It’s official — successful professional mediator and ADR marketing coach Tammy Lenski has announced that her book, Making Mediation Your Day Job, is at last on online store bookshelves.

I’ve had a chance to read the book for myself. Here’s what I think:

Shakespeare once wrote, “This above all: to thine own self be true.” These words, written 400 years ago, resonate today. They do so especially for the many professional mediators who cringe at the very thought of marketing — with its associations with shameless self-promotion, glad-handing, and cold-calling. For many mediators, marketing just feels wrong.

Now, at long last, there’s a guidebook that achieves something no other mediation marketing resource has done. It helps mediators do the impossible: become more effective marketers and remain true to themselves and their work. Dr. Tammy Lenski, a mediator and mediation marketing coach who has run her own successful practice since 1997, has created Making Mediation Your Day Job, the definitive resource for mediators who want a realistic, practical blueprint for marketing their practice.

The clue to Dr. Lenski’s formula for success is in the second half of the title of the book: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know. She asks readers, “Would you enjoy marketing more if your primary aim isn’t selling and self-promotion? I’m betting most of you would say yes.” Like the skilled practitioner she is, she reframes, inviting readers to see marketing anew, “as dialogue or as a learning conversation”, something mediators already know how to do, and do well.

Using humor, anecdotes, and real-life examples drawn from her clients, her students, and her own experience, Dr. Lenski encourages her readers to step outside their comfort zone and draw upon the professional skills they already have to build opportunities. She also offers sensible productivity tips, business planning advice, and useful exercises that help mediators master marketing.

What also distinguishes this work from the numerous resources available now on mediation marketing is its emphasis on professional integrity — on honoring the profession through a commitment to mediation excellence. Dr. Lenski reminds readers that it’s not just good marketing that matters; mediators also have a duty to uphold standards of excellence and develop their professional skills. She wisely observes, “In the end, it’s the quality of the work you deliver that’s going to help keep the clients coming.”

More than a book, Making Mediation Your Day Job functions like an honest conversation with a wise and caring friend. Dr. Lenski writes as someone who has been there and understands where and why any of us get stuck when it comes to marketing. She’s there to nudge us forward, with encouragement and straight talk. Making Mediation Your Day Job offers authentic, real-world advice for mediators who want to use marketing to take their practice to the next level — and all the while stay true to themselves and their work.

Congratulations, Tammy!

It’s been such a busy month that my third anniversary of blogging, January 10, 2008, passed unnoticed. I completely forgot until now.

That is partly due to the attention that my blog’s move to a new home required, as well as the demands of work. And among the tasks involved in that move was the slow sorting-through and creation of categories for over 650 posts, the product of 36 months of blogging.

Among my archives I discovered several posts that reminded me why I continue to blog — some thoughts I’d like to share with you as I look back on three years.

Blogging of course is an effective marketing tool, one reason why many businesses and entrepreneurs are drawn to it, as my friend and fellow New Englander, Tammy Lenski, reminds readers today in asking an important question, “Is blogging a good mediation marketing strategy?”

Blogs are also tools for gathering and disseminating knowledge and information. In a post from June 2005, “Five reasons why ADR professionals should be blogging“, I argued that blogging may make you smarter:

Successful blogging requires research. So bloggers surf the web, cruising for news. We’re Internet blood-hounds, tracking down the elusive scent of stories that will pique the curiosity of our readers. That constant prowling alerts us to stories, trends, breaking news in our field—and even in fields that have nothing whatsoever to do with our blog’s focus, which, I would argue, makes us well-rounded individuals.

But blogging by nature is designed to connect not just ideas but people — for me blogging’s greatest appeal. As I wrote in November 2006, “Get the connection: building your network through blogs“:

Although I have made many contacts the old-fashioned way—through personal introductions, conference attendance, and committee work–nothing has connected me to the world around me faster or more dramatically than blogging has succeeded in doing.

Blogs bring people together like no conference or convention can. It allows for conversation in a multitude of ways.

Here’s one: Publish a post and instantly the whole world hears your message. But this is no one-way conversation–because most blogs permit reader comments, the world can talk back.

Here’s another: Another blogger reads your post. Intrigued by the viewpoint or links you shared, he or she riffs on what you’ve written and links back to you, amplifying the conversation. Suddenly your voice is joined by someone else’s. Other bloggers chime in and the chorus of voices grows.

Here’s another: Someone discovers your blog. One of your posts has sparked their imagination or triggered questions. They email you to tell you. Or they email you a link to an article they think you’d find interesting. Or they email you just to say hello.

With a little encouragement, these conversations can ultimately give rise to meaningful connections–to collegiality, to inspiration, to collaboration. These connections, as I have happily discovered, can produce discoveries, insights, and, most rewardingly, friendships.

Contrary to popular belief, blogging is not a solitary activity. It is joyfully, boldly public.

You can shout into the canyon and hear your own voice echo back.

But wait and shout again, and you will hear other voices rise in greeting.

That, more than any other reason, is why blogging remains such an essential part of my professional life. It is the collegiality, the friendships that have sprung up across geographic distances. It is the pleasure of mutual discovery, of interests shared. It is the sparks struck and the ideas that ignite when viewpoints collide.

Here on the web, what matters most: Only connect.

Thanks to all of you for sharing some or all of those three years with me.  I’m glad you were here.

How others see us may be very different from how we see ourselves.

But how to map the overlaps and gaps between their perception and our own? How can we see that self more completely?

Professional mediator and tech expert Tammy Lenski points us to a tool that can help us see that total picture: an interactive Johari window that allows users to map personality awareness with the aid of friends, family, and colleagues.

Interested in finding more online tools that test self-knowledge? Visit this post from the MediationChannel.com vaults: “Hidden agenda: online test reveals conscious and subconscious biases“, which links to several, including Project Implicit, which tests for implicit associations, and the Moral Sense Test, an ongoing study of moral intuition.

For many mediators in private practice, it’s not delivering services that poses a challenge. It’s managing the business end of things that can be tricky. Here are some links that offer tips that may help:

For general, all-around ideas and support on running a home office, since many solo practitioners do, visit Home Office Warrior, where you can find among other things a Home Office Warrior Blog Carnival, with a list of resources for anyone who works from home, and a look at the “Cell Phone v. Landline” debate for those struggling with selecting a phone service that keeps them connected best with clients.

For those deciding whether to launch a business from home, Dumb Little Man lays out a plan for those who want to work successfully from home.

Although April 15 seems far away, it’s never too early to organize your records for tax time. Web Worker Daily has ideas on “Tracking Business Expenses“, with a link to our friend the IRS for more information. (Hint: save those receipts.)

Mediation Mensch points out the marketing lesson for mediators in a recent BusinessWeek article, “Education-Based Marketing Sells“.

Mediator Tech has advice on expressing end-of-year appreciation to clients and referrers in a way that will make your thanks stand out from the rest.

Finally, for those of you seeking to keep costs down (or just in need of a good laugh), you may want to consider Word Perhect, a free online word processor. (A hat tip to Slaw.)

(Photo credit: Herman Brinkman.)

One of the greatest things about the web is the amount of free stuff out there to help any small business owner, well, take care of business.

Thanks to the Canadian legal research and IT blog Slaw, I just learned about 100 free (or really, really cheap) products and services ideal for the entrepreneur launching a business on a shoestring.

You can browse The Poor Entrepreneur’s Toolset: 100 Freebies for Boostrappers at the Bootstrapper blog.

(Photo credit: Leea Gilmour.)

The best part of being webmaster of the World Directory of ADR Blogs has got to be the emails I get from people around the world contacting me to tell me about their web sites and the work that they do.

Here are some of the sites that I’ve been introduced to within the last few days.

The Peace and Collaborative Development Networking site was created by Dr. Craig Zelizer, a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Masters in Conflict Resolution within the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Craig describes this site as “a free professional networking site to encourage interaction between individuals and organizations worldwide involved in development, ADR, conflict resolution and related fields. Members are encouraged to dialogue and share resources. The site has blogs, forums, resources and much more.”

You’ll find three new blogs at the World Directory of ADR Blogs–along with a newly added country–Switzerland. They are:

CKA Mediation and Arbitration Services Blog. Recovering litigator Christopher Annunziata opines about all aspects of alternative dispute resolution, mediation, arbitration and recent developments in Georgia law and beyond. Expect to find topics to enlighten the practicing attorney and non-lawyer alike, as well as the occasional humorous story. (I’ve told Chris in a recent email exchange how friendly the ADR blogosphere is, so please be sure to visit Chris and say hi.)

The Peacebuilding Blog. A Geneva, Switzerland based electronic resource to support the work of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, showcasing relevant research and policy materials, news, critical analysis, events and employment related to peacebuilding, conflict management and resolution, worldwide.

The Geneva Peacebuilding Platform Blog. According to its web site, the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform’s “overarching objective is to contribute to international peace and security by building partnerships among and between governments, international organisations and NGOs on disarmament and arms control issues of common concern.” Its web site includes this blog.

Do you have a blog you’d like to tell my readers about? If you publish or know of a blog that should be added to the World Directory, please let me know. It’s a commercial-free site, and there is no cost to be listed. The Directory has information on submitting your blog and submission guidelines.

Recently I had the great pleasure of teaming up with friend and colleague Tammy Lenski to deliver a workshop at the Annual Conference for the Association for Conflict Resolution’s New England Chapter.

Our workshop was designed to introduce mediators, arbitrators, and others in the conflict resolution field to digital tools for managing, marketing, and delivering services in an ADR practice.

Tammy and I selected our favorite tools and put them together in a handbook for workshop participants. We had three criteria for selecting the tools that made it into this handbook: 1) ease of use; 2) no special tech skills or knowledge required; and 3) free or affordable.

We realized though that this stuff was too good to keep to ourselves and the people who came to our workshop–so we decided to share it with the web-surfing world. In PDF format for you to download is ADR in the 21st Century: Easy Tech Tools to Market and Manage Your Practice.

Tammy and I hope that you find it useful. And if you have your own favorite digital tools that make your life as a mediator easier, please let me know.

Networking, marketing, information sharing, conversation, and collaboration: no other online tool delivers more for professionals than the blog.

If discovering how to make the most of blogging is at the top of your list of New Year’s resolutions, then I hope you’ll join my colleague Tammy Lenski and me for “Building Buzz with Blogs: Internet Marketing for Dispute Resolution Professionals (Even If You’re Not a Geek!)“, a teleseminar to be held on four consecutive Mondays in January 2007, from 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET., beginning Monday, January 8. Click here to register.

(If you register by the end of the day today, December 31, 2006, you’ll receive the early bird discount. Side benefit: you’ll get to cross one item off that lengthy list!)

It’s that time of year…the time to look ahead, consider the possibilities a new year brings, and decide what will make a big difference to your business and your practice. It’s easy, of course, to make resolutions—it’s keeping them that can be the hard part!

One resolution you can both make and keep is to learn more about the power of the blog. One of the most powerful online tools, blogs can help you promote your business, build your network and boost your web presence. Best of all, they do so at little or even no cost and require no special technical skill or knowledge.

As more and more ADR professionals are discovering, blogs are an ideal online tool for both business marketing and for social interaction, producing conversation, community, and contact with prospective clients and referral sources.

My good friend Tammy Lenski, one of the blogosphere’s most respected ADR bloggers, and I are collaborating on a new program to benefit you, our dispute resolution colleagues. Launching in January 2006, this professional teleseminar program will give blogging newcomers a primer in blogging basics and prepare you to leverage blogging strategies to build your business. Based on what Tammy and I have learned in mentoring numerous other bloggers, we have designed a program with your needs in mind.

“Building Buzz with Blogs: Internet Marketing for Dispute Resolution Professionals (Even If You’re Not a Geek!)” will be held on four consecutive Mondays in January 2007, from 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET. Click here to register.

Each session focuses on a key topic to prepare you for blogging success. You’ll have a chance to learn all about:

• Session 1: Build Your Brand with an ADR Blog, January 8
• Session 2: Choose Your ADR Blogging Platform, January 15
• Session 3: Jumpstart Your ADR Blog, January 22
• Session 4: Write a Topnotch ADR Blog, January 29

To participate, all you need is a telephone. With registration, you’ll receive the dial-in information for the call(s), an audio recording of the teleseminar for your future reference, and supporting handouts with resources we recommend to make your blogging experience effective and successful. You may register for the 4-session series (your most cost effective option) or choose from among the teleseminars.

Tammy publishes the critically acclaimed blog, “Mediator Tech“, and is the founder and editor of a new collaborative blogging project, “Mastering Mediation.” I publish this blog, “Online Guide to Mediation” and am the founder and webmaster of the world’s first Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs, which tracks and catalogues over 90 blogs from 15 countries.

Click here to register.

Although studies abound that purport to show that social isolation is growing and that the Internet may be to blame, don’t believe it. Here’s one reason why:

Last month I participated in a panel discussion on “Marketing Mediation Excellence”, which explored the impact of the internet on marketing. John DeBruyn, a transactional attorney based in Denver, served as moderator, and panelists included bloggers Robert Ambrogi, Gini Nelson, and Geoff Sharp, along with dispute resolution professional Louise Wildee.

What set this apart from other panel discussions I have participated in was that this one was held online. While some of us were in front of a real-world audience, the rest of us participated thanks to the miracle of digital technology, joining the discussion from across the U.S., or, in Geoff’s case, from the other side of the world in New Zealand. The same was true of many audience members.

What brought these panelists together? One word: Blogging.

Although I have made many contacts the old-fashioned way—through personal introductions, conference attendance, and committee work–nothing has connected me to the world around me faster or more dramatically than blogging has succeeded in doing.

Blogs bring people together like no conference or convention can. It allows for conversation in a multitude of ways.

Here’s one: Publish a post and instantly the whole world hears your message. But this is no one-way conversation–because most blogs permit reader comments, the world can talk back.

Here’s another: Another blogger reads your post. Intrigued by the viewpoint or links you shared, he or she riffs on what you’ve written and links back to you, amplifying the conversation. Suddenly your voice is joined by someone else’s. Other bloggers chime in and the chorus of voices grows.

Here’s another: Someone discovers your blog. One of your posts has sparked their imagination or triggered questions. They email you to tell you. Or they email you a link to an article they think you’d find interesting. Or they email you just to say hello.

With a little encouragement, these conversations can ultimately give rise to meaningful connections–to collegiality, to inspiration, to collaboration. These connections, as I have happily discovered, can produce discoveries, insights, and, most rewardingly, friendships.

Contrary to popular belief, blogging is not a solitary activity. It is joyfully, boldly public.

You can shout into the canyon and hear your own voice echo back.

But wait and shout again, and you will hear other voices rise in greeting.

One of the great things about the internet, particularly what is known as Web 2.0–the second wave of digital technology that has made the internet a far more social and participatory place– is that fresh discoveries are always possible. Its potential seems so limitless that it can make trailblazers of us all, if we can simply find our niche.

There potentially remain many firsts yet to claim, within our reach, even here in the conflict resolution field. Consider these examples:

• Bill Warters, Campus-ADR Tech Tools: first blog ever on ADR and conflict resolution
• Perry Itkin, Florida Mediator, world’s first mediation blog
• Miquel Tort, Blog Solomediacion.com, world’s first Spanish language blog
• Dina Beach Lynch, Mediation Mensch, first African-American to blog about mediation and first person to use a blog to coach mediators
• Josh Weiss, Negotiating Tip of the Week, world’s first negotiation podcast
• Me, World Directory of ADR Blogs, another first

You get the picture.

Now another conflict resolution professional is blazing a brand-new trail.

Tammy Lenski, who somehow finds time to publish not just one but two blogs, “I Can’t Say That” and “Mediation Marketing from Mediator Tech“, is doing something that no other mediator has done. She is writing a book on marketing for mediators, using her blog Mediator Tech as the publishing platform. Visitors to Mediator Tech see “Making Mediation Your Day Job” unfold, chapter by chapter. As writer, Tammy benefits from readers’ feedback. Readers of course benefit as well from Tammy’s experience.

The good news is that there’s still plenty of room for you to be a pioneer yourself in cyberspace. Not all the great ideas have been taken. (In fact, I can’t wait to tell you about another first for the mediation field. However, like a good mediator, I’ve promised to keep it confidential. At least for now. I think the wraps come off this week, so check back soon.)

Since detailed instructions on how to sue a mediator are readily available online, as the ever-vigilant Geoff Sharp has reported, perhaps it’s time to dust off an article of mine that first appeared a couple of years ago in the newsletter of the New England Chapter of the Association for Conflict Resolution: “An Ounce of Prevention or a Pound of Cure: Making the Decision to Purchase Professional Liability Insurance for Mediators” (in PDF).

It’s one of those things that no mediator should be without.

This post constitutes Part 3 of a series of essays on blogging for the conflict resolution community.

The series began earlier this summer with Part 1, “Getting to yes with alternative dispute resolution blogs: time for ADR practitioners to join the conversation” and continued with Part 2, “Getting in touch with the whole world through blogging“.

What can you do then to influence what the Internet has to say about you and to make yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd?

Think blogs.

Take my own case. Unlike, say, “Bob Smith”, “Diane Levin” is not an especially common first name/last name combination. So I was surprised to learn that I am not the only Diane Levin out there. There are in fact quite a few of us on the web.

There is of course me, the Diane Levin who is an attorney and mediator. There is also Diane Levin, a well known professor of early childhood education at Wheelock College. There is also Diane Levin the Texas Holdem champion–who frankly sounds like a way more fun Diane Levin than I am–and a Diane Levin in the wholesale fashion business. There’s even a Diane Levin who is vice president of a Great Dane club in Minnesota (definitely not me, I have a yorkie).

Before I started blogging, and despite the fact that I had a pretty healthy web presence, with my own business web site, online articles, and listings in any number of web-based directories, anyone looking for me on the web would have had a very hard time figuring out which Diane Levin was in fact me.

When people searched online for my name, search engines often mixed us all up together or, worse, gave first-page ranking to another Diane Levin, even if the search combined “Diane Levin” with “mediation”. It was enough to give even a self-confident mediator an identity crisis.

What made things confusing, too, was the fact that the Wheelock College professor Diane Levin lives and works in Massachusetts like me. To make things even more confusing, much of her work concerns conflict resolution and violence prevention, not so different from the work I do as a mediator. People were always mixing us up.

Being confused with that Diane Levin, however, wasn’t necessarily the end of the world. She is a nationally respected authority on the effects of violence in the media on children who has testified before the U.S. Congress–who wouldn’t enjoy some of that celebrity?

But it was soon apparent that people were confusing me with other Diane Levins as well. I knew that I was in trouble the day a client asked about the secret to my success at poker tournaments.

People were definitely getting the wrong impression.

The fact is that we all google each other. It’s an easy way of doing a fast background check. Employers do it before making an offer to that prospective new hire. Clients and customers do it before hiring a consultant or a service provider. Savvy competitors google each other. So, too, do colleagues.

Blogging can give you control over what the Internet has to say about you. It allows you to shape the impression the world has of you and to create and market your own personal brand.

Today, largely thanks to this blog, when someone googles me, there is no mistaking me with anyone else. What’s cool, too, is that my blog posts enjoy favorable search engine rankings for search phrases relating to topics in my practice area. My work is much easier to find, and along with it, me.

For a series of articles on blogging’s benefits for ADR professionals, visit my friend Tammy Lenski’s blog, Mediator Tech.

At any rate, thanks to blogging, it’s nice to know that my little identity crisis is behind me.

(Although I sure wouldn’t mind just once winning a Texas Holdem jackpot.)

My eagerly awaited copy of the Summer 2006 edition of the Association for Conflict Resolution’s quarterly magazine, ACResolution, arrived just the other day.

It was eagerly awaited primarily because it contains ACResolution’s first-ever article on blogging, which, I am proud to say, I wrote.

This article, “Three Reasons ADR Professionals Should Be Blogging”, while unfortunately not available online, can be glimpsed in an earlier draft, “Five reasons why ADR professionals should be blogging“, published here on this blog last year.

The editor was kind enough to add a sidebar with a list of ADR blogs (Negotiating Tip of the Week, Florida Mediator, and Mediation Mensch among them) as well as resources for bloggers, together with a nice screenshot of the World Directory of ADR Blogs.

This could be a sign that the ADR world is finally starting to pay attention to blogging. Hey, a girl can hope.

Welcome to Part 2 of a series of essays on blogging for the conflict resolution community. The series began several weeks ago with “Getting to yes with alternative dispute resolution blogs: time for ADR practitioners to join the conversation“.

It was launched with the hope of encouraging ADR practitioners everywhere to think about blogging’s power to share ideas, encourage inquiry, and to build connections among us.

Yet blogging is not the solitary practice one might think it is. When you blog, you do so knowing that you are reaching out to share your message, that others, somewhere in the world, are listening. Readers reach back, reacting and responding through comments or emails.

When I first began blogging in January 2005, I had no expectations about where it would take me. I had no idea what kind of response this blog would even get.

Roughly 18 months and some 360+ posts later, this blog has attracted visitors from every continent but Antarctica (not known anyway as a hotbed of mediator activity) and from countries around the world.

Many of these visitors have taken the time to contact me and let me know what they’re thinking. Some have even written to me in languages other than English. Typically by email but on occasion even by phone, these readers have responded with positive feedback, with constructive criticism, with ideas they thought would be of interest to me and my readers. They have reached out to educate me, to share knowledge, and to pass along news, articles, links, information about upcoming events, and book recommendations. Some have asked for advice or help with their own blogs. Some have just wanted to say hello to a fellow mediator.

A number of these have turned into meaningful friendships–people whose work I admire, opinions I respect, and whose ongoing support and encouragement sustains me as a mediator, as a blogger, and as a fellow traveler on planet earth.

Those of us in the conflict resolution field appreciate the importance of relationships and communication. Blogging provides opportunity–plenty of it–for both.

Blogging has succeeded in putting me in touch with remarkable individuals I might never have met otherwise. It has, in effect, allowed me to network with the entire world.

It’s a trip I encourage every mediator to take.

Interested in learning more about blogging? Please visit the World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs for links to resources, advice, ideas, and ways to get started for beginning bloggers.

And by all means please get in touch to let me know that you’re blogging. Other ADR bloggers and blog readers can’t wait to find out.