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

Bill would create ‘hostage czar’ to coordinate efforts to rescue Am...

A Maryland congressman introduced legislation Friday that would create a “hostage czar,” a high-level position at the National Security Council that would centralize efforts to find and free U.S. hostages.

...The U.S. government’s approach to handling hostage cases has come under intense criticism since the Islamic State beheaded three American hostages last year. The group also claimed that an Arizona woman it had kidnapped was killed in an airstrike on one of its buildings in Syria.

Read more from the Washington Post [HERE]. 

Get in the Right State of Mind for Any Negotiation

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had a prickly relationship. On the one hand, their two companies did significant business with each other. (Microsoft actually wrote software for some Apple devices.) But the two men also were rivals, both in the marketplace and in the public spotlight. Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson described their relationship as “a scorpion dance, with both sides circling warily knowing that a sting by either could cause problems for both.”

Gates visited Apple headquarters in hopes of smoothing things out. Instead, Jobs excoriated him in front of Apple’s top management team. “You’re ripping us off,” he shouted. “I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!”

Gates didn’t yell back, though...

Read more from HBR.com [HERE].

Insights into negotiation from Colombia’s peace talks with Farc

Many people — from corporate litigants to divorcing couples — have had to sit down to negotiate with adversaries they might once have wanted to blow out of the water. For Sergio Jaramillo, the contrast is not entirely metaphorical.

“You need to be incredibly aware and lucid. So it is useful sometimes to read challenging things that keep you sharp, like difficult poetry, Rilke or Mallarmé,” says the 48-year-old. “It sounds funny but it helps you find new angles.”

Read more from FT.com [HERE]. 

Just Be Reasonable

When a person is very angry, the part of their brain associated with being reasonable and articulating reasonable thoughts more or less shuts down. Closed for business. Sign on the door — go away, can’t do this right now.

Yet in the midst of an argument, we still think to ourselves (or even say out loud), “Just be reasonable, can’t you?”

Read more [HERE]. 

Jobs

Job: Director of Mediation Services, Community Mediation Services
Ombudsman at Richland County School District
Health Care Ombuds/Mediator at Kaiser Permanente Northern California
Ombudsperson at Virginia Tech