What's Happening [01.14.13]

"What's Happening?" Blog is a weekly round up of the all the ADR news, jobs, events and more. Check it out each week and view past news [HERE]

5 Tips From Hostage & Crisis Negotiation For Measuring Progress

Crisis Negotiator Blog- Progress is not always easy to measure during a negotiation, mediation, or an attempted collaboration. Sure, it is easy to measure lack of progress as it is laden with clear negative emotions and also the lack of a resolution or jointly decided upon conclusion but positive progress is not as easily defined.

1. Shift From Violent, Threatening Language to Nonthreatening Language.

2. Subject Discloses Personal Information

Read more [HERE].

No Environment is Neutral

Karen Hollett- Mediators are often concerned with their own neutrality and with ensuring the processes that they facilitate are 'neutral' or favour no particular side. But environmental psychologists understand that no environment can be totally neutral. People are affected by their environments...

From another recent study, it seems that expansive environments tend to cause people to feel more powerful and they are correspondingly more likely to be dishonest. Thus, the next time that you are sitting across from someone in a big chair behind a big desk, be forewarned. Of course, as the authors suggest, if we focus on "the ways that offices and furniture are designed...we may capitalize on even the simplest features of our physical environments toward the goal of promoting ethical, prosocial and healthy workplace behaviours."

Read more [HERE].

Opening statements by the mediator

Arnold Zeman- It's important in the mediation process, irrespective of the model, for the mediator to explain how she works in an opening statement. There are two reasons for this: participants have a right to know what to expect from the mediator and how the process will unfold; and, participants have a right to make an informed decision on whether the process will be helpful to them.

In the transformative framework, we believe that the opening statement says it all...

Read more [HERE].

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