If you’re a New England mediator who missed the vibrant, fast-paced discussion, you can now read a summary of it in the publicly available Winter-Spring 2012 NE-ACR News. I was also profiled in the issue for their ongoing “10 Questions for…” series. Here’s a snippet:

How did you get started in this field?

I was a college dean, and my president kept asking me to mediate disputes in various departments on campus and facilitate large campus meetings where there were diverse and strong opinions on a variety of organizational matters. Then she began recommending me to presidents at other institutions, and I realized that people saw me as someone who could help them sort out messy stuff. I was just winging it, though, so I decided I’d better get mediation training. I came home from that first basic mediation course knowing conflict resolution was the work I wanted to do all the time.

When was this?

That was in 1996. I was a VP by then, and it was months before I built up the courage to walk away from a good and fulfilling job.

Editor, NE-ACR Past President, and all-around fab mediator Louisa Williams has put together another gotta-read edition of the newsletter. It includes a review of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Danial Kahneman, whose early work lit me on fire while I was working on my doctoral dissertation in the early 90s. I enjoyed Kahneman’s new book tremendously and am still working to digest all that was in it.

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. 10 questions from New England ACR copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Practice helping them fix problems themselves. You’ll get credit for helping them develop and mature as employees. You’ll stop being overwhelmed by the constant stream of help everyone needs and find more career-advancing ways to spend your day. And you’ll be taller.

I learned how to do this after taking my first mediation course years ago while a college dean. I tried it out the very next day I was in the office.

A student came in and sat down across the table from me. She described a problem with a professor and she spared no details. With each detail unearthed, I could see the problem inching its way toward me across the round table. On she went, and closer crept the problem until it was right in front of me, hovering on my side of table, threatening to tumble over the edge into my lap.

I put my hands out to stop it. I covered it with my hands and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take this problem you’ve just nudged over to me and I’m going to slide it on back across the table to you.” My hands moved across the table, then gave a final little shove of the problem toward her.

She started down at the table, frowning. “What do you want me to do with it?” I could tell she didn’t like the problem’s close proximity.

“I’m going to help you figure out how to fix it. I’ll work with you as long as you need, but I’m not going to fix it for you.”

When I’d headed to work that day, I was only 5’1”. When I left, I’d returned to the 5’9” of my early adult years. Fixing other people’s problems for them, it turns out, is a lot of weight to carry around.

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. A better way to fix problems at work copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Missy

As I prepared to run a course the instructor had set up, I stood on the start line with my dog and mentally checked off the things I wanted to attend to as we ran: Draw the line. Remember to push out hard at that corner so she takes the outside obstacle. Keep the talking to a minimum. And for goodness sake, Tammy, try to remember to rock backward slightly if you see her heading for the dogwalk instead of the tunnel on that discrimination! You always forget to do that!

We had a mediocre run. Not awful, but nothing to write home about.

The instructor, Lynn, said, “I know your head is filled with the things we’ve been working on today. Too filled. You weren’t at all connected to your dog. Here’s what I want you to do — try to empty your head, feel your dog in your heart, and run the course again.”

I returned to the start line, bent down to look into Missy’s eyes and cupped her sweet little face in my hands. I closed my eyes for a second and just felt the connection with her. I mentally pushed away all the clutter of the morning’s lessons. I said to her, “Ready to have some fun?” She was.

As we ran, I thought only of staying connected with her, not of all the things I wanted her — and me — to do. Our run was smooth, flowing, and far better than the prior one. Missy danced happily at my feet, ready to claim her reward treats.

Resolving conflict is like this. We can carry around all the techniques and tools we want, but if we fail to make a real connection with our dance partner or to be fully present in the moment because we’re stuck inside our own heads, we won’t do our best work.

Photo credit: Jo-Ann Gerde

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. The agile conflict resolver: Going beyond the toolbox copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

I’ll be unveiling, for the first time in depth, a simplified conflict resolution process I’ve developed over the last decade and have been using successfully with mediation, coaching, and consulting clients for several years. Participants will learn the basics of the process and how to use it with their own conflict resolution clients.

Here are the workshop details:

Getting interpersonal conflict unstuck: Using the power of story to transform conflict in personal and professional relationships

What: Pre-conference workshop
For whom: Association for Conflict Resolution 2012 Annual Conference
When: 12 September 2012, 1:30-5:00 pm
Where: New Orleans, Louisiana

Conflict is a story. It’s a story we tell ourselves about what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. It’s a story we tell others as a way to seek comfort, validation, or understanding. Such socially constructed narratives strongly influence how conflict unfolds and contribute to “stuck” conflict in personal and professional relationships. But as with any story, a conflict narrative can be rewritten.

This session will explore the ways narrative influences interpersonal conflict, share successful approaches for shifting such narratives, and introduce a simple three-part framework for transforming conflict through the “rewriting” of conflict narratives.

View the ACR schedule | Register

I’ll be staying for the full conference. It would be fantastic to meet you in person or catch up with you if we haven’t crossed paths in a while. Do you plan to go?

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. Getting interpersonal conflict unstuck at ACR copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

When I was little I became an official Junior Forest Ranger, one of hundreds of thousands of children recruited by Smokey the Bear. (I know, I know, his correct name is Smokey Bear but I grew up when it was popular to add “the” and taking it back out of his name just makes it sound wrong to me.)

My little Golden children’s book had a drawing of tiny Smokey clinging to a charred tree, his feet burned, his mother missing and never to be found. My heart was heavy with the sadness of it. I needed no encouragement to become one of Smokey’s rangers.

So when the Forest Service’s package arrived in the mail, I was beside myself with excitement. Official badge, pamphlet, card signed by Smokey himself, even a plastic spoon! As she pinned on my badge, my mother asked if I was ready to shoulder my responsibility.

I was. As she and I made the rounds in our small upstate New York town, I reminded the postmistress, the pharmacist, the shoe store owner.

“I am a Jewish Forest Ranger! Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” I declared with zest.

They all beamed at me, some of them even laughing with delight. The minister of our Methodist church seemed the most delighted of all. I was very pleased with the impact I was having. Who knew forest rangering could be so easy and make people so happy?

I like to think of it as my first foray into putting out fires. Thank you, Smokey.

Photo source: Disneyland Records Blog

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. Putting out fires copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

I pointed down the block. “Let’s head in the general direction of Chinatown,” I said as we began to walk. Then I added, with a devilish tone, “And there’s no turning around until something in the conflict really shifts for the two of you.”

They eyed me. “Do you mean that?” one asked. I shrugged. “Maybe so. Better get to work!” Off we went.

We tend to think of negotiation and conflict resolution as sedentary activities that take place around around a table or in clusters of comfortable chairs. We even use the phrases, “coming to the table” and “the negotiation table.”

But some of my best moments as a mediator have been when I’ve been able to get my clients outside and moving. When my husband and I have a difficulty to sort out, we often do it on a hike with the dogs or heading off to the rail trail for a stroll. When my head is muddled, there’s nothing like a run to clear my brain. As I’ve written before, I see nature as a place to find our creativity again.

I’m not alone. Organizations regularly take management teams on retreat to think through thorny problems — and those retreats are often in inspiring, natural locales. Research suggests that rooms with high ceilings help creative thinking. I like to think of the sky as the ultimate high ceiling.

And there’s something about walking along, side by side, facing the future together instead of facing each other in combat, that seems to change a conversation.

Which is exactly what those Boston mediation clients did. They didn’t magically resolve everything on our one-hour walk, but the progress they made set up a highly productive return to the conference room. Said one of them with a smile as we wrapped things up that day, “Thank goodness we made progress on that walk. Otherwise we’d be in Brookline by now!”

Next time you’ve got a dicey negotiation or difficult conversation, take it outside. Don’t just talk it out, walk it out.

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. Take it outside: Talk it out and walk it out copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

He once had a mediation between two men who were not talking to one another. I have no idea what caused the rift or brought them to mediation, but they came in and sat down facing away from each other, arms folded across their chests.

“I’m here and I’ll talk to you,” said one of the men to N, “but I’m not talking to him.” He gestured over his shoulder toward the other man. Said the other, “I’m not talking to him, either.”

Faced with such a deep-sigh-inducing start, most mediators would have done one of three things. Some would have ignored the declarations and plowed ahead, dragging the two men into the mediation by sheer force of will. They would have been so focused on the business ahead that they missed the opportunity right in front of them.

Others would turn to polite chit chat about the crappy weather on the drive in that morning, or how awful the traffic was two blocks down at the corner of West and Elm and it didn’t look like they were going to get here on time. They would have chit chatted away about meaningless things and then finally run out of things to say about the weather or the traffic. After the inevitable awkward silence, they would formally begin the mediation with an opening statement or somesuch. This is not an awful approach. It can work well enough. But it is rather painful to be chipper and chatty when you could cut the air in the room with a knife. And it fails to capitalize on the real opportunity.

Still others would take the communication impasse head on, courageously pointing to the large pink elephant in the room, demanding it be named and addressed. Pink elephants in rooms are favorite mediator fodder, and for good reason — it can be a pivotal act of courage to stop avoiding the toe-crushing pink feet and that trunk waving around and threatening to send the water pitcher flying through the air, drenching everyone in its path. But, as with everything in a mediation, timing matters. One minute after they’ve walked in the room, have barely taken off their coats, don’t even yet have a clue what a mediation will be like, is not the time.

So, many mediators would have chosen one of those three approaches. But not N. Because he is an artist.

N noticed that the cap one of the men was wearing had flies attached to it, the kind used in fly fishing. “Do you fly fish?” asked N. “Yes,” said the man, not yet ready to converse much beyond monosyllables. “I’ve been thinking about learning to fly fish,” said N.

The man in the cap turned to face N a bit more, and gestured up to the flies on his head. “I tied these myself.” “I’ve heard that’s pretty much an art form,” said N. The man beamed. “Yes, there are those who do say that. I have to agree.”

The other man chimed in, “If you decide to go fly fishing, I recommend you go up to Willoughby River in the Northeast Kingdom. That’s where I go and the fishing is just terrific there.” The fly-wearing gentleman replied, “That’s a good recommendation. I also like fishing the Clyde.” The second man nodded his agreement.

After 20 minutes discussing the best fly fishing spots in northern Vermont, the best way to learn fly fishing, and the art of fly tying, N said, “Well, shall we get started?” “Sure,” said both men as they sat facing N and each other around the small table, having turned toward each other during their energized fly fishing conversation.

Next time you’re trying to figure out how to start a negotiation or mediation, think of N. He knew that genuinely building real connection is the right way to start and is worth the investment of time, because it becomes the strong foundation for everything that comes after.

Photo credit: Trout Lore

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. How to start a negotiation or mediation like a pro (and an artist) copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

It was my first day of fifth grade at a new school near Philadelphia. I’ve never forgotten Sugar’s name because I had never met a Sugar before and because she was very, very hip…long straight blonde hair parted in the middle, a beaded headband, bell bottom jeans and a fringed, beaded belt. A flower child clearly out of my fifth-grade, fresh-from-rural-upstate-New-York league.

I don’t recall where the teacher was at that moment, but Sugar had the stage and the students around us all turned to see what I’d say. Sugar smiled at me. Did I sense the smugness or did her smile reveal it? I don’t know. But I sensed I was being set up.

The problem was that I didn’t exactly know how I was being set up. I didn’t know for sure what a virgin was.

Driving to the grocery store with my mother that afternoon, I asked if I was a virgin. My mother pulled the car over – rather a bit quickly, I recall – and inquired what had prompted me to wonder about that. I told her all about Sugar and her crowd and her hip-ness and her question during homeroom.

You know, my mother said, just because you’re asked a question doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea to answer it.

Good advice, that. In negotiations and conflict we’re asked questions that aren’t a good idea to answer either. Questions like, Well, aren’t you going to apologize? Like, What’s the matter with you, anyway? And like, What’s your best offer?

They’re not good to answer because…

1. They may technically qualify as questions but really, they’re cries of frustration dressed up as questions.
2. Almost any reply to that kind of question will contribute to escalation.
3. They may prompt answers we’ll regret (You want me to apologize? Ok! I’m sorry you’re an idiot. Or What’s the matter with me? I married you, that’s what! Or What, do you think I’m an idiot?), just like my reply to Sugar’s question left me with regret I can still feel decades later.

What to do instead? Ignore the question and redirect the conversation to more productive territory. Or look for the important thing that’s behind the question in the first place. Or use your reply to ask a question of your own – a better question, like: What should we talk about right now that would help this be a better conversation?

I wish I’d known to do something like that with Sugar. As I pondered her question, my little Methodist self recalled some of my Catholic friends back home praying aloud to the Virgin Mary for help during dodgeball. Surely I’m not like the Virgin Mary, I thought to myself.

So I said to Sugar, No, I’m not a virgin.

As I told my mother my sound reasoning, she looked a tad stricken. When I told her my answer, she gasped. Kind of like Sugar and the other kids had. Then she started banging the steering wheel with the palms of her hands as she shrieked with laughter. Then she hugged me and set about helping me figure out how to go back to school and set the story straight.

Photo credit: San Jose Library

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. Are you a virgin? and other questions to avoid copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

I tell my conflict resolution grad students that mediators and negotation coaches aren’t smarter or better than our clients, though we may look damn brilliant on occasion. It’s an illusion, I tell them, so don’t let your ego run away with you. We only look smart because we’ve trained our eyes and ears to notice the hints whispering to us.

Frank Lloyd Wright knew how to notice those whispers, too.

Years ago I facilitated a meeting of architecture school deans from throughout the U.S.. They’d come together because they cared about sustainability and green design and wanted to see if they could reach agreement on how to green the traditional architecture school curriculum.

We were very fortunate to have the gathering at the Johnson Foundation’s Wingspread, the 14,000 square foot home Wright designed for Herbert Fisk Johnson, and to tour, on a morning’s break, the spectacular Johnson Wax Building, also designed by Wright. We were also fortunate that one of the architects at the gathering was a relative, by marriage, of Wright’s.

He told us that Wright had no formal schooling after 8th grade. Wright learned through apprenticeships and often turned to nature for help in resolving complex architectural, design, and physics challenges. Wright had used the idea of a forest’s canopy, for instance, in the Johnson Wax Building’s famous ceiling. The saguaro cactus’ structure led him to develop a new type of column that could hold an enormous amount of weight on a narrow base.

He said that when Wright was nagged by a tough design problem, he’d go for long walks in nature because he knew nature had already solved some of the same problems and he could learn from that.

Maybe the story stuck with me because my husband and I are Wright architecture fans who’ve visited his designs all over the country. Maybe the story stuck with me because I, too, go for long walks or runs in nature when I’m working my way through a nagging problem.

But I think the real reason the story stuck with me is that I realized Wright was a kindred whisper listener. He knew how to tune his ears and eyes to possibility. He knew that when a problem seemed insurmountable or stuck or crazy-making, the best thing to do is lean into it gently, opening our hearts and minds and ears to the quiet whispers we’ve been too busy or angry to notice.

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. The Frank Lloyd Wright secret to creative problem solving copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Odds and Ends

Two quick announcements:

• The teleseminar series I’m teaching for the Spirituality Section of the Association for Conflict Resolution has been rescheduled to begin in May. The new dates are available on the page of my original announcement, 3 Upcoming Speaking Engagements…Come Join Us.
• I’ve just released a mobile-responsive design update on my website. “Responsive designs” are developed for optimal display on all devices, including smart phones and tablets. The layout and content adapts automatically based on the size of the screen on which it’s being viewed. Since I know a good many of you are now reading my blog via your iPhones, iPads and Android devices, I wanted you to have the best possible experience. Enjoy!

About the author: Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals and organizations use simply better ways to dramatically shift negotiations and conflict. Every person you fight with copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.