusiasm for her subject matter and her depth of knowledge make her the ideal host for the “Back to Business” edition of Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in blogging on law and legal issues.

Highlights of Blawg Review #177 include a tutorial on Twitter, a popular social networking tool; a new slant on web site bio pages; and a one-stop resource for tax information for small business owners.

MediationChannel.com

I was fascinated last week by the word clouds — graphic depictions — of the convention speeches of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain that appeared on so many web sites and blogs.

Word clouds are visual representations of words. The larger the word in the image, the more frequently it appears on the site.

I was delighted then when the folks at the National Arbitration Forum Blog created an ADR word cloud using Wordle, an online tool.

I generated the images you’re seeing by feeding the content of Mediation Channel and my other site, ADRblogs.com, to Wordl. You can create one for yourself using a blog’s feed or by submitting words of your own.

It’s the chance to see right before your eyes the weight words are given as Wordle captures in a snapshot what is important at a particular moment in time.

ADRblogs.com

If you’re in New England on Friday, November 14, 2008, please join me and mediation marketing expert Tammy Lenski, author of Making Mediation Your Day Job, for a fun, interactive afternoon as we share affordable, simple ways to put technology to work when you market and manage your ADR practice.

The official title of our workshop is “Digital technology you can try at home: easy & affordable tech tips for managing & marketing your ADR practice“. Presenters who enjoy creating programs that are enjoyable and informative, Tammy and I have a knack for demystifying technology even for people who are tech-shy.  I’m really looking forward to teaming up with her once again.

We’ll be at the Sheraton Harborside in scenic downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, less than an hour from Boston, from 12:30 pm - 4:30 pm ET.  The cost of the workshop is $95 if you register by October 31, and $110 after.

Click here for more information and to register.

It’s not just for mediators of course — attorneys and other professional service providers are certainly welcome to join us, too. Hope to see you there!

In a recently published paper, experts in decision making Dolly Chugh, Katherine L. Milkman, and Max Bazerman asked an important question, “How Can Decision Making Be Improved?” (PDF):

We propose that the time has come to move the study of biases in judgment and decision making beyond description and toward the development of improvement strategies. While a few important insights about how to improve decision making have already been identified, we argue that many others await discovery. We hope judgment and decision-making scholars will focus their attention on the search for improvement strategies in the coming years, seeking to answer the question: how can we improve decision making?

They explained why the question matters, particularly today:

Errors are costly: We believe the importance of this question is somewhat self evident: decisions shape important outcomes for individuals, families, businesses, governments, and societies, and if we knew more about how to improve those outcomes, individuals, families, businesses, governments, and societies would benefit. After all, errors induced by biases in judgment lead decision makers to undersave for retirement, engage in needless conflict, marry the wrong partners, accept the wrong jobs, and wrongly invade countries.

(And, dare I say, make poor choices in the voting booth.)

Although the development of strategies to combat poor decision making won’t come in time for this election (or to undo the subprime mortgage crisis), this is an encouraging step forward. I can only hope that experts in behavioral decision making answer the challenge — and that the public actually pays attention when they do.

Related articles from Mediation Channel:

• What voters can learn from the field of negotiation
• In an election year, falsehoods not so easily banished by facts

My son graduated in June from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a double major in legal studies and philosophy.  As you might imagine, he’s an avid reader who enjoys the lively exchange of ideas, particularly around our family’s kitchen table during visits home. Over Labor Day weekend, while we were grilling steaks together, he asked me a question: why isn’t there a constitutional right to education in the U.S.?

I thought it a good question. Why not indeed? Given how important education is to human growth and potential, to political and social stability, to vanquishing poverty, and to participation in democracy itself, there should be.

Although education is not enumerated (yet) in the U.S. constitution, it has been honored in other ways.  The United Nations, recognizing the critical role education plays in transforming individuals and society, established International Literacy Day, observed on September 8. Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, author of the blog Legal Literacy, salutes International Literacy Day in the latest edition of Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging.

Hasl-Kelchner writes,

Literacy can’t function in a vacuum.  It must be nurtured before it can flourish, and thrive, and enrich us.  Celebrate literacy.  Ignorance of anykind is dangerous.  It can turn our daily playing field into a mine field.  Literacy, on the other hand, lets us successfully navigate the dangers and gives us the freedom to succeed.  It feeds the mind, the heart, and the soul.

I think my son would agree.

If you seek proof of civilization’s decline, look no further than Sidetaker, a site that lets the public be the judge in spats between quarreling lovers.

Don’t bother to seek nuance or middle ground here; there’s plenty of blame and fingerpointing for couples bickering over everything from toilet flushing habits to illicit affairs.

Sidetaker (slogan: “let the world decide who’s at fault”) of course is in this for the greater good:

…far too many divorces, break ups, and separations happen over non-critical disputes. Over 50% of American marriages end in divorce. In a fight, each person has their side and are usually backed by their friends (on either side). When you can create a jury of anonymous peers to decide who is right or wrong in an argument, then the bias is gone and the person at fault will just have to suck it up.

A noble sentiment indeed. This site is of the same ilk as People’s Court Raw, which brings the added dimension of video to lovers’ quarrels.

(Thanks to Tammy Lenski for the link.)

The International Mediation Institute (IMI), a public policy initiative creating international competency standards for certifying mediators, has conferred a great honor upon a select group of bloggers.

IMI has created a special section on its web site to recognize the work of mediation bloggers from countries around the world. IMI’s list of bloggers, with links and brief descriptions, is prefaced by these words from Herman Melville that capture beautifully the spirit of both mediation and blogging:

We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men;
and among those fibres, as sympathetic threads,
our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

I feel privileged that Mediation Channel was among those included. I’m in the company of the likes of Geoff Sharp (New Zealand), Tammy Lenski (U.S.), Marcus Brinkmann (Germany), Sanjana Hattotuwa (Sri Lanka), and others who have contributed in significant ways to the quality of the conversation about ADR on the web. You can explore the complete list of mediation blogs at the IMI web site.

Thank you, IMI, for your generous support of our community of bloggers.

(Hat tip to Samil Demir who publishes the Turkish language Arabulucu Blog.)

Now available online is the latest edition of The Complete Lawyer, a web-based magazine focusing on quality of life and career satisfaction for attorneys, along with its special ADR column, “The Human Factor“. This issue of The Complete Lawyer discusses “The Brave New World of Associates.”  Articles include “Jettison the Myth of Individualism“, reflecting on the importance of building social capital.

“The Human Factor” focuses on ADR from the perspective of four attorneys who mediate - me and three colleagues, Stephanie West Allen of Idealawg and Brains on Purpose, Gini Nelson of Engaging Conflicts, and Victoria Pynchon of Settle It Now Negotiation Blog.

After writing the first three columns together, each of us will now solo, starting with Gini Nelson, who takes this issue of “The Human Factor” to discuss how “Joining A New Firm Is Like Traveling To A Foreign Country“. Then it’ll be my turn for the following issue.

The Complete Lawyer is published by Don Hutcheson, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of “The Human Factor” from the beginning. Thanks, Don, for being such a good friend to the four of us.