Cross-posted at She Negotiates.
At 8 PM Women on the Move gets down to business with attorney Victoria Pynchon, author of the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, who has been called a “master of conflict resolution and deposition skills.”
Victoria recently became a regular contributor to Forbes.com’s “On the Docket” column.
You can call in with questions!
Call-in Number: (347) 857-2102
I continue to bark at the moon.
Here's a piece I missed in April on real litigation filed over virtual property in Second Life.
Architect David Denton spends much of his time on a lush tropical island, where he experiments with cutting-edge building designs and creates spaces for artists to showcase their work.
Never mind that the island only exists in the virtual-reality world of Second Life, a popular online venue where people interact via digital avatars. Denton, 62, said he purchased the island for about $700 — real money, not virtual cash — from its former owner, and considers it his property.
Here's the thought this article triggers. If 90% of all litigation involving people (I'll skip corporate litigation and litigation brought to vindicate rights such as that declaring Prop 8 unconstitutional) will end with a retired Judge telling the people that litigation is too expensive and a jury trial too uncertain for them to bear, why don't we just litigate virtually (with Linden dollars!) giving the parties the experience of litigation that will eventually drive them to settlement?
I'm sure some smart programmer can come up with an algorithm for most personal disputes, including both factual templates and the application of simple legal principles. A "ticker" could keep track of the dollars your virtual attorney is billing on your law suit's screen everyday. Continuances, discovery motions, pre-trial proceedings and depositions could all be simulated.
Then the parties return from the virtual life of Second Life Litigation and sit down in the old fashioned way to negotiate a resolution to their dispute or, if necessary, hire a village elder trained in conflict resolution, sometimes called a mediator, to help them do so.
(cross posted at She Negotiates)
I asked one of my consulting clients for a testimonial yesterday.
"Anything," she said, "it's genuinely changed the way I do everything. It's not just the shift in my business relationship with [BigBiz, Inc.]. I dumped a boyfriend last week because of our conversations! So, seriously, what would you like me to say?"
My client and I, like the few women commercial litigation clients I had during my twenty-five years as a lawyer (2%?) were quickly becoming friends. And I was proud of her. Truly proud. Like a parent would be.
"I'm proud of you," I finally said, even though I'd been thinking it for weeks. "You've shifted the power in your working relationship and that was difficult to do. You were persistent. You're a first class learner. And you've been brave."
She laughed, the way we women do when we're praised, wanting the moment to pass instead of savoring it a little, particularly when we know deep down we've genuinely achieved something important in our own lives and careers but don't want to appear self-satisfied.
So I said it again. "I'm really proud of you. You've done great work and you never gave up. You didn't fold to the power of BigBiz, Inc. You stood up for yourself."
Continue Reading...In Workplace Negotiating Secrets From Bethenny's Shrink over at Forbes.com, Xavier Amador, the therapist on Bethany Getting Married? gives his "secrets" for "winning" workplace arguments. What Amador suggests (below and at the link) is really just collaborative interest-based negotiation, but his catchy acronym - LEAP - is a good one to remember for all negotiations, whether you're brokering peace in the Middle East or getting your guy to put the toilet seat down. If you read the article, and I highly recommend doing so, you'll see that no one is "winning" any "argument." Rather, people are finding ways to accomodate all of their needs simultaneously.
Amador, 50, uses many of the same methods with both individuals and corporate clients. His book I'm Right, You're Wrong, Now What?, lays out a strategy he calls LEAP, for listen, empathize, agree, partner. It applies to salary negotiations, to disagreements with partners or colleagues or underlings and even to challenging sales assignments.
An acronym enthusiast ("acronyms help me to remember"), Amador says the first step is "L," for listen. That may sound simple, but often it's very hard. In sales, for instance. Before he became a psychologist, Amador worked for an Arizona company that sold solar heating. Rather than simply trying to push his product, he found he got further if he patiently listened to his potential clients' objections.
More important than her religious background (Jewish) her Ivy League Credentials (Harvard) her progressive, liberal or conservative Democrat political leanings, is the prospect that Kagan's addition to the Supreme Court will result in the magic number of three women on the United States Supreme Court.
Why is three the magic number?
Recent studies have shown that it takes three women corporate board members to avoid the deliterious effects of group think on corporate decision making - my own supposition on the question "why three" being that one or two women easily risk falling into male group-think. This isn't male bashing, by the way. I assume three men on an otherwise all woman's board would have a similar performance enhancing effect.
Continue Reading...
We’re celebrating Mothers Day by posting Blawg Review #263 at the She Negotiates Blog for one obvious and some not so obvious reasons. The obvious reason is the word “She.” The not-so-obvious reasons are: (1) Mother’s Day was a peace and reconciliation movement before it was a holiday; and, (2) peace exists only when we have the political will to seek and the negotiation tools achieve the resolution of conflict.
In addition to the main post, we've also posted Blawg Review #263 on our She Networks, She Succeeds, She Transforms and She Resolves pages (up at the top of the blog).
I'm blogging about gender and negotiation this month because March is National Women's History Month and March 8th was the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day (commenced in 1910, a full decade before the Nineteenth Amendment would grant U.S. women the right to vote).
Today I stumbled over the post Women Deal with Conflict Differently than Men, reporting on a study done by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard in 2008. Results of the study showed the following similarities between men and women including:
The differences included:
We'll be working with gender differences through the end of the month of March and will likely discuss this data in more detail later.
I'm sure you've noticed that we're celebrating negotiating women here this month in honor of International Women's Day and National Women's History Month. Other than tomorrow night's free negotiating women teleseminar with super coach Lisa Gates, I'm celebrating by posting in one place all of my articles on negotiating women.
Nature gives you the face you have at 20; it is up to you to merit the face you have at 50. -- Coco Chanel A local judge who has four beautiful young law students working for him this summer...
Tips from Forbes & a Word with Women: Negotiate Your First Salary
If you're entering the job market, you'll want to check out Forbes' Magazine's Tips for Negotiating Your First Salary. If you do not negotiate your first salary, you stand to lose half a million dollars over...
Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want
I didn't realize until I got onto the plane out of Seattle that Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever -- our morning plenary session speakers (Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide) -- have written a new book -- Ask...
Negotiating Your Mid-Life Career Crisis with Career Coach Lisa Gates
Practicing law, particularly litigation, is often frustrating, sometimes humiliating, and frequently simply dispiriting. On the other hand, the practice of law can be thrilling, intellectually stimulating, challenging, absorbing, and a darn good way to make a good living. When you...
Is Hillary Negotiating Her Withdrawal? So Says Cokie
From Women on the Web's Conversation Today Cokie Roberts: 'Hillary Is Negotiating Her Withdrawal' with Lesley Stahl Q&A with ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts. Excerpt below: LESLEY: Let’s talk about Hillary. I’m wondering, how do you explain..
Must Read for All Women Negotiating Law Firm Life
Below is my review in The Complete Lawyer of Lauren Stiller Rikleen's must-read book Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law. Concluding paragraph: At bottom, this book calls for management practices that will benefit all attorneys...
Clinton Speaks on 88th Anniversary of Women's Suffrage
(Right, women protesting, 1912. My own grandmother was 12 years old at the time this photo was taken. By the time she was old enough to vote in 1921, she could vote) Why women's voting rights and Hillary Clinton's DNC...
Negotiating Women at ForbesWoman
If you're a certain age, you'll remember women's magazines as mostly "Can This Marriage Be Saved" (The Ladies Home Journal to which PWNSC members Cathy Scott's and Cordelia Mendoza's mother was always submitting articles) or 101 Things to do with...
Negotiating Against the Grain of Gender
Yesterday, we talked about the different negotiation styles of men and women. Today, we're going to explore how men can benefit from learning women-speak and women can benefit from learning man-talk. All of the data relied upon and excerpted below...
Negotiation 101: Gender War or Gender Peace and Prosperity?
Although I am indisputably a "woman lawyer," I have never thought of myself in those terms. I'm a lawyer. And I'm a woman. I'm also a writer, a step-mother, a wife, a daughter, a river rafter, and an aficionado of...
Negotiating Women on New Day Talk Radio Easter Sunday Noon
(and, yes, I am not only old enough to remember the "Second Wave" Women's Movement, I took a quite serious role in it, first as an unpaid volunteer and later through the federal government's "Program for Local Service" at...
Negotiating Women: 5th and Final Part
Thanks again to Vicki Flaugher of SmartWomanGuides.com for inviting me to have this conversation with her about ways in which women can and do maximize their bargaining power. And yes we do talk about negotiating the purchase of an automobile...
This segment of my interview with Vicki Flaughter is primarily about why women don't negotiate - to their substantial economic detriment - (see Women Don't Ask Here) and what they can do about it....
In part two of Vicki Flaugher's interview with me, we discuss ways in which women can comfortably respond to aggressive zero-sum distributive bargainers and negotiate better business deals using their natural strengths. I'd like to once again thank Vicki Flaugher...
Negotiating Women: Never Negotiate Out of Fear, But Never Fear to Negotiate --
Video below is part I of an interview on negotiation challenges, strategies and tactics for women with Vicki Flaugher, founder of SmartWoman Guides. The full audio of the video is here along with Ms. Flaugher's kind comments about our conversation....
Negotiating Women: Free Teleseminar at Craving Balance
How to Negotiate Anything: Free Intro Thursday, Mar 18, '10 8pm EST Some researchers say that women's failure to negotiate working conditions, salary or other compensation--along with their hesitancy to seek what they're worth when they do negotiate--is one of...
Women Bloggers Proclaim National Women's History Month
Whereas American women of every race, class, and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of our Nation in countless recorded and unrecorded ways; Whereas American women have played and continue to play a critical...
Update on Gender Diversity in the Judiciary and in ADR
When I posted Negotiating Gender: Why So Few Women Neutrals? I had not yet found a source for the statistical representation of women neutrals on the American Arbitration Association Panel. I've now located an article on the AAA website from...
Negotiating Gender: Why So Few Women Neutrals?
Although most of the major providers of alternative dispute resolution services tout their commitment to diversity in the ranks of their neutrals, the coloration of nearly all ADR panels continues to be white; the nationalities European; and the gender male....
Women, Negotiation and the Persistent Wage Gap
Thanks to Ed. at Blawg Review for passing along this (somewhat rambling but well worth watching) lecture at Stanford University by Deborah Kolb, the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Professor for Women and Leadership at the Simmons College School of Management....
You know all the statistics about women's failure to negotiate their first salaries, their car purchases, their raises, their rates, and their price points. If you don't, run over to Lisa Gates Craving Balance Blog right now for the straight skinny on women and negotiation (Why Women Must Negotiate Now than Ever Before).
What both Lisa and I are finding with our women clients (women are Lisa's market and my quarter-market) is that they're always doing stuff for free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let's not waste our time analyzing why we do this. Let's just stop doing it.
Run on over to the Commercial ADR Blog right now to see - yes - Lisa's and my free Twitter negotiation seminar where I take Lisa through a very short negotiation role play to help her negotiate a price for her services rather than simply saying "yes."
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