Southern California Arbitration Mediation and Conflict Resolution : Settle it Now Dispute Resolution Services : Serving Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Century City : Settle It Now Negotiation Blog

Thanks to Geoff Sharp at mediator blah blah for directing us to this great U.K. Mediation resource, The Mediator Magazine which is great to poke around in a little when you're home for mother's day and mom's gone off to bed.  Here, for instance, are some well taken criticisms of mediation practice by in-house counsel from the article Where's the Magic?

Top of the list of issues which invite scorn is perceived weakness on the part of the mediator. Giving palpable nonsense and well documented fact equal air-time in the interests of appearing open-minded has backfired for a number of mediators. 'It can be frustrating where they [the mediator] can see the irrationality of the other party, how their claims and positions are unsubstantiated, and choose to ignore it,' says Frank Aghovia, legal adviser at Exel Plc. He continues, 'It's like saying, "I know he's talking out of his backside, but can you give him what he wants anyway." He concludes that 'steadfast neutrality is irritating and wastes time.'

One public sector lawyer, though generally more favourably disposed towards mediation, shares a sense of frustration with the purely facilitative model: 'If a mediator is too passive,' he says, 'there isn't going to be any realignment of expectations, there isn't going to be the refocusing of the parties on the strengths and weaknesses of their own and the other party's case. It's simply not going to happen. You're not going to facilitate the movement.'

Naturally it is all a question of degree, but frustration with a style perceived to be 'slow', 'wet', 'namby-pamby', or worse, 'like therapy' is real, and stands in the way of mediation increasing its meagre market share.

It is also evident that some mediators have failed to manage the process with sufficient vigour, fuelling comments like 'I've been at quite a few [mediations] and question what the mediator actually does.' No doubt they've had to spend all their time working with the other side, but if so, this needs to be communicated.

This lack of robustness which for many is synonymous with mediation has bred the widespread belief that mediation only works when both sides want to mediate. And where that's the case, without prejudice discussions will do the job. Until mediation's image hardens to the point where people realise that great mediators can deal with the shirty, dismissive and gratuitously rude types, mediation will remain in the shadows. . . .

These criticisms are real and require attention.  I'm uncertain of the state of "professional" mediation in the U.K., but here in California, its all over the board.  For the mediation advocate and his client, finding the right mediator for the right case at the right time is not only more art than science, it's often more guesswork than art. 

I'll be dealing with the issues raised by this U.K. article in the coming weeks.  For the full article, click on the link above.

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I shouldn't be talking about collaboration and reciprocity without penning a short note of gratitude for the benefits bestowed upon me and my readers by the new Forbes.com Business and Financial Network.  

The BFNetwork has not only introduced me to many business blogs that otherwise wouldn't have come to my attention, my narcissistic perusal of my own posts listed there have drawn me into abundant Forbes.com resources that benefit my readers.  

I urge my fellow Forbes BFN Bloggers to poke around Forbe's  pages to unearth riches that can benefit their readers there.    

(right:  Forbes.com staff writer Tara Weiss)

That ridiculously lengthy introduction out of the way, here's a great article on how to negotiate a higher salary during a recession from Forbes.com staff writer Tara Weiss -- How to Ask  For A Raise When Times Are Hard.  Summary below:

• find out what people in your market and your position are making.
• once you know your market value, request a conversation with your manager about salary
• remind your manager of the strong contributions you've made.
• during an economic downturn, highlight new clients you've brought to the firm and cost-saving measures you've enacted. Include the key projects you've completed and goals you've met.
• prove you're vital to getting the company through a recession
• present your manager with the research you collected on what others in your market are making.
• consider perks outside of salary such as vacation time, health benefits, or reimbursement for commuting and professional training in a job-related skill.
• if you're rejected, ask what you can do in the next six months to make this conversation successful the next time. 

Thanks Tara!

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Today's New York Times (Questions of Rent Tactics by Private Equity) reports that investment firms have been purchasing New York City rental properties for the avowed purpose of "turning over 20 percent to 30 percent of the units, five times the typical vacancy rate," to upgrade the rentals up and out of rent regulation, generating tens of millions of dollars of income for the investors.    

Tenants are complaining that the investment firms' tactics to "turn over" those units (i.e., evict low-income residents from their homes) are not only ruthless, but fraudulent as well.  See the full article here.

So what's the little guy to do when BigBusiness decides to set aside ethics to maximize profit?  What individuals have always done when their survival is threatened.  Organize.  According to John Medina, author of Brain Rules, there's more than one way to be the fittest survivor and collaboration has always been our species' strategy.  

"Suppose you are not the biggest person on the block," Medina writes,

but you have thousands of years to become one.  What do you do?  If you are an animal, the most straightforward approach is becoming physically bigger, like the alpha male in a dog pack, with selection favoring muscle and bone.  But there is another way to double your biomass.  It's not by creating a body, but by creating an ally.  If you could establish cooperative agreements with some of your neighbors, you could double your power even if you did not personally double your strength. 

Trying to fight off a woolly mammoth?  Alone, and the fight might look like Bambi vs. Godzilla.  Two or three of you, however, coordinating your behaviors and establishing the concept of 'teamwork,' and you present a formidable challenge:  You can figure out how to compel the mammoth to tumble over a cliff.  There is ample evidence that his is exactly what we did

Locating and deploying likely allies is not only good sense when the individual has no bargaining power -- like NYC's low-income tenants -- it's also an extremely savvy move for business negotiators.  As Lax and Sebenius explain in their ground-breaking book 3-D Negotiation

[w]here one-dimensional negotiators mainly focus on actions at the table, [the] third dimension, “setup,” extends to actions away from the table that shape and re-shape the situation to advantage. In deal after deal we’ve seen the same result: once the parties and issues are fixed, and once the negotiating table has otherwise been set, much of the game has already been played.

Therefore, before even showing up at the conference room, 3-D Negotiators take the initiative. They act away from the table to set up the most promising possible situation, ready for tactical interplay. This means ensuring that the right parties have been approached, in the right sequence, to deal with the right issues, that engage the right set of interests, at the right table or tables, at the right time, under the right expectations, and facing the right consequences of walking away if there is no deal.

If the setup at the table isn’t promising, this calls for moves to re-set it more favorably. As we’ll show you, a superior setup plus the right tactics can yield remarkable results that would be unattainable by purely tactical means, however skillful.

See the 3-D Negotiation strategy summarized in the online introduction here.

You don't need to grow larger, richer, stronger or even smarter to gain a bargaining advantage.  If you find the right allies, before you know it, you'll be roasting that woolly mammoth over charcoal briquettes in your own backyard.   

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Brilliant piece on de-escalating conflict over at Tammy Lenski's Conflict Zen this morning.  Teaser and link below:  

The friendly 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 and 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?”

Continue reading here.

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I'm asked this morning by an ADR colleague whether we can criticize diversity without sounding like racists.  The question itself is problematic because it not only assumes a racial divide, it places "us" on the "white" side of it. 

The question arose from a recent press release by local mediator Elizabeth Moreno -- Is Mediation Losing Its Effectiveness:  Lack of Diverse Mediators.  The release describes an ADR diversity initiative being pursued by Shell Oil.  Shell, noted Moreno, is  

 introducing supplier diversity to the ADR profession [by] extend[ing] business opportunities to certified minority and women ADR neutrals. These efforts, coined as "second tier," allow Shell to influence prime or majority ADR firms, with whom they do business, to also contract with minority and women owned ADR firms within the business community.

In the upcoming months Shell will be targeting  . . . ADR services to participate in second tier efforts. Shell astutely recognizes that by embracing the concept of inclusion, the company will rise to a higher level, reflecting its belief that it "will benefit from diversity through better relationships with customers, suppliers, partners, employees, government and other stakeholders, with positive impact on the bottom line."

I'm assuming that my questioner does not agree with the "affirmative action" aspect of this program.  Having debated the affirmative action issue since I began law school at U.C. Davis where the Supreme Court Bakke decision originated, I know well how divisive this issue can be.  But it is an important issue -- an issue critical to a nation not only "conceived in liberty" but "dedicated to the proposition that all men (sic) are created equal."

So Let's Take a Look at ADR and Diversity

I'll ask the academics over at the ADR Prof Blog to correct me if I'm wrong.  

I understand the academic criticism of mediation to be this:  in the immediate post-civil rights era while greater legal protections have been afforded to women and under-represented minorities, the "people" have been channeled into a system -- mediation -- that lacks the prejudice-flattening constraints of the rule of law.  More disturbing, say critics, is the fact that this "lawless" system is largely presided over by -- excuse me if this offends anyone -- OLD WHITE MEN.

I've learned more about racial bias talking to my liberal (white) "unprejudiced" friends this election season than I have since I participated in the "second wave" women's movement in the early nineteen seventies (remember consciousness raising?)  I do not judge them, nor myself, for our necessarily limited view which just happens to be that of the dominant culture.

I know we still have a serious racial divide because when I talk to my educated and liberal African American friends they say things that shock me. Things like -- the U.S. may have started the AIDS epidemic to rid the world of Africans. OK. I get it.  There's something about their experience of America that is so radically different from mine that I think their point of view is, frankly, just a little nuts.  This is what I do know -- I will never truly be able to see the world from their point of view.

That said, I do think we can criticize people for taking advantage of "diversity" issues to forward an agenda -- or their own personal advancement -- other than forwarding diversity itself. We can criticize those who would deepen the divide to profit from it.

I think Obama is modeling the correct response to racial divide, which is one of the reasons his candidacy impresses me so.  There haven't been many public figures willing to talk about the elephant in America's living room -- racism.  Nor has anyone on the national stage in my memory ever said "your dreams do not have to come at the expense of mine."

If I could write a sentence in a circle at this point, instead of linearly as the language requires me to do, I would do so.  Here is what I understood Obama's response to the question of the racial divide in America to be.

Acknowledge it Heal it Move on Heal it Move on Acknowledge it Move On Heal it Acknowledge it

There are no periods in this sentence because this activity needs to be constant and on-going.  Because we will always be stuck in our own point of view.  Because in-group and out-group prejudice will always be with us. And because the more visible markers there are for "otherness" in others, the more prey we are to the error of dividing the world into "us" and 'them."  

The answer?  Diversity.  Vigilance.  Education. 

Toward that end, here are some ADR Diversity resources: 

Commonality to Balance Diversity

Mediation:  the Great Equalizer?  A Critical Theory Analysis

Toward a More Perfect Union in an Age of Diversity: A Guide to Building Stronger Communities
through Public Dialogue

Center for Dispute Resolution, whose mission is to "to promote and provide education and comprehensive approaches to dispute resolution that constructively serve the needs of our culturally diverse society."   

ACCESS ADR:  A 2004 Diversity Initiative Launched With The Support Of The JAMS Foundation And The ABA

Striving for DIVERSITY in ADR & Why it Matters: An Interview with the Hon. Timothy K. Lewis, the Chairman of the AAA's Diversity Committee [who] speaks candidly about his interest in diversity in the decision making professions, and why allowing minorities and women an opportunity to participate is so vitally important.

The Diversity Task force of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution ("CPR") whose mission it is to "adopt businessdriven initiatives to increase the ethnic, gender, and social diversity of mediators, arbitrators, and those involved in alternative dispute resolution, both within CPR institute and on a national scale."

Compilation of mediate dot com articles on diversity in mediation 

THE GREGORY SOBEL DIVERSITY IN MEDIATION SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION

Slouching Towards Inclusion by Carol Miller Lieber & Jamala Rogers

Diversity Resistance

The Media Diversity Institute

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Here's another character who everyone will recognize.  The Drama Queen.  Male or female, those who "stir up" conflict to add a little dramatic flair to an otherwise boring day, do so for a predictable set of reasons.

Before dissecting the guy who's the first to spread the word that George is being fired for "cooking the books," and tells Crystal that the office manager has it in for her at the same time he tells the office manager that Crystal covets her job, let's briefly return to the conflict "basics" outlined in chapter one.  

A conflict exists whenever two or more people believe that their needs (or desires) cannot be satisfied at the same time.  They see all relationships as zero sum games.  The social scientists would say that such people are in a constant state of  "perceived relative deprivation."  They are deprived in relationship to their fellows.  

We all live in a state of relative deprivation.  We drive a Honda while our neighbor drives a BMW.  We rent while our best friend owns.  Our salary is less than six figures.  The guy in the office next to us is making 200 grand.  Other people have been given more talent, better luck, more resources, superior business and professional networks, and, of course, more loving and supportive families.  And yet these "relative" deprivations do not always result in disputes.  Not unless we name, blame and claim.   

Naming, Blaming and Claiming

As we said in chapter one, "conflicts" over scarce resources do not ripen into disputes until we suffer a perceived injurious event such as failing to get in to the school of our choice; being rejected by an employer we hoped to work for; having our lavish dinner party go unreciprocated, or watching someone else take our parking space!  When we begin to suspect that we have been injured, we start looking around for the source of that injury -- someone to name as the cause, to blame for the loss and from whom to claim redress.  

Name, blame, claim.  

The Drama Queen in the Field of Conflict

Of the primary responses to conflict -- denying, avoiding, yielding, problem solving, and contending -- the Drama Queen almost always chooses contention.  Contentious responses to conflict include ingratiation or gamesmanship, shaming, threats, promises or arguments, and coercive commitments or violence. All of these tactics are employed to overpower the will of another to get what the contender wants. 

Meet Drama Queen John.  He's your colleague who has recently been assigned to work on the same project you have.  You are calm, well-organized, efficient and productive.  John is impulsive, chaotic, inefficient and un-productive.  You've never understood why John has lasted as long as he has at this job.  "Maybe he's the owner's brother-in-law" you've speculated -- but only to yourself.   

As a good team player, you've been keeping your own counsel.  You've mentioned neither your opinions about John nor your irritation with him to your co-workers.  You've been careful in all your interactions with John not to show your annoyance.  You've been "getting along and going along" while at the same time trying to keep your eye on the prize -- the successful completion of the project that's been entrusted to you.   

For all your caution, things start to go wrong on the first day.  That very afternoon your supervisor Jamie drops by your office to mention that your teammate Gina is complaining about your domineering style.  The following week, you hear that George is saying you didn't deserve the bonus you received last year.  Someone has suggested that you have a "special" relationship with the divisional vice-president.  By week three, the team meetings have become tense.  People with whom you've long worked well eye you suspiciously when you enter the room.  And John is uncharacteristically cheerful. 

What Happened Here?

Unless someone talks to John about his dissatisfaction, we'll never quite know why he's been spreading rumors about you and creating ill-feeling between you and your team mates.  Still, we can make a few fair assumptions based on our knowledge of the social psychology of conflict.

For whatever reason, John appears to have named you as the source of some dissatisfaction in his worklife.  He's blamed you for that dissatisfaction and is actively claiming something from you.  In this case, his claim -- though negative and likely self-destructive -- comes in the form of personal satisfaction. 

What does someone like John get out of demonizing you to your workmates? The perverse satisfaction of exercising control, of making a drab office day momentarily dramatic, and, of exacting revenge from someone he's cast in the role of adversary.  John's hallmark characteristic is a lack of control.  Remember that he's disorganized, chaotic, impulsive and unproductive.  When he's able to create an atmosphere of suspicion about you, he's momentarily achieved the thing he most lacks, the thing you appear to have, the thing he believes people like you have deprived him of -- control.  

Though you needn't pity the poor Drama Queen, now that you know what drives him, you have some chance of engaging him in a productive conversation about his workplace behavior; a conversation that will make your work life far more cheerful and friendly.

Below, the Conflict Map outlining some of the concepts discussed here -- scroll down to the second page. 

Conflict Map - Get more documents

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Dear Janis,

As you'll notice, I've posted on my blog the first three "chapters" of the ABC's -- due out from Janis Publications under the more genteel title "A" is for Donkey in July.    

Not meaning to compare myself to one of the greatest writers of all-time -- Charles Dickens -- other than in our mutual need for reader recognition, I'm hoping you will find that the "serialization" of the ABC's will encourage readers to buy it rather than discouraging them from doing so.  As you'll remember,

[a]ll of Dickens' novels made their first appearance in serial form. Nine came out in monthly installments: Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, and The Mystery of Edwin Rood. Five were composed for weekly serialization: The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock; Hard Times in Household Words; and A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in All the Year Round. . . . Oliver Twist appeared in the monthly issues of Bentley's Miscellany, which Dickens was editing at the time. Although he took up the weekly form with the intention of getting into more frequent correspondence with his readers, Dickens never ceased to fret under the restrictions of tailoring his narrative into briefer segments; and indeed, with Hard Times he returned to the practice of blocking out his stories as if for monthly installments. Thus, the novelist's preferred and characteristic method was that of monthly serialization, calling, as he said, for "the large canvas and the big brushes."

Simply put, as a writer of installment novels who invited reader comments as he wrote, Charles Dickens may have been the first blogger for whom instant gratification was also "too slow." 

We don't, however, have to return to Victorian England for serialization precedent.  Tom Wolfe's phenomenal best-seller The Bonfire of the Vanities  was serialized in 27 installments in Rolling Stone magazine starting in 1984. The novel was a bestseller and a phenomenal success, even in comparison with Wolfe's other books.  Although it was thereafter made into one of the most dreadful movies of all time, we cannot blame that failure on the serial form the novel originally took.

Now that I've compared myself to two of my favorite authors, I will have to display a little humility.  Unless I can merge blogging with book writing, I don't think this book will be ready this July, this summer, this fall or next winter.  I think I'm only going to get it written if I do it this way.  

I hope that's alright with you!  The book itself will be better written (there are editors and publishers for a reason) ; far better illustrated; and, will make a fabulous gift for any friend, neighbor, co-worker, or mother-in-law the impulse-Borders'-buyer has in mind when they first see the ABC's irresistibly offering itself at the check-out stand.

I'm also hoping to convince you that the word "Asshole" will draw more customers than it will repel.  But that's why I'm in contact with readers.  I'm certain they'll tell me.

All best to you and your lovely husband Ray,

Vickie

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R. David Donoghue over at the Chicago IP Litigation Blog is hosting a new "Carnival" of Blogs that is new to me -- The Carnival of Trust.  

As David explains:

The Carnival of Trust is a monthly, traveling review of ten of the last month's best posts related to various aspects of trust in the business world. It is much like the weekly Blawg Reviews that I post links to and have hosted, but those generally contain far more than ten links. My job this month was to pick those ten posts for you and provide an introduction to each post that makes you want to click through and read more.

I'm ridiculously pleased to be included in the category of Trust in Leadership and Management along with Charles H. Green's Trust Matters; George Ambler's Practice of Leadership;  and Stephen Albainy-Jenei's Patent Baristas  (if they gave awards for blog template design, PB would win in my book every day of the week).  In this crowd I feel like Zelig!

Here's David's generous mention of the Settle it Now Negotiation Blog and my recent post on convincing your clients to give up more than you (their attorney) predicted while still maintaining your credibility.

On the subject of trust-based leadership, Victoria Pynchon at the Settle It Now, Negotiation Blog has an excellent guide for maintaining your client's trust during a difficult negotiation: How Can I Convince My Client to Lose More than Predicted and Still Maintain My Own Credibility? The answer is complex and multi-faceted, but it boils down to the fact that you have to get the stakeholders and decision makers face-to-face, get their buy in on resolution as a goal (in addition to winning), explore all avenues of resolution, and you have to let them explore all aspects of the dispute, even those that do not matter. The last point is a difficult one for lawyers. As a lawyer you generally want to remain focused on the settlement inputs -- money, confidentiality provisions, sale of existing product if something about the product is being changed, etc. -- but from a trust perspective it is important that the stakeholders resolve not just those issues that go into a final agreement, but any problems or concerns they have related to the dispute or the parties to the dispute.

And let me just add here -- though I'll sound like a broken record to my regular readers -- that business people seek out lawyers because they believe themselves to be victims of injustice. (see my short-short video on this topic here)

Though I, as a mediator, am always seeking business solutions to legal problems, the client's injustice problem must be addressed to maintain your credibility (and retain your client's trust.).  Every great mediator I know will address this issue with your client unbidden.  If you're using less than great mediators --  raise the issue yourself -- all competent mediators should be prepared to address the issues foremost on your client's mind right including -- Will I lose?  How much more is this going to cost me? and Am I Being Extorted or Low-Balled?

Thanks for the mention, David!  I truly am greatly honored.  But more than that, you've helped me reach greater numbers of business people with a message that I carry somewhat like an old-fashioned missionary -- go beyond positions; find the parties' interests; create value; claim as much of that value as possible; craft business solutions to a legal problems; and, frankly address your client's injustice issues.  They'll be yours for life.

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Here's a local community protest being "handled" -- in part -- as a community-wide  "mediation," "facilitation,"  or "public dialog."

We have an attempted engagement here over the apparently unwanted "gift" of a new Home Depot in the Sunland-Tujunga community.  It appears that the community would like to see an Environmental Impact Assessment conducted and an EIR filed before the Depot moves in (if ever).

The City Attorney stepped in to help -- recruiting community mediators and facilitators to conduct a community dialog.  It's my understanding that Home Depot representatives were not present at this dialog (please correct me if I'm wrong about this).  For that reason alone -- a missing critical stakeholder -- a suspicious or hostile community response is unsurprising. 

Let me say, however, that we/** are new at this -- making an effort to engage an entire community in a facilitated conversation about the issues giving rise to a protest.  We're bound to make the type of errors highlighted by community members below.  So let's not call this a failure but an opportunity to learn.  

Here, for instance, is a recent blog entry calling the "community meeting" a facilitation rather than a mediation -- correctly noting that mediators have no allegiance to one side or the other and no agenda.  See the Zuma Times -- LA Daily Blog coverage with one or more YouTube videos here.

For background, here's a late April '08 Los Angeles Daily News article on the issue -- excerpt below.  

SUNLAND - Amid a contentious battle over a proposed Home Depot, city officials tried to cool tempers Saturday by hosting a community dialog aimed at finding a middle ground between warring factions.

About 200 community residents attended, although organizers had been expecting up to 1,000.

Although a few supporters, including Home Depot employees, noted the project would likely bring more jobs to the community, most in the crowd were against it.

Asked for opinions, most listed complaints such as traffic and an increase in day laborers. Some even used the term "community assassination." . . . .

Some residents sat and listened patiently as mediators engaged them in dialog in an effort to understand their concerns and to work toward constructive solutions.

Billed as "the Sunland/Tujunga dialog," the meeting at Mount Gleason Middle School was set up by the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office as part of an agreement with The Home Depot Inc., which suspended a $10 million lawsuit against the city while it seeks a building permit.

The company is seeking to build a store on the old Kmart lot on Foothill Boulevard . . . 

Attorney Barbara Goldfarb, a volunteer facilitator with the dispute-resolution team that conducted the meeting, made sure everyone knew that she and her staff had no connection to the home-improvement company.

"I do not have a Home Depot credit card," she said before people split up into 27 groups. "I do not own Home Depot stock."

Goldfarb said the dispute-resolution program is funded by grants and funds from the city and county.

"Certain times (these types of efforts) don't work. Other times, they work out wonderfully," Goldfarb said.

"There's always an answer to conflict if people will talk."

And here's a mis-step "we" won't make next time as reported by the Sunland-Tujunga Alliance blog.  

Lots of folks have comments and questions about the evaluation form we were asked to fill out at the end of the small groups. I have some of my own, too. I was shocked and horrified at some of those questions. I thought the questions showed a slanted, pre-conceived idea of what someone thought our issues should or would be, not what our concerns really are. I spoke with Barbara Goldfarb, the lead facilitator, about it. Yep, the evaluation form was written by the RAND Corporation, just as the pre-questions were. Ms. Goldfarb agreed with me that some of those questions were way off the mark, too complex to be answered by just checking a box, or unrelated to our actual concerns.

I just want to add that I am so proud of us, all of us who showed up yesterday. We were well prepared, and participated with a mature and honest approach. Also, to those who wrote intelligent, well thought out answers to the questions, I applaud you. There were a lot of people who let us know that they were unable to attend the “dialog” due to other commitments, but those of us who were there, carried the message loud and clear! No Home Depot in Sunland-Tujunga! Home Depot must follow the rules! We want our EIR!

I invite comment from participants in the community. For their information, I am not affiliated with the City of Los Angeles in any way.  I serve as a volunteer mediator for the Los Angeles County Bar Association Community Mediation program in West Hollywood, on the Los Angeles Superior Court's pro bono mediation panel (for litigated cases) and as a Settlement Officer for the local federal trial court (also for litigated cases).  Otherwise, my work is entirely in the private sector. 

___________________

/**  When I say "we" I'm referring to mediators in general who are part of a theory and practice of facilitated dialog as well as many other strands of the mediation movement including consensus-building, prejudice-reduction, settlement conferences, mediations of litigated cases, community mediation, restorative justice and the like.  I personally have had nothing to do with the community "dialog" or facilitation or "mediation" arising from the dispute over the development of a Home Depot in Sunland-Tujunga.

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In the new issue of The Complete Lawyer, my fellow Human Factor columnists and I talk about what new tricks we had to learn and old skills we had to re-invent when we took the journey from legal to mediation practice.  I give you my section of the column below, encouraging you to link to the Human Factor here to read what my my good friends and colleagues Gini Nelson, Stephanie West Allen and Diane Levin have to say.

My first day of mediation training progressed in somewhat the same fashion as my first few weeks in Civil Procedure. I remember struggling with the theoretical bases of jurisdiction in Pennoyer v. Neff one day only to be told the following week that Pennoyer was no longer the law. “Why,” I remember thinking, “did we even bother with Pennoyer when this Buckeye case about an exploding boiler now seems to be the law? Or would it be replaced next week as well?”

Law school, which taught me to “think like a lawyer,” was the precise opposite of my new mediation studies. Now, it seemed, I was being trained to stop “thinking like a lawyer.” Still, mediation, like the law, was full of conflicting ideologies from which it appeared I was required to choose.

It was easy for me to be evaluative: I had 25 years of legal practice in my backpack. I learned Dr. Cialdini’s “Principles of Ethical Influence”—Reciprocation, Scarcity (the rule of the rare), Authority, Commitment, Empathy, and, Consensus. These power principles helped the mediator to “make the other side see reason” when called upon to do so.

But the evaluative style was not the only prescribed route to mediation mastery. There were many who favored facilitation. The facilitative mediator first creates an atmosphere of hope and safety before helping the parties locate areas of agreement and mutual benefit. Here, the mediator is a follower or helper on the path to resolution, like the protective figures who appear early in a hero’s journey to enlightenment.

You can’t immerse yourself in mediation for long before you hear the clamor of the transformative crowd. Facilitative mediators, say the transformative folks, too often present themselves as wizards who intrude upon the parties’ conflict with their own agenda—usually “resolution be damned, let’s settle this darn thing!” The transformative mediator lets the session wheel out of control if that is where it is eager to go. Conflict is not seen as a state to be avoided or suppressed. Like a loving mother following the course of her child’s flu, the transformative mediator provides the parties with encouragement, opportunities to rest, lots of fluids and a metaphoric place to lay their heads as the conflict runs its natural course.

When I first brought this tangle of methodologies to the few master mediators I know, they all made short work of it with the scalpel of experience. “You are the technique,” they instructed. “Just stay in the process. Don’t guess. Ask questions. Listen. Don’t give up before the miracle of mediation happens.”

Now, four years into a full-time ADR practice, I am still struggling to embrace the entire dispute—the business or people problem that found its way to an attorney because of the justice issues with which it was burdened. I often feel that I’m walking a razor’s edge. I will never stop “thinking like a lawyer.” Nor will I stop pursuing this new way of thinking—one that looks for the opportunity to finesse the legal impasse by using the problem itself as an opportunity to broker a deal.

Why mediation? For me, it’s simply a broader canvass on which to paint a new picture. How mediation? In baby steps, one after the other, in just the same way I learned to be a litigator and trial attorney. How can the Human Factor help with your own life and legal practice? Stick around. Miracles are common here. We think you’ll enjoy the ride.

 

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Is negotiation a political issue?

You bet.

Qureshi: Pakistan Won't Negotiate With Terrorists

(RTTNews) - Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Monday that his government would not negotiate with "terrorists" even as it seeks open dialogue with some militant groups.

Jimmy Carter and Hamas

WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL
April 16, 2008

Jimmy Carter's decision to meet with the terrorist organization Hamas is turning the former president into something of a political pariah.

New York Times "On the Issues" Foreign Policy Terrorism and Iraq

John Edwards

 On North Korea: "We should negotiate with the North Koreans. We should be tough. We should require that they stop their nuclear development program. We should have the absolute ability to verify that that has occurred."

On the Middle East: Has said that he believes "a two-state solution is ultimately the answer" but would not negotiate with Yasir Arafat. (before Arafat's death, obviously) Would send an envoy to the region.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon
Wednesday Feb. 27, 2008 
Majority of Israelis want to negotiate with Hamas

Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Less than one-third (28 percent) still opposes such talks.

I could go on but you get the point.  The first decision any negotiator must make is whether he's willing to negotiate with the "opposition."  And the second is on what terms.

That decision -- and the many ways in which you can bring your opponent to the bargaining table any time you wish -- with the expectation that your negotiations will either successfully resolve your dispute or drastically limit the amount of time you spend litigating it before settlement will be the subject of this week's posts. 

Along the way, we'll talk about the many ways in which the masters of international diplomacy manage to take advantage of favorable negotiation conditions and to finesse unfavorable political climates for the purpose of getting warring parties to meet in an attempt to reach accord.. 

Stay tuned!

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This morning's guest blog -- Eye of the Storm Leadership:  Mediation as Leadership and Leadership as Mediation -- is by Peter Adler, PhD, President of The Keystone Center and author of Eye-of-the-Storm leadership: 150 Ideas, Stories, Quotes, and Exercises on the Art and Politics of Managing Human Conflicts. 

Not long ago, Bob Benjamin and I offered a session at the ABA meeting in Seattle called “Beyond Orthodoxy: The Adaptive Mediator in a Perpetually Changing Marketplace of Clients, Needs, and Ideas.” The session, surprisingly packed to the gills, focused on new and alternative frameworks for mediation. 

We began with three assumptions.

First, we posited that mediators have become much too self-absorbed with rules, laws, titles, professional issues, and organizational matters.

Second, we noted that there is insufficient attention being paid to ongoing core negotiation issues and intervention dilemmas, as well as to the tensions surrounding competition, cooperation, and the deep human needs that attend conflict resolution.

Third, we stressed that it is time to take mediation to the next level in our popular and political cultures.

At the end of the session, one very thoughtful gentleman came up to me and said: “I like what you guys are saying but I really need to make a living. Much as I want to move our work to the next level, I have to focus on professionalization issues.”

But are the two incompatible? Not at all! 

Certainly mediators need to be concerned about fees, markets, specialties, certifications, associations, and affiliations. But there is a more important challenge, one that, if we meet it capably, will help advance our professional goals and simultaneously take our work to its zenith.

Quite simply, we must make our core mediation values part and parcel of the way leaders in the public and private sectors lead.  The creation of a widespread cultural mediation “pull” would necessarily both overtake and serve as the engine of our much narrower efforts at “pushing” settlement, resolution, and agreement in legal markets.

Mediators like to talk about “the field” or “the profession.”  But let's remember that our work is, at core, a passion. It is a shared calling that links us to millions of people worldwide who do not have the word "mediator" engraved on their business cards.

Most of people with whom we are so aligned have never been formally trained and don’t know what we are talking about when we slip into technical mediator-babble. Nonetheless they share the same passionate impulses and intellectual creativity as we do when they talk about the power of beneficial negotiation processes, the inclusion of diverse voices in our communities, and the ability of ordinary people to forge wise, effective, and tractable solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

In my work at The Keystone Center, I see these people all the time. Many of them are at the table grappling with the energy, environment, and public health cases and consensus building projects we work on. They come to assert their positions on reformulating food products, realigning the I-70 highway, or stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions and are stunned by their own progress. They open lines of genuinely new communication, form improbable alliances, and craft smart deals.

Tough as nails as negotiators, they also see the enormous value of collaborative problem solving. These same people are in positions to change our political and popular cultures. They hold influential positions in their companies, government agencies, and NGOs. They sit on library boards, church councils, and education commissions. They volunteer time to the PTA and sit on the boards of the local United Way. Some of them occupy elected or appointed to public offices. Others coach basketball teams, lead Rotary Clubs, or run neighborhood farmers' markets.  . 

We need to connect with these people, learn from them, pass our knowledge and experience to them, and help foster a new generation who can make the obvious links between the mediation skills we have learned and the native leadership work they are doing.

If we do that well, our political culture will flourish in new ways and business will boom.

______________________________

Peter S. Adler, Ph.D. is President of The Keystone Center, which applies consensus-building and cutting-edge scientific information to energy, environmental, and health-related policy problems. The Keystone Center also offers extensive training and professional education programs to educators and business leaders and runs the Keystone Science School in the Rocky Mountains.

Adler's specialty is multi-party negotiation and problem solving. He has worked extensively on water management and resource planning problems and mediates, writes, trains, and teaches in diverse areas of conflict management. He has worked on cases ranging from the siting of a 25-megawatt geothermal energy production facility to the resolution of construction and product liability claims involving a multi-million dollar stadium. He has extensive experience in land planning issues, water problems, marine and coastal affairs, and strategic resource management.

Adler has written extensively in the field of mediation and conflict resolution. He is the co-author of Managing Scientific & Technical Information in Environmental Cases (1999); Building Trust: 20 Things You Can Do to Help Environmental Stakeholder Groups Talk More Effectively About Science, Culture, Professional Knowledge, and Community Wisdom (National Policy Consensus Center, 2002); the author of Beyond Paradise and Oxtail Soup (Ox Bow Press, 1993 and 2000) and numerous other articles and monographs.

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This is a great video that I highly recommend to everyone interested in ending violence in our public schools -- particularly Los Angeles attorneys.  I "judge" (the DRS folks like to call it "coaching") local peer mediation "competitions" (the DRS folks don't like the word "competition)with students as young as ten and as old at 17.  And they are dynamite mediators.  If you want to get involved in some truly pro bono community service work, there's no better place to start than with LACBA's peer mediation program.

And, as always, the "kids" have a lot to teach us "adults" about collaborative vs. positional bargaining.

I am also a LACBA DRS volunteer for its community mediation programs, doing my work at the West Hollywood Community Mediation Center on Melrose under the tremendous direction of one of the world's greatest mediation conveners, Kathryn Turk.  See Part I of my interview with Kathryn below.

 

Finally, if you don't mind making last minute plans, come on down to the Fifteenth Annual DRS Awards Dinner this coming Tuesday, April 29, 2008, with the reception beginning at 6:00 p.m. and Dinner 7:00 p.m. at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel

                                        HONOREES

Stanton “Larry” Stein
Hon. Joyce L. Kennard

Keynote Speaker: Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith

Get your tickets here!

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I talk a lot in this blog about community; about the need for all of us to understand that when you drill a hole in the other guy's side of the boat, you sink too.  There's something about disaster on a grand scale that brings the best out in us -- creates heroes.  And maybe, if you're inclined to ask why "bad things happen to good people" the answer is that we need to be reminded of our common humanity; common fragility; and, our common obligation to serve as stewards of the planet and all life on it.

So it is with more than a small amount of pleasure that I announce the book launch for my good friend Cathy Scott's memoir of the heroic pet rescues that took place in the wake of Katrina.

Cathy was one of the "kids" in my neighborhood fom the time I was five years old until we all left the old neighborhood for our adult lives.  She was also a member of the first writers' group I was ever part of -- Sisters of the Pen -- a neighborhood "club" we started when I was in the sixth grade and Cathy just entering high school.

Only Cathy has truly fulfilled the dreams of that small group of children and teenagers.  This is her sixth or seventh book and the one that I just know is going to sell a million or more copies for her.

Nostalgia aside, here is the information on the book launch!  (for the r.kv.r.y. literary journal's special issue on natural disasters, click here).  

A book launch event will be held on Saturday, July 26, marking the national release of author Cathy Scott's  book, PAWPRINTS OF KATRINA: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned (to be released this summer by John Wiley & Sons).

The event will be held from 1:45 p.m. - 5 p.m. at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary's Welcome Center (5001 Angel Canyon Road, Kanab, Utah 84741, a 3-1/2-hour drive from Las Vegas). Refreshments will be served.

Attending and signing books will be actress and animal activist Ali MacGraw, who wrote the book's foreword, and photographer Clay Myers, who has more than 70 compelling photos in the book. Also signing will be police K-9 handler Cliff Deutsch, who is featured on the cover rescuing a dog.

On display at the Welcome Center patio deck during the event will be Ark, a full-sized replica of a flat-bottomed boat used to save animals from floodwaters. It was created by Cyrus Mejia, in-house artist and a co-founder of Best Friends . The 4-by-10-foot boat is covered in a unique collage of animal admissions forms (with rescued pets' pictures), photos from volunteers, satellite images of Katrina, maps of New Orleans and strips from pet product bags used during the rescue effort.

Volunteers from Katrina will be at the event, and many Best Friends staffers who worked in the region will be attending too, so it will very much be a reunion. While book signings are scheduled for other parts of the country (including New Orleans on the third anniversary of Katrina), this is the kick-off event and a great opportunity to visit the sanctuary.

To find out where to stay in Kanab, go to: http://www.bestfriends.org/atthesanctuary/angelcanyon/visitorfaq.cfm.

A new Holiday Inn Express has opened in Kanab (435-644-3100), so if the sanctuary cabins and cottages or other hotels are full, the new one will probably have openings. Summer is a busy time in the area, because of nearby Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon, and booking early is highly recommended.

If you'd like to take a free tour of the sanctuary, which sits on 33,000 acres in Angel Canyon with about 1,800 animals on any given day, you'll need to book a reservation by calling 435-644-2001, ext. 4537. Or, for more info, go to: http://www.bestfriends.org/atthesanctuary/angelcanyon/visitorfaq.cfm

To learn more about Pawprints of Katrina, go to: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470228512.html

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I promised you a series of posts on mediating complex and sophisticated commercial mediation. 

Here's what I'm really most interested in doing -- starting a high level conversation among commercial litigators and commercial mediators about the best way in which we can help one another help your clients to achieve the best resolution possible to their commercial dispute and the legal problem/solution associated with it. 

I'm always looking for the smartest guy or gal in the room because. I'm just a geek who really enjoys spending time with people who are savvy, astute, original well-read, and, well-spoken.  These people tend to see things more clearly than I do and that clarity of vision often results in a way of approaching problems that generates better results in a shorter amount of time than is the norm.

One of the smartest guys in any room is AAA arbitrator and Judicate West mediator, Jay McCauley.  O.K., he's Harvard Law and I'm just a state university girl.  But pedigree doesn't matter to me.  Brilliance and creativity does.  Jay and I have recently spent a lot of time talking about the way we feel that we're sometimes talking past our attorney clients and they us.  So we have plans to write some really interesting articles that we hope will help both mediators and attorneys achieve better results more consistently when they decide to settle, rather than to try, a case.

Jay's written a lot already.  And because I'm now getting around 11,000 hits/month (!!yay!!) I've decided to simply pull up his existing articles on mediating particular commercial disputes before launching our jointly written posts.  If any of those 11,000 monthly "hits" come from commercial litigators, we'd LOVE to hear back from you on this series.  

That said, here's Jay's article on Wage and Hour Class Action Mediation.     

There is no such thing as a "cookie cutter" mediation. Nonetheless, most mediations have, among other things, the following general characteristics: 

•  At least four participants whose interests are not naturally aligned - Plaintiff, Plaintiff's counsel, Defendant and Defendant's counsel. 
• Little or no genuine concern that a settlement will foster future claims. 
• Some prospect of integrative, or "value adding," resolutions. 
• A rich body of applicable case law to serve as the empirical basis for risk-based claims valuation analysis. 
• A virtually unrestricted free market where almost any resolution agreeable to the parties can be turned into a contract fully enforceable by the courts.

Wage & hour class action mediation, by contrast, has none of these characteristics.

• Mediating with Only Three Participants

All fictions aside, there are three, not four, interested participants in a wage & hour mediation. They are the defendant, its counsel, and the counsel for the class. Plaintiffs themselves (including the named representatives) are literally absent from the negotiation altogether, and are typically absent physically from the mediation sessions.

Any imbalance resulting from the absence of plaintiffs themselves is, in theory, "corrected" by an institutional device unique to class actions: the fairness hearing, in which a court imposes outside boundaries on the settlement for the protection of the plaintiffs.

Nonetheless, the absence of the plaintiffs themselves is significant. The court is not, in any sense, a substitute negotiator for the plaintiffs. It simply either approves or rejects the settlement agreement, in accordance with reasonably well-established standards, after the settlement has been negotiated by plaintiffs' counsel and the defense team.

The actual negotiators have a common interest in avoiding agreements so extreme that they will be either rejected by the court, or undermined by excessive "opt-outs" from the plaintiffs themselves. But subject to these outside limits, the three players at the negotiating table have an interest in maximizing two things: the portion of the settlement funds that goes to plaintiffs' counsel as approved fees; and the portion of the settlement funds available to be returned or otherwise used by the defendants.

The upshot is this: Plaintiff's counsel seek, and usually get, one third of the settlement funds as fees; amounts unclaimed by class members revert to the defendant to the extent the court permits ; and the stated settlement amounts include the resulting social security and FICA charges the company will have to bear as a consequence of the settlement - an amount that turns out to be 13.85% of the total paid to the class members. These terms are easily arrived at because those at the negotiating table can "give" each other these benefits, without cost to themselves.

The absence of the plaintiff also eliminates one of the most common challenges a mediator has to face in "ordinary" litigation - the challenge of plaintiffs resisting economically advantageous proposals because of a desire to use the courts to obtain perceived benefits that go beyond economics: retribution for perceived wrongs; public vindication; and principled refuge in the Rule of Law.

This not to say that the issues addressed in wage & hour class action mediations are entirely economic. But the non-economic issues characteristically arise from the defense side, and tend to break down into two categories. The first category is the common "principled" resistance to a fairly rigid statutory scheme that typically strikes defendants as entirely inconsistent with the statutory purpose and with common sense. Specifically, those rationally thought to be managers cannot be treated as exempt in California if the time they spend in identified categories of non-exempt functions (e.g. sales) happens to take up more than half their time. The "player-manager" may be thought of as a manager, but there will be exposure if he is paid like a manager, and that fact is a hard-to-swallow surprise for many companies. 

• The Defendant's Need to Deter Future Claims
  
  Then there is the second form of defendant resistance to otherwise attractive settlement opportunities. This one is born of a genuine dilemma: the company concludes it cannot "turn managers into foremen" without losing the critical work incentives or esprit-de-corps or "company culture" that it concludes comes with classifying class members as exempt; but to "buy off" the class action claim through settlement without also turning class members into non-exempt workers for the future would be to inspire, by that act, endless waves, every three or four years, of new wage and hour claims.

These claims would come from new employees who are not collaterally estopped or otherwise bound by the class action judgment supporting the settlement. It would also come from its current employees, class members, who have a basis to argue their release can only apply to past "wrongs," but cannot release the continuing "wrongs" that take place after the release is entered into. Such companies are sorely tested take their chances at trial to escape the dilemma. The prominence of that question is an unusual hallmark of wage & hour mediations. And much of the focus of mediations I have handled has involved finding creative solutions to this very dilemma.

• The Absence of Integrative Bargaining Opportunities
  
  While there is a need to find creative techniques to subdue extraordinary needs for deterrence that wage & hour defendants will often have, there is a curious absence of opportunity to employ another form of creativity - that of finding integrative (rather than purely distributive) resolutions to the dispute. With one obvious exception , the "Jack Sprat" non-monetary exchanges that are the special joy of mediators - where parties give what's cheap to get what's dear, and thereby optimize the likelihood, as well as the quality, of the resolution - are not to be found in this arena.
  
  The reason is not that negotiators in this specialty are not creative, but simply that the inherent nature of class actions virtually eliminates any prospect that the form of any exchange will be anything other than money. Specifically, one stricture of class actions is that similarly situated class members be treated uniformly, and the only uniform needs the members will have is the presumptively universal need for money. As a result, the nature of class action bargaining is heavily distributive, not integrative. 
• The Absence of a Rich Body of Case Law to Support Risk-Based Claims Valuation Analysis
  
  It is a bit of an irony that a field which is so tilted toward distributive bargaining is also one in which mediators are essentially deprived of a major tool used to facilitate such bargaining - a substantial body of actual outcomes at trial in analogous cases to provide a realistic assessment of the actual risk of trial, and therefore the reasonable settlement value of a release. Because the large volume of wage & hour class actions is historically new, and because so few that do exist go to trial, little such evidence of likely outcomes in fact exists.
  
  What girds the negotiation in the absence of that evidence? It is four things. First, the statutory scheme in this area is fairly administrable, and results are arguably more predictable for this reason even in the absence of extensive actual results.
  
  Second, there is an extensive and ever increasing body of evidence of actual class certification decisions, and the factors relevant to class certification decisions in wage & hour actions are more closely related to the ultimate issues at trial than they are in other actions (compare, for example, securities fraud class actions, where the class certification issues have almost nothing to do with the significant issues at trial).
  
  Third, some narrowing of the range of potential settlement is achieved by the fact that extreme low ball offers typically are not made, even preliminarily, because both sides know (or can be reminded) that there is a certain threshold that will not survive a fairness hearing, nor sustain the plaintiff's counsels basic need to preserve reputation in the context of a settlement record that (unlike the settlement of individual claims) is always public.
  
  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, parties tend to be guided by a kind of "market price" for these claims - settlements tend to fall within a fairly well defined band established by publicly available information of what other cases have settled for relative to the total potential exposure in the case.
  
  What is notable is that, given the fairly strict and administrable standards of liability set forth in the statutes, the market price of the claims is probably materially below the amounts that a standard risk-based discounted claims valuation analysis would yield. This probably makes sense in light of the various incentives of the participants. Defendants need attractive offers (relative to exposure) to overcome both non-economic resistance factors as well as the lack of extensive palpable evidence of trial results. Defense counsel, paid hourly, have, if anything, an economic advantage to honor the client's resistance, as well as reputational and self-fulfillment benefits to keeping at least some quota of cases to try.

Plaintiffs' counsel, particularly specialists in demand, reach a certain threshold where the economically optimal course is to declare the offered amount to be enough and free up their time to fry another fish. And that threshold, in turn, need be no greater than a respectable outcome as compared only to the settlement market price itself. The Court, for its part, is institutionally loath to second-guess the norm, and institutionally dependant on most large cases settling in any event. Finally plaintiffs, themselves, are, for all practical purposes, absent from the process. They can opt out, and thereby preserve the right to bring claims on an individual basis, but the value of individual claims is rarely enough to warrant the transaction costs.

• Role of the Mediator
  
  It helps immensely for the mediator to have substantive familiarity with the rhythms and restrictions of class actions generally, and specific familiarity with the rights and duties of employers regarding wage and hour matters. That is the environment in which the mediator is applying his or her skills. But the mediator's primary contributions come from the use of more general "process skills" to anticipate, analyze and avert impasse in the negotiation process. Those skills are not unique to wage & hour mediations.
  
  Some taste of the actual process of analyzing and averting impasse may be provided by an actual example of an email I sent to defendant's counsel to overcome an impasse in a wage & hour class action I was mediating. The text - attached as "Attachment 1" - has been left in its raw form, with one exception: all names appearing in the original have been made generic so as to fully protect confidentiality. The case settled shortly after the email was sent.

John (Jay) McCauley is a mediator who also serves as an arbitrator on the Complex Commercial Panel of the American Arbitration Association and an Adjunct Professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law.  He is also a hearing officer for the ADR firm Judicate West.  

Website: www.mediate.com/mccauley.

E-mail: mailto:info@mccauleylaw.com

Phone number: (800) 848-5591.

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Thanks to Anne Reed over at Deliberations for forwarding this April 22 Psychology NewsWire, It Pays to Know Your Opponent: Success in Negotiations Improved by Perspective-Taking, But Limited by Empathy.

It Pays refers to recent work done by Kellogg School of Management Professor Adam Galinsky, who has demonstrated (with colleagues William Maddux -- (INSEAD -- Debra Gilin -- St. Mary's U. --  and Judith White -- Dartmouth) that success in negotiations depends on focusing on the head and not the heart. In other words, it is better to take the perspective of negotiation opponents rather than to empathize with them. (You may remember Galinsky as the academic responsible for demonstrating that the person who makes the first offer will (nearly) always get the larger share of the delta between the two parties' "bottom lines."  See Making the First Offer here). 

Now Galinksy and friends inform us that we are far more likely to reach a negotiated resolution to a conflict if we use our heads rather than our hearts.  As It Pays reports:  

Perspective-taking, according to the study published in the April 2008 issue of Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, involves understanding and anticipating an opponent's interests, thoughts, and likely behaviors, whereas empathy focuses mostly on sympathy and compassion for another.

"Perspective takers are able to step outside the constraints of their own immediate, biased frames of reference," wrote the authors. "Empathy, however, leads individuals to violate norms of equity and equality and to provide preferential treatments."

The researchers performed a total of three studies designed to assess the relationship between successful negotiations and perspective-taking and empathy tendencies. In two of the studies, the participants negotiated the sale of a gas station where a deal based solely on price was impossible: the seller's asking price was higher than the buyer's limit. However, both parties' underlying interests were compatible, and so creative deals were possible. In the first study, those participants who scored highly on the perspective-taking portion of a personality inventory were more likely to successfully reach a deal. In contrast, higher scores on empathy led dyads to be less successful at reaching a creative deal. 

Why Enlightened Self-Interest Trumps Sympathy

Just when you were about to stereotype "negotiated resolutions" as commie-pinko limp-wristed new age aquarian left-of-liberal kum-by-ya marshmellow toaster solutions to the problems of (excuse me fellas) real men -- along comes new research once again demonstrating that negotiation requires hard heads rather than soft hearts. 

Why?

Because our competitive natures ("I need my stuff to survive") will almost always trump our collaborative inclinations ("we need each other to survive").  If this weren't so, the world wouldn't be divided into its current "pie pieces" -- the first, second and third worlds for instance.  

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