How perceptive are you? How accurately do you see the world?

With a quiz created by Jeremy Wolfe, Ph.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital Visual Attention Lab and Harvard Medical School, test yourself for change blindness — the perplexing difficulty that all of us have in perceiving alterations in the things that are right in front of our eyes.

As philosopher Henri Bergson once said, “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

(Thanks to Stephanie West Allen for so kindly sending me the link to this story.)

On Tuesday, June 24, 2008, influential thinker and ADR pioneer Albie Davis presents an “Intuition and Creativity Workshop” for mediators at Suffolk University Law School in Boston.

Albie enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a true innovator who has made significant contributions to the development and advancement of mediation and conflict resolution during the course of her decades-long career.

From the workshop description:

You tune up your car every few thousand miles. Schedule annual health exams. Is it time for an Intuition and Creativity Tune-up of your mediator readiness? Mediators must think on their feet; use the famed five senses, plus ones with no name; make rapid assessments of the need of parties and momentum of negotiations; be on the lookout for “magical moments,” draw upon theory, research, ethics and personal practice; separate the wheat from the chaff; and more. In this day-long seminar, we will revisit various theories about mediation, negotiation, creativity, change, culture and human behavior. Drawing upon the experience of presenters and participants, we’ll role-play, invent and try new things; be irreverent, if we must. Each person will leave with a self-administered intuition checkup sheet with strengths identified and tips for improving one’s personal best.

I am proud to say that Albie Davis recently joined my firm, OptionBridge, as an affiliate, and my partners and I are deeply honored to be able to offer this program to our colleagues in the mediation community in June. To register, visit the OptionBridge web site, or for more information click here to download the flyer in PDF.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

Forty years ago today Robert F. Kennedy spoke those inspiring words as he announced the tragic death of Martin Luther King, Jr., to an African-American audience gathered in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Forty years later these words remain relevant. If you’ve never heard this speech before, or long to hear it again, read it or listen to it now.

Women don’t ask.

That was the premise — and the title — of a book published in 2003 by Linda Babcock, James M. Walton Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, and successful writer and editor Sara Laschever.

Women Don’t Ask explored the uncomfortable truths about gender and negotiation and exposed the obstacles that keep women from negotiating effectively for themselves. While men seem to have no trouble negotiating and asking for what they need, women hesitate or fail to ask at all.

Social conditioning and cultural expectations are among the causes of these gendered differences. Tragically these differences produce well-documented economic costs for women, haunting them over the course of a lifetime. For example, according to the Women Don’t Ask web site, “By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60 — and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.”

This book touched a raw nerve for the many women who read it; indeed, so overwhelming was the response to Women Don’t Ask that Babcock and Laschever went to work on a sequel.

The result is Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, a book filled with practical advice; real-world negotiation stories from the authors, the women who have contacted them as a result of their work, and Babcock’s students; and a detailed four-phase program with exercises for preparing for and succeeding in life’s negotiations.

Phase One teaches women to recognize that “Everything Is Negotiable”. As anyone knows, the toughest negotiation can be with yourself, and the authors help readers begin by asking questions of themselves to identify and clarify their professional and personal goals. Phase Two teaches readers how to “Lay the Groundwork”, reviewing the skills and concepts of basic negotiation strategy. Among the most important lessons? Information is power — and the authors explain how and where to get it to strengthen your bargaining position.

Phase Three, “Get Ready”, pushes women to aim high when it comes to negotiating. It covers cooperative bargaining; ascertaining your worth; using logrolling or trade-offs to get past jams and build value; and how to make the first offer. Best of all, it even comes equipped with a “Negotiation Gym” — a six-week program of increasingly difficult negotiation exercises that will help women build negotiation muscles and develop stamina and strength in preparation for tougher negotiation challenges. No one will ever kick sand in your face again.

Phase Four shows how women can “Put It All Together” — to practice in advance by role playing with a friend, to avoid making concessions prematurely, to create the right impression to influence your counterpart at the table, and, finally, to close the deal.

An appendix helpfully provides a detailed worksheet to help women prepare for negotiations, along with a link to the web site where readers can download a PDF version.

Ask for It recounts numerous stories of women facing negotiations at work and in their lives, across a range of industries and professions, which bring the lessons to memorable life. However, as convincing as these anecdotes may be, I would have welcomed more examples of negotiations in blue-collar settings, my one quibble with an otherwise excellent book.

What makes this book a must-read for men, too, and not just for women are its unpleasant revelations about the realities of hidden bias against women at the negotiation table. The authors exhort readers to take responsibility themselves for combating gender bias, not just that of others but particularly their own. They remind readers that all of us regardless of gender possess assumptions and unexamined beliefs about women in negotiation. They point to studies that indicate that while aggression earns men points at the negotiation table, it punishes women with backlash and disapproval. And, while the authors fiercely advocate for women at the negotiation table, the chapter on “Likability” with its insistence that women avoid aggressive tactics and “be nice” while bargaining, will no doubt leave some readers bristling. However, until the world changes how it views women in negotiation, it’s hard to argue with the studies the authors cite.

There is much to admire about this gutsy book with its commitment to helping women really succeed at negotiating. Even the title itself serves as a defiant call to action. Babcock and Laschever explain in the forward that the title represents a deliberate effort to reclaim a phrase weighted with negative meaning for women and instead assert it as an emblem of power:

For centuries the phrase “asking for it” has been used as an accusing finger to point at women. A woman who’d been sexually assault was “asking for it”. A woman who’d been the victim of spousal abuse must have provoked her partner — she “asked for it”.

Our goal is to help women ask for and get the things they — we — really want, to claim the phrase “asking for it” as our own and transform it into a dynamic tool for increasing our happiness and pursuing our dreams.

This is not simply a book about changing the way women negotiate. Instead, Babcock and Laschever have ambitiously set out to change women’s lives.

Any of us can join the revolution — all we have to do is ask.

Two years ago I introduced readers to the web site ChangeThis, which I described as

a web site born of a radical and hopeful idealism: to virally transmit ideas through a culture medium of community, respect, and dialogue.

Recognizing that “the best discussions in science, medicine, business and politics have always been the civil ones”, ChangeThis publishes what it calls manifestos — proposals for change which serve as “a reasoned, rational call to action, supported by logic and facts”. The goal is to provide a forum for “the rational and thoughtful arguments that help people change their minds to a more productive point of view.” In the egalitarian spirit with which ChangeThis was founded, anyone is welcome to submit ideas for a manifesto.

This online experiment in changing minds has thrived, amassing in the past two years a considerable inventory of innovative thinking, and consequently I continue to stop by in search of ideas to invigorate my work.

On a recent visit to the site I was struck by the premise of a newly published manifesto, “Questionating“, by business consultant Corinne Miller. Miller celebrates the power of the question and its role in creativity and fresh thinking:

Questions have been the enablers of innovation for centuries. As Albert Einstein said, “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science”…

Questions use verbs and words that activate key areas of the brain that, in turn, increase the volume and variety of questions. The more questions, the more creativity and innovation. We like to say that questions open the innovation pipeline.

Despite the role of the question in stimulating discoveries and advancements, Miller observes that people seem to lose the willingness to ask questions as they grow older:

As we age, we disengage… from asking questions. Questions decrease as aging increases. Think about it. Why does the typical 5-year old ask about 65 questions a day, while the typical 40-something asks only about 6 questions a day? Why is it that the older we get, the fewer questions we ask? We’ve found that the most popular answers to this question have been: asking a question makes one look stupid; asking a question is a sign of weakness; and people think they know the answer so they don’t feel the need to ask.

What a sad state that we have created a business culture where asking questions is seen as a weakness. Shouldn’t it be the opposite, where not asking questions is a weakness?

How can we change this?

Indeed. How can we change this? What can any of us do to challenge the notion that asking questions displays weakness or even disrespect? What can we do to make it safe to ask questions of our institutions, of our leaders, of each other? Questions reflect, reveal, resolve; they shine light into the dark corners. Most importantly, questions give us the ability to see the world afresh. As Bertrand Russell once said, “In many affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

Fans of Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging, get a two-fer this week thanks to host George M. Wallace, a lawyer in Pasadena, California.

George hoists the Jolly Roger at the pirate-themed Blawg Review #153 at Declarations & Exclusions, warning readers with these ominous words:

But tell me true now: It be Blawg Review ye’ve really come seekin’, eh? Thought as much.Well, yer appeal’s been heard and ye’ve come to the proper place. And properly warned ye be, sez I.

But here ye’ll find no more o’ yer namby-pamby “Blawg Review,” savvy?

No, matey, that be fer the lace and waistcoat gentry, an’ the lords o’ the Admiralty an’ such-like luckless landlocked lumpers, wi’ their clerks an’ their cubicles an’ their quills an’ their copiers.

No, me hearty: for the likes o’ us — bold ‘n’ dangerous sorts that we be, don’cha know — hencefor’rd this be . . .Blarrgh Review!

Meanwhile, for landlubbers, George has produced a second edition of Blawg Review, in the form of an April Fool’s Day appendix at his other blog, A Fool in the Forest.

Highlights from these editions of Blawg Review include a look at how many innocent people remain behind bars, tips on negotiating with sociopaths, discussion of a check written on toilet paper, and a revealing glimpse into the sexual fantasies of lawyers (hint: it involves bargaining).

Perhaps the greatest gift that blogging has brought me has been the fellowship of fellow bloggers. Mediator and lawyer Stephanie West Allen, one of those remarkable bloggers I am privileged to count as friend, has just marked a milestone: the second anniversary of her blog Idealawg, which celebrates the artistry of the lawyer’s craft and honors the lawyer’s role as healer, not instigator, of disputes.

Stephanie shares the results of her intellectual inquisitiveness with readers by artfully covering topics ranging from idea productivity to life after law to conflict resolution.

Happy anniversary, Idealawg.