I’ve described that professor and his colleagues to my conflict resolution students over the years, asking them, “How does a mediator help best in this situation?” Invariably, the majority want to settle things down, help the faculty colleagues talk to each other in nicer ways, see if they can find some things to agree on, and de-escalate the hostility in the faculty department.

The mediator that does that will have missed both the point and the opportunity. The point is that good mediators don’t smooth in the name of resolution and settlement. The opportunity for these faculty colleagues is real dialogue, even if it’s messy. Smoothing and rushing to resolution thwart real dialogue.

It’s the difference between positive and negative peace. Mediators can inadvertently interfere with the former with too much zealousness for the latter. While studying for my doctorate many moons ago, Birgit Brock-Utne’s Feminist Perspectives on Peace and Peace Education rocked my world by differentiating negative peace, the cessation of overt hostilities, from positive peace, the state achieved when underlying conditions causing the hostilities are truly addressed.

Negative peace-making is the act of reducing nastiness, back-stabbing, violence. Positive peace-building is the restoration of relationship, the creation of family and organizational systems that address injustice and/or other underlying causes of the conflict

I was reminded of that college professor and Brock-Utne’s book when I read peace-builder Ashok Panikkar’s guest post on the the New York Peace Institute blog. Panikkar, Executive Director of the Indian organizational conflict resolution service Meta-Culture, takes mediators and other conflict resolvers to task for being too neutral in some of the wrong places and putting real dialogue in jeopardy, saying,

The price of silencing the voices that make us uncomfortable is that we kill the spirit of a people, one voice at a time, and finally lose whatever space we have left for honest expression. Why should this worry mediators and peace builders? Well, for one, without honest expression, there is no dialogue. Without honest dialogue, conflict transformation is not possible. Such consequences should be seriously disconcerting to those of us who love this work, and believe in its power to transform conflicts and societies.

Well said.

It’s a good post worth reading. And it is, to my mind, right thinking. It means peace-builders and conflict resolution professionals like myself need to have the courage to look conflict in the face and not be cowed by it. It means we need to have great mastery of our craft so that we can build positive peace, particularly for clients who need or want to be in continued relationship, without subjecting them to harm, a delicate balance sometimes.

What do you think? What kind of peace do you build?

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. Negative peace, positive peace: What kind do you want? copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Said Alex Osborn, who coined the term brainstorming, “Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while discouragement often nips it in the bud…Forget quality; aim now to get a quantity of answers. When you’re through, your sheet of paper may be so full of ridiculous nonsense that you’ll be disgusted. Never mind. You’re loosening up your unfettered imagination—making your mind deliver.”

It turns out, however, that Osborn was wrong. Quite wrong. Brainstorming has been refuted repeatedly as the best creative thinking approach.

In a terrific New Yorker article, GroupThink: The Brainstorming Myth, Jonah Lehrer comments on creativity research led by UC Berkeley’s Charlan Nemath:

Nemeth’s studies suggest that the ineffectiveness of brainstorming stems from the very thing that Osborn thought was most important. As Nemeth puts it, “While the instruction ‘Do not criticize’ is often cited as the important instruction in brainstorming, this appears to be a counterproductive strategy. Our findings show that debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition.” Osborn thought that imagination is inhibited by the merest hint of criticism, but Nemeth’s work and a number of other studies have demonstrated that it can thrive on conflict.

According to Nemeth, dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone’s feelings,” she says. “Well, that’s just wrong. Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive. True creativity requires some trade-offs.”

Dissent and exposure to unfamiliar perspectives increase our creative thinking. Go read the Lehrer article, particularly if you lead groups; it’s filled with compelling information.

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. For better creative thinking, don’t brainstorm, do disagree and criticize copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

We’ll be discussing the relevance of professional and volunteer conflict resolvers in people’s lives and how we do (and don’t) address that relevance in the ways we talk about our work, our services, our value.

If you’re in New England, I hope you’ll plan to attend and be part of this important conversation. We’re planning a robust, mind-stretching, and energizing exploration of the topic. More information is coming, but for now, here’s the official hold-the-date announcement from NE-ACR:

SAVE THE DATE, PLEASE
NE-ACR’s Annual Meeting is Thursday, April 12

The time: 5:30–8:30 pm April 12, 2012
The place: 219 Washington Street, Wellesley Hills, MA
The topic: How can we describe our work in understandable — and relevant — terms?

Most of us know that few people really understand what conflict resolution is all about and how it might help them. Isn’t it time we changed the conversation?

NE-ACR is pleased to announce that Tammy Lenski, longtime practitioner, teacher, and innovator, will be at the chapter’s annual meeting to help us talk about labels, language, and relevance.

Come enjoy old friends, new faces, food for eating and food for thought.

PLEASE JOIN US!
Registration details coming soon.

Not a member of NE-ACR but want to know when registration opens? Leave a comment on this post and I’ll make sure you know.

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. The relevance of professional conflict resolvers in people’s lives copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desire, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. How do you listen? copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

For the past month I’ve been celebrating with a blogiversary retrospective, sharing my own and audience favorites from 10 years of conflict resolution blogging. And I’ve been delighted to hear from so many of you as part of that celebration! I’m glad you’re here.

Of course, no celebration would be complete without some party favors and I’m here today to announce the prize winners in the random drawing…and to add an additional prize for every single person who joined the drawing. Drum roll please…

The winners

• Winner of the free lifetime membership in my online conflict resolution training program, the Conflict Zen Commons: Karen Bray
• Winners of a free quarterly membership in the Commons: Wendy Franklin and Ian Grodman
• Winner of one hour of negotiation or conflict management coaching or mediator mentoring from me, via phone or skype: Robin Eichert
• Winner of a signed copy of my book, Making Mediation Your Day Job: Pierre A. Gauthier

And for everyone who entered, a special prize

I’ve decided to give everyone who entered complimentary access to the private discussion forum over at the Conflict Zen Commons. The forum is a place to discuss conflict resolution, negotiation, and for ADR professionals, the business of mediation and other conflict resolution services. [Update: The Conflict Zen Commons discussion forum is now open membership to all. Come by and register!]

If you’d like to take advantage of this, just do the following to claim your special prize:

• If you entered the prize drawing by leaving a comment on one of my blog posts, simply email me and let me know you’d like to join the discussion forum; be sure you’re emailing me from the same address you used to your comment.
• If you entered by retweeting, favoriting or sharing my post on Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else, email me and provide me a link to your retweet/share.

Access will begin in a couple of weeks, once I’ve had the chance to set it all up for everyone, so bear with me. I’ll reply to your email to confirm receipt.

Thanks for being part of the blogiversary celebration…and here’s to the next 10 years!

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. And the winners are… copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

A few of my chosen posts didn’t really fit into any particular category so they’re ending up in this last installment of the 10-year blogiversary retrospective. If you haven’t entered the celebratory prize drawing yet, there’s still time, you know.

Thanks for going on this trip down memory lane with me. And here’s to the next 10 years!

The best time to resolve conflict

A conflict’s greatest opportunity for collaborative resolution is usually near the time it first occurred (if such a time can be known) or at least nearer the time it first entered your awareness.

Sometimes, the triggering event is clear and memorable. Sometimes it’s elusive, building under the radar over time, brick by brick, small frustration by small frustration.

Either way, the sooner you address it after the raw initial pain and anger have passed, the better. You want the rawness to have subsided enough that people can bring their better selves to the conversation, but not so much time to have passed that… read on

Shut up and listen: Multi-tasking and conflict don’t mix

A disagreement isn’t the place for multi-tasking because doing conflict better means really paying attention. Here are the three top multi-tasking mistakes you can make during a dispute:

1. Doing anything else while the other person’s talking. When you do something else when someone’s talking to you, you send the message that the conversation with them isn’t worth your focus. This may not be a faux pas during ordinary conversation. But during conflict, when people are hyper-alert for slights, they may assume you don’t really care and it’ll escalate the conflict. So put that paper down. Take your hands away from the keyboard. Close the file cabinet. Give the other person your full attention for a few minutes. What a difference it’ll make!
2. …. read on

The art of untangling conflict: A lesson from peacemaker Jimmy Carter

In 1978, Egypt President Anwar Sadat, and Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords, a treaty brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and for which Sadat and Begin later received the Nobel Peace Prize.

A teenager at the time, I still recall the powerful emotion I felt as I watched the signing on television. Many years later, by then doing my own work helping people navigate complex conflicts and negotiations, I read Carter’s Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President because I could still viscerally feel in my heart that moment in 1978.

I’ve never forgotten the following story from Carter’s memoir because it moved me to tears. And it taught me something powerful about the real art of helping people untangle conflict… read on

How to let go of unresolved conflict

A workshop participant recently asked me, “When I can’t get the other person to talk, and the conflict can’t be resolved, how do I let go of it?”

I’ve had the privilege of bearing witness others’ decisions to let go of an unresolved conflict and move on with their lives. And it really is a conscious decision not to let too much of the past eat up too much of the future. Those decisions, which I’ve witnessed as an executive coach, as a mediator and as a college professor of conflict studies, usually became possible when one or more of these had occurred… read on

The Isaac Asimov secret to elegant conflict resolution

One of the most important conflict resolution and negotiation lessons I ever learned came from scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. He taught me that real shifts come not from reaching conclusions, but from pursuing curiosity.

The summer before I left for college, I had the very good fortune to spend a week with Isaac, Isadore Adler, and other luminaries at The Rensselaerville Institute, then known as the Institute on Man and Science.

That summer’s institute invited the group of us to answer one question with our best thinking… read on

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. From Isaac Asimov to Jimmy Carter: 10-year blogiversary retrospective copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

We kept track of their negotiations outside of class in our online discussion forum, where they could post about the negotiation, celebrate, or ask for insights about what could have been done better. Seven weeks later, when the term ended, these 13 graduate students had successfully completed dozens of home and workplace negotiations, and I estimate they saved well over $10,000 in purchases ranging from new carpet to sporting goods to coffeemakers. Not bad for a group that claimed not to like negotiating!

Next up in my 10-year blogiversary retrospective and prize giveaway are a few of my favorite negotiation tips and stories. These just scratch the surface of the total posts on the subject, of course, so if you want more, check out the Conflict Zen archives.

How red Converse All-Stars taught me my first negotiation lesson

When I was eight, I rather desperately wanted a pair of “boy sneakers.” Up until then, I had been wearing the little white canvas “girl sneakers” that a lot of mothers seemed to buy their daughters in the 60s. All of my girl classmates had them too.

I couldn’t stand those sneakers.

I thought, though the word may not have existed then, that they were dorky. I seemed to go through a lot of them because I wore out the toes. Those little girl sneakers just didn’t stand up well to tree climbing, kickball, stopping bikes with a toe-drag, and building forts in the woods.

I wanted a pair of red boys’ Converse All-Stars… read on

Car negotiations: When non-negotiable aren’t

A few weeks ago, my husband Rod bought a new car. I think it’s fair to say he doesn’t much enjoy the prospect of negotiating the price of a car and so he tends to drive his vehicles for a very long time before he feels ready to go through the process again. I, on the other hand, relish a chance at negotiating for a new car, so I’ve had to work hard to keep my nose out of his planning, pondering and bargaining. We tend to buy our own cars, solo, partly due to very different negotiating styles and partly due to a chance for some independent decision making in the midst of a lot of marital collaborating.

And I did stay out of it. Almost… read on

Good negotiators know anchoring

When I’m mediating a dispute involving money, I notice how frequently parties want the other side to make the first offer. It’s clear that many people consider it a disadvantage to go first. If you know anything about the concept of anchoring, though, you also know that making the first offer can actually put you in a very powerful position.

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman (also the winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics) and Amos Tversky have researched the kinds of mental shortcuts, called heuristics, which people take when making a decision involving uncertainty. They’ve found that we tend to make decisions using some kind of reference point (anchor) and that we adjust our own number higher or lower according to that reference point.

And here’s the rub: Even if the reference point we use isn’t associated with the decision itself, it can influence us heavily… read on

When negotiating salary, women are also negotiating social approval

Women, when you’re negotiating salary, business contracts, departmental budgets, auto purchases and the like, figure out a way to imagine yourself as negotiating on behalf of others and not just for yourself.

If you’re negotiating salary, frame it as negotiating on behalf of your family. If you’re negotiating a new car purchase for yourself, frame it as bargaining on behalf of your elderly mom, for whom you run errands on weekends. If you’re negotiating a business contract, frame it as negotiating on behalf of your division or organization.

I’ve been advising women to… read on

5 reasons compromise is a dirty word in relationship negotiations

The scene: A home decorating show on television. The characters: Wife, husband, interior decorator. The setting: Couple’s living room with a big, blank, newly painted wall behind the beautiful new sectional couch.

The scenario: The couple is trying to select art for the wall. The husband likes the traditional-looking oil painting, the wife likes the contemporary wall sculpture.

The interior decorator proposes a contemporary oil painting, saying, “It’s the perfect compromise!” Wife and husband each nod in agreement, but their faces say it all: When the decorator departs and the cameras are packed up, that painting will be taken down faster than a bee-stung stallion.

It’s not that compromise doesn’t have it’s place in relationships… read on

8 common reasons agreements fall apart after workplace negotiations

“The object of good mediation, good negotiation and good conflict management isn’t to get people to agreement. It’s to help people reach agreement they’ll want to act on once we all leave the table.”

I say this when I train advanced mediators and when I teach mediation and conflict management in organizations and groups. And I said it last night while meeting with a community group interested in getting “inside mediator” training for some of their members.

Why do solutions and agreements fall apart after the organizational conflict appears resolved? I see these eight reasons more frequently than any other… read on

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. Negotiation tips for work, home and the marketplace copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Mediation was my “first love” in the conflict resolution field 15 years ago and over the years I’ve written many posts and articles on the subject, not to mention my book, Making Mediation Your Day Job. It seems only right that I highlight a few favorites about mediation, mediators and the mediation business as part of my 10-year blogiversary celebration. (If you’ve just become a reader of the Conflict Zen blog, be sure to read about the celebration and how to enter the prize drawing.)

The following is a varied lot, spanning such topics as becoming a good mediator, finding a good mediator, mediation training, and mediation practice building.

Mediation isn’t about making it all better: What Alice taught me

I sat in Alice’s office, weeping. Hard. And feeling embarrassed about weeping, even as I cried harder. I felt pathetic.

Alice, my teacher at the time and my colleague now, sat there quietly, in that graceful way she has. Her compassion was palpable, her attention fully on me. But there was something she was specifically not doing and I recall being a bit puzzled by it even while I was steeped in my own misery.

“I thought I was a bright person,” I said. “But I can’t mediate my way out of a cardboard box at the moment.” Sob, hiccup, sob.

The moment in Alice’s office had followed one of my more traumatic moments as a student. This was in the mid 1990s and I was in my last term of Woodbury’s year-long program in mediation and conflict management. I’d been mediating informally as part of my job as a college VP, was now in the culminating term at Woodbury, and I clearly should have been able to mediate in class… read on

Giving advice is a problem-solving crutch

I recently finished co-teaching a basic mediation workshop I deliver about four times a year to people from many different backgrounds. In this most recent workshop, we had a social worker, several attorneys, a nurse practitioner, a teacher, a builder, two human resources directors, a college student, a human development trainer, and a long-retired World War II vet, among others. All were there because they had an interest in either becoming mediators or integrating dispute resolution skills into their professional work in some way.

On the first evening of the training we tell participants we really have just one rule: No advice giving. We tell them they can’t give disputing parties any advice or suggestions for resolving their problems because that’s something they already know how to do, perhaps a bit too well. No sense in coming to a training and just doing what you already know. We tell them we want to develop and stretch some new brain muscles and that we’ll spend the coming days teaching them other ways to approach problem-solving.

That single rule creates some real havoc for many of our participants… read on

Do you need a Mediator or a mediator?

I am about to split hairs. But it’s for a good cause.

I’m going to split hairs because I want to create a quick reference guide to which I can point people who contact me about (1) hiring me as their mediator, (2) hiring a mediator in general, and (3) becoming a mediator. Since public and media use of the term “mediator” can mean anything from mediator to facilitator to arbitrator to negotiator, I want to propose a common language to share with people discussing this work with me.

And since professional mediators, a group to which I belong, also vary in how they use the term “mediator” and have sometimes biting (!) disagreements about who is a “real” mediator and who is not, I want to help would-be mediators have a broad understanding of the term.

When I’m teaching basic or advanced mediation to my graduate students or as a mediation trainer, I begin with the difference between “big M” and “little m” mediation… read on

Finding a good mediator: Avoid the square peg/round hole problem

Consider this mediation story reported by the Associated Press about a decade ago:

Northampton, Mass. – The city’s attempt at mediating complaints by merchants about ice cream loving motorcyclists gathering outside a Main Street shop had mixed results. About 40 bikers and 10 merchants, including the owner’s of Bart’s Homemade, sat in a circle and held hands as a mediation firm hired by the city opened the more than two-hour session Tuesday. They came to no resolution.

…”Let them go ahead and arrest me. They won’t convict me,” said Gary Arnold of Northampton, one of the riders who walked [out]. Arnold, a retired telephone lineman, said the last straw was when the group started passing around a feather to designate the speaker. “I’m not going to sit around like a grade-school kid,” Arnold told Northampton radio station WHMP.

I pass around my copy of the newspaper clipping with this story when I teach a mediation course or seminar, a warning about… read on

Your mediation competition: It isn’t who you think it is

Your biggest mediation competition isn’t who you think it is.

It’s not the mediator down the street who’s been in business for a decade and whose name is synonymous with mediation in your region. It isn’t the legal firm one building over. It isn’t the newly minted mediator across town who’s known well from a prior career. And it isn’t the ADR star from out of town, called in on his white horse for high profile cases that make the news.

Long the traditional task of good business planning, analysis of the competition has inadvertently lead too many mediators astray. It’s focused you too much on what others are doing, on what you believe is working for them and should therefore emulate, and on trying to figure out how to be distinctive in a crowded market.

Like the marathon runner so focused on the runners near her that she fails to notice the runner steadily gaining ground from two blocks back, mediators who focus primarily on other professional competition waste time, energy, and opportunity… read on

The integrated practitioner: what it takes to be one

One of the most treasured times in my professional ADR life were the months spent with my three core faculty colleagues, planning the curriculum for what would become Woodbury’s master’s degree in mediation. We’d all been teaching in the undergraduate mediation certificate program for some time, but since all of the faculty are full-time practitioners in our field and not full-time academics, our paths didn’t consistently cross in person. It was a treat, then, to work together for an extended period.

There we sat, in Alice’s stunningly beautiful and graceful rural home, coffee and tea cups in hand, musing and creating together. Laughing together. Arguing together. Problem-solving together. It’s a treasured thing to create a new program from scratch, from all that came before it and yet with the freedom to adopt or toss what we wished. It’s an even more treasured thing to have done it with people I cherish.

We were clear on one thing from the very start: Learning to be an effective mediator is improved upon by… read on

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. My favorite tips for mediators copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

For the next installment of my 10-year blogiversary celebration I’m going to share three posts that created a barrage of emails at the time they were written, and in one case, continue to prompt emails that generally start with something like, “Tsk tsk…”

The Shamu Maneuver Causes a Stir

Tammy’s note: Most of the comments from this post and its predecessor were lost in a long-ago transition to new servers, but I’ve never forgotten the hundreds of emails this topic generated. It really took me by surprise. But I am very proud that, even six years later, I still rank #1 in Google search for the phrase “shamu maneuver.” Who’d have thunk it?

Earlier in the summer the New York Times Sunday magazine featured a story that ultimately proved so popular that it was emailed around the globe and became the fodder of many a blogger. I blogged about it too, after my husband emailed a copy of the article along with the note, “Now that one woman has revealed this tactic, husbands everywhere will be free from the ‘Shamu maneuver’.” If you know Rod, then you know he wrote this with a chuckle.

The New York Times article, What Shamu Taught Me about a Happy Marriage, chronicles the author’s visit to exotic animal trainers as part of research for a book she was writing… read on

The 10 Best Ways to Win an Argument

Tammy’s note: I wrote this one for a blogging contest and had the good fortune to win the $500 first prize and find hundreds of new readers as a result of the links. Then the post got picked up for both the American and British editions of a textbook. I just recently found out it will be included in the Chinese edition later this year. I still get 3-4 emails or so a month, most of them chiding me for such poor advice! Perhaps I need to do a better job conveying irony.

I’ve been a mediator and conflict management coach for a long time. After watching lots of people fight, I think I’m pretty well informed about the most successful argument-winning tactics. Next time you argue with a loved one, try any or all of these:

1. Call them names. Particularly those that start with A, B, C and F. This approach gives you a sense of moral superiority and will help guarantee that they start acting badly in their outrage.

2. Point out their deficits. Maybe it’s their lack of intelligence, always a winning choice. Or their unattractiveness. Or whatever deficit you just know will most aggravate or hurt them. After all, this is a person you say you love. Isn’t all fair in love and war?… read on

He Was So Mild Mannered…

Tammy’s note: After I wrote this post and a right-wing blogger took me to task for it, I received such an onslaught of emails from his cronies that my email was clogged for weeks. It’s the only time in 10 years that I’ve received such a firestorm of nastiness. I still find it interesting that he never took me up on the offer I made in the article comments.

I’ve been staring at this post for several hours, trying to decide whether or not to put it up for your reading. Since you’re seeing this, you know my decision. I’ve been hesitating because the rawness of the most recent school shooting still hovers in the air. The horror and sadness are palpable, not just for those in Lancaster County, PA, but for a nation that’s beginning to comprehend that vengeance, bullying, and social disaffection are having violent consequences beyond what we can ever control with school resource officers and metal detectors.

I’ve been hesitating because I know that what I wrote below will be uncomfortable for some of you. Maybe even make you angry. I don’t usually hesitate to speak my truth but find myself doing so this time, as I search for the right words to convey myself in a way that can reach your heart before resistance sets in.

… read on

Remember, there are prizes too as part of my blogiversary celebration you get entered every time you comment or share one of my posts on your own blog or favorite social media site during the month of January 2012!

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. Conflict and blogging: 3 posts that unleashed onslaughts copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Here are five more of my favorite stories from the past decade of the Conflict Zen blog, which I’m sharing as part of my 10-year blogiversary celebration. You can find the first five favorite conflict resolution lessons and stories here.

There are prizes too and you get entered every time you comment on my blog or share one of my posts on your own blog or favorite social media site during the month of January 2012.

Be the bedouin: spend more time understanding before problem-solving

A man walking in the desert approached a Bedouin. “How far to the nearest oasis?” he inquired.

The Bedouin did not respond. “I said, how far is it to the nearest oasis?” the man asked, a bit more loudly this time and enunciating his words very carefully.

The Bedouin still did not respond. The man shook his head in frustration, turned, and began to walk away… read on

The secret to de-escalating loud, angry conflict

The bailiff unlocked the small courtroom. After telling me to make myself at home, he pointed to a small red button on the wall. “If you need me, just press that button and I’ll be in here faster than you can blink an eye. It’s an emergency button.”

“Ok, thanks,” I replied, and began to unpack my briefcase. “I mean it,” he said. “Just press the button. Maybe you should set up your chair so you’re near it.”

I gave him a long look. “You seem to want me to know about that button. Is there something else you want to tell me?” … read on

What everyone ought to know about conflict management skills

So, you want to get better at your difficult conversations at work or home. Maybe some new conflict management tools will make a difference, right?

Not quite. Formulas, recipes and active listening will only get you so far. I generally believe that most people I meet in my workshops and conflict management coaching already have all or many of the good skills they need to manage conflict well. It’s not so much about building better skills. As with all tools, it’s about what you do with them…how you put them to work.

A few years ago, my Interpersonal Conflict class was just getting underway when Kate, very animated as she came in, raised her hand. “Can I tell a quick story about something that happened to me this morning?… read on

The crucial difference between yelling at and yelling toward

The woman was screaming and yelling at the top of her lungs. Cursing a blue streak. Waving her arms wildly. And it was me she was addressing as we stood together on the sidewalk of a small town during evening drivetime. I still remember the faces of driver after driver slowing down to watch the spectacle as they passed. And wondering how long I had before someone called the police.

About twelve years ago I agreed to mediate a very contentious conflict in a small co-housing community. By the time they called me, things had escalated so badly that verbal altercations between neighbors were commonplace and everyone’s inner lizards were calling the shots… read on

This is what happens to people who live with mediators

We bought a new stove last week. It has a lot of electronic bells and whistles. Our old stove, ca. 1974 (I know, I know), could never have dreamed of such gadgetry.

The old stove’s timer emitted a honking blast of noise that just kept going until one of us ran into the kitchen, hands over our ears, to turn it off. The new stove’s timer beeps in a pretty little way when the time is up. If we don’t go in and press the keypad, it’ll beep again in about a minute. Makes sense…wouldn’t want to burn the dog biscuits because we missed one beep.

Last night… read on

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. Favorite conflict resolution lessons and stories, part 2 copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.