From the category archives:
According to a study conducted by Juliet Zhu, professor of marketing at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business, colors can affect the brain, influencing our ability to attend to details or generate ideas. The study indicates that red increases attentiveness, and blue promotes creativity and brainstorming.
Remember that the next time you redecorate your mediation office.
{ 1 comment }
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?
{ 4 comments }
…proper daydreaming – the kind of thinking that occurs when the mind is thinking to itself – is a crucial feature of the healthy human brain. It might seem as though our mind is empty, but the mind is never empty: it’s always bubbling over with ideas and connections.
So writes Jonah Lehrer in “Daydream achiever: A wandering mind can do important work, scientists are learning – and may even be essential“, an article in today’s Boston Globe “Ideas” section. Lehrer is the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, a book that explores the workings of the human brain by examining the ways in which creative minds — poets, artists, and others – anticipated scientific breakthroughs through their work.
Lehrer describes the discoveries about the role daydreaming can play in creative problem solving.
Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections.
This holds implications for negotiators and mediators alike. It leaves me wondering how we can encourage our clients or ourselves to utilize this underappreciated tool. Daydreaming may be just what we need when we face impasse or consider our future.
As Lehrer writes,
One of the simplest ways to foster creativity, then, may be to take daydreams more seriously. Even the mundane daydreams that occur hundreds of times a day are helping us plan for the future, interact with others, and solidify our own sense of self. And when we are stuck on a particularly difficult problem, a good daydream isn’t just an escape – it may be the most productive thing we can do.
(Photo credit: Chris Hortsch.)
{ 2 comments }
Sometimes I wonder how I lived without the internet, that seemingly endless flow of news and ideas, which, loaves-and-fishes style, miraculously replenishes itself with every visit.
While the quality of content can be uneven and its reliability sometimes suspect, the web is nonetheless a lush hunting ground for discerning information seekers. The best part of course is that so much of it is free.
Michelle Golden, who blogs at Golden Practices, has uncovered one of those gems that internet hunts can yield: a free guide to “Basic Facilitation Skills” (in PDF) available for downloading from the web site of the International Association of Facilitators.
This free 32-page booklet provides step-by-step guidelines for organizing and running productive meetings. There are sample forms to adapt for your own meeting, as well as tips for keeping meetings on track with suggested interventions for dealing with everything from personal attacks to sidebar discussions.
{ 4 comments }
Since I began blogging over three years ago, one of the most delightful changes I have witnessed is the steadily increasing number of mediators who now share ideas, news, practice tips, and their best thinking through the medium of blogs. In fact, on any given day, a stroll through the ADR blogosphere is like attending a conference with none of the expense but much of the pleasure.
There are many mediation blogs I enjoy but one of my favorites is the French language blog, Réseau Médiation (Mediation Network). Published by Dominique Foucart, a Belgian mediator in family, civil, and commercial disputes, this blog stands out for its thoughtful and honest reflection on difficult issues in the mediation field and its attention to the discoveries in other professions that have special relevance to the work of mediators. It is well worth the time it takes me to read it with what remains to me of the French I learned in junior high and high school and the help of my trusty Larousse.
In a recent post, “Comment libérer votre créativité“, Dominique shared with his readers a link to an interview with three experts at Scientific American with advice on “How to Unleash Your Creativity” — ideas on tapping into and freeing up the creative powers of individuals and groups, adults and children.
It describes the four competencies necessary for creativity:
The first and most important competency is “capturing”—preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them. The second competency is called “challenging”—giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas. The third area is “broadening.” The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections—so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things. And the last competency is “surrounding,” which has to do with how you manage your physical and social environments. The more interesting and diverse the things and the people around you, the more interesting your own ideas become.
If you need some inspiration to revive your own creative processes, be sure to read this interview.
{ 1 comment }
The ABA Journal honored Mediation Channel as one of the top 100 legal blogs for 2009. Readers, thanks for inspiring me!
