Tammy Lenski Conflict Resolution

How do you listen?

Tammy Lenski — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:06:02 +0000

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

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

And the winners are…

Tammy Lenski — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:25:04 +0000

The Conflict Zen blog is 10 years old today!

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

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

The winners

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

And for everyone who entered, a special prize

I’ve decided to give everyone who entered complimentary access to the private discussion forum over at the Conflict Resolution Commons. The forum is a place to discuss conflict resolution, negotiation, and for ADR professionals, the business of mediation and other conflict resolution services.

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

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

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

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

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

From Isaac Asimov to Jimmy Carter: 10-year blogiversary retrospective

Tammy Lenski — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:00:29 +0000

Ten years of blogging is a long time. And selecting a few from over a thousand posts has been a harder task than I thought it would be, though a fun one.

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

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

The best time to resolve conflict

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

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

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

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

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

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

…. read on

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

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

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

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

How to let go of unresolved conflict

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

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

The Isaac Asimov secret to elegant conflict resolution

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

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

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

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

Negotiation tips for work, home and the marketplace

Tammy Lenski — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:23:51 +0000

Last fall, my 13 graduate negotiation students, few of whom described themselves as good negotiators when class started, mostly shuddered at the prospect of one assignment in particular: Each week, they had to negotiate something. A matter at home. A better price on a purchase at the mall. A contract with a vendor at work. A problem with a colleague.

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

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

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

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

I couldn’t stand those sneakers.

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

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

Car negotiations: When non-negotiable aren’t

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

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

Good negotiators know anchoring

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

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

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

When negotiating salary, women are also negotiating social approval

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

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

I’ve been advising women to… read on

5 reasons compromise is a dirty word in relationship negotiations

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

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

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

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

8 common reasons agreements fall apart after workplace negotiations

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

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

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

… read on

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

My favorite tips for mediators

Tammy Lenski — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:42:39 +0000

Some, but not all, of my conflict resolution work is mediation, the act of helping others negotiate a solution to their conflict without having a stake in the outcome. I count among my other hats conflict management consulting, coaching, training and education.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giving advice is a problem-solving crutch

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

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

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

Do you need a Mediator or a mediator?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The integrated practitioner: what it takes to be one

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

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

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

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

Conflict and blogging: 3 posts that unleashed onslaughts

Tammy Lenski — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:30:54 +0000

Ten years of blogging has been one of the most fun rides of my professional life and created opportunities to meet and work with fine folks from all over the world. But every now and then, I’ve stepped into a quagmire.

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

The Shamu Maneuver Causes a Stir

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

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

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

The 10 Best Ways to Win an Argument

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

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

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

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

He Was So Mild Mannered…

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

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

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

… read on

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

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

Favorite conflict resolution lessons and stories, part 2

Tammy Lenski — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:00:53 +0000

A mediation colleague and friend of mine, Lee Bryan, describes stories as the perfect way to create a “hook” in your brain – something on which you can hang an idea for easier retrieval later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The secret to de-escalating loud, angry conflict

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

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

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

What everyone ought to know about conflict management skills

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

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

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

The crucial difference between yelling at and yelling toward

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

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

This is what happens to people who live with mediators

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

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

Last night… read on

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

Favorite conflict resolution lessons and stories, part 1

Tammy Lenski — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:22:52 +0000

We’re in the midst of my 10-year blogiversary celebration, a retrospective of the Conflict Zen blog for the past decade. I’m sharing both personal favorites and crowd favorites, those posts that make me smile, are good representatives for how I think and work, and/or continue to generate a lot of email from readers.

If you’ve been around the blog for any length of time, you know I particularly like to tell stories and believe that stories are terrific ways to learn and remember an idea. So it’s fitting that I’m going to kick off the blogiversary retrospective with favorite conflict resolution lessons and stories. I’ll share five today and five more a few days from now.

Don’t forget…I’m giving away prizes as part of the month-long party, so every time you leave a comment or share one of my blog posts on your favorite social media site, you get an entry into the drawing. You can find the details here.

Take off your tarantula before the difficult conversation

I once mediated a dispute with a large tarantula eyeing me the entire time from the shoulder of a participant.

It was unsettling. As, I suppose, it was intended to be.

The case was a dispute between three middle-aged siblings locked in combat over their father’s will. The siblings had more than half a century of baggage between them, compounded by two years of litigation since dad died, and I was asked by their attorneys to get the matter resolved before lunch… read on

I didn’t do it intentionally

I can get pretty inward-focused when I’m working on a project, so much so that I tend not to pay much attention to what’s going on around me. I know I’m really absorbed when I start to notice small bruises on my legs and arms. They come from my banging into door jambs as I walk around oblivious to my surroundings, thinking about whatever I’m thinking about. That’s pathetic, isn’t it.

Door jambs are not my only victims. My husband also bears the brunt of this over-absorption. One evening I opened a kitchen cabinet door into his head… read on

Conflict Zen® and the overflowing teacup

When I packed my bags for college, my big sister gave me a book to put in my suitcase. It was beautifully bound and just the right size in my hands. I carry the book with me still, decades later. The very first story in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones has received me as a visitor more times than I can count:

A Cup of Tea
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring… read on

Solutions depend on how we frame the problem

I recently had an experience that reminded me that the way we think about a problem influences the solutions we can see or are willing to see.

Many of you know that I teach mediation in a graduate mediation program at Woodbury College in Vermont. The curriculum includes some online courses and I teach a few of them. My students this term had never, to my knowledge, taken an online course before and all of them had gone through our in-person courses at the undergraduate level. The online experience, with both its power and its frustrations, was new. Let me emphasize frustrations here, since that became front and center for some of the students… read on

Channeling Elaine: How Seinfeld helped me apologize

My Man from the Midwest, Rod, is a major Seinfeld fan. He still tunes in old episodes many evenings, though they’re all pretty well known to him already. I enjoyed Seinfeld when it was originally on t.v. but am not generally someone who wants to see any show again and again…and again.

But Elaine came to my rescue the other day, bless her. So maybe all that viewing paid off…I said something I shouldn’t have. To Rod. It was grumpy and mean-spirited. It came out of my mouth before I thought about it and hung there in the air, threatening to ruin a perfectly decent evening… read on

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. Favorite conflict resolution lessons and stories, part 1 copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

A 10-year blogiversary celebration

Tammy Lenski — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:19:56 +0000

In a few weeks, the Conflict Zen blog will be 10 years old. I’m throwing a party to celebrate and I hope you’ll join in.

In February 2002, I’d been in business about five years and was looking for a better way to manage all the articles and newsletter content I was creating for prospective, current and past clients. I wanted to keep it online for easier use and access by clients and I wanted software that made it easy to manage. Blogging software fit the bill perfectly…and still does.

The blogosphere was still young and the business blogosphere was a lonely place at the time. The conflict resolution blogosphere was downright barren, something I’m happy to see has changed substantially over the years. I stuck with it because I had the sense these things called blogs could be helpful in the business arena and I enjoy experimenting with ideas on the bleeding edge.

I’m glad I stuck with it. A decade later I’ve had the good fortune to have talked with, met, and worked with people all over the world, many whom became connections because of this blog. I’ve made life-long friends thanks to the ‘net, learned new things, taught new things, and had a ball while doing it.

I feel like partying, I do. Over 1,000 articles and 2,000 comments later, I’m counting down to the official 10-year blogiversary on February 1. And I want to invite you to my party, gifts included. Gifts from me to you, that is. Your gift to me has been your presence here, your comments on my posts, your camaraderie.

And since a blogiversary party should take place in the blogosphere in which it all started, here’s how this party will happen:

Between today and February 1, I’m going to share long-ago articles that many of my more recent readers probably haven’t seen – personal favorites, audience favorites, ones that continue to yield constant email streams.
Each time, the article comments box will be available for your comments – comments on the article I highlighted, comments about the Conflict Zen blog in general, comments to me about anything you’d like to say.
Beginning today, each time you comment, you’ll be entered once into a random drawing.
Each time you share my blog post with others, either by writing about it on your own blog, or posting it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, you’ll get an additional two entries in the drawing. Use the Facebook or Twitter comment feature associated with the comment box or find me on any of those platforms and drop me a note so I know you shared.
On February 1, I’ll announce the winners right here on the blog.

The Prizes

What can you win? Glad you asked. Here’s the run-down:

A free lifetime membership in my online conflict resolution training program, the Conflict Resolution Commons.
A free quarterly membership in the Commons (I’ll be giving away two of these).
One hour of negotiation or conflict management coaching or mediator mentoring from me, via phone or skype.
A signed copy of my book, Making Mediation Your Day Job.

Join me, won’t you? Comments are open, my friends. (If you read my posts via email or RSS reader, just click on the title of the article to be taken automatically to the web page with the comments box at the bottom). Thanks for being here, whether you’ve been with me for a decade or day.

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

The body in the suitcase and the conflict stories we tell

Tammy Lenski — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:00:26 +0000

“Maybe he’s got a body in there,” quipped my husband.

I watched the man walking toward us, dragging something heavy behind him. Even from a long distance, it was easy to see he was burdened by the load. “Yep,” said I, “maybe so.”

We were walking our dogs on one of the local rail trails and as the distance between us and the man lessened, we began to make up a story about him and the body inside what now appeared to be a large rolling suitcase. Perfect for body moving, we agreed, warming to our jovial task.

As the man grew quite close to us, we could see he was elderly and that the rolling suitcase was almost too heavy for him to drag behind him on this paved portion of the trail. “He may need our help,” I said. My husband nodded, considering. He said, “But then wouldn’t we be complicit in his crime?” We chuckled and went on with our storymaking.

We do this in conflict too, of course — make up stories. We make guesses to fill in blanks about things we don’t understand in the situation or the other person. We take prior conclusions about them and use those conclusions to feed our guesses and judgments, forgetting that conclusions are just opinion, not fact. If we already have a poor history with them, our stories tend to be tinged with darker tones. We tell our stories to ourselves and to others, forgetting after a while that only some part of what is relayed is what happened and that the rest is stuff we made up by way of explanation and self-protection.

Our conflict stories can get us into trouble because we treat them like The Truth.

As the man approached us, we looked to make eye contact. He said hello tersely, then turned his head away from us and continued on. It was clear he didn’t want to talk to us. As he passed, I glanced down at the heavy, bulging rolling suitcase. Strapped to it with bungee cords was a chainsaw.

My face pivoted back toward my husband faster than Linda Blair’s. His eyes were as wide as mine. “Did you see that?” I hissed. “He has a chainsaw!” Talk about stating the obvious. “Nothing leaking out of the suitcase,” said my husband, walking backward to scan the suitcase’s path.

We started to giggle a little nervously, then roared as we thought about the shock of seeing the chainsaw after making up the dead body story. “Do you think we should do something?” I finally asked, “like follow him to see where he goes with it?”

By now the old fellow was quite a distance from us, just a speck, really. We’d reached the part of the trail where we usually turn around, so we began to head back with the dogs.

As we passed a part of the path during which we’d been in deep conversation about the chainsaw, we saw what we’d missed on our first pass: Sawdust on the pavement and the remains of a fallen tree that had been cut back from where it breached the trail.

The fellow was hauling the wood he’d cut from the fallen tree. A poor old man struggling under a heavy load he probably needed to heat his home during a cold New Hampshire winter.

I wish our conflict stories could be so easily torn asunder and exposed for what they really are…something we partly (mostly?) made up in less than our best moments.

About the author: Tammy Lenski has been helping individuals and organizations turn conflict into growth and opportunity for two decades. She specializes in transforming interpersonal conflict into stronger personal and professional relationships. The body in the suitcase and the conflict stories we tell copyright 1997-2012 Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.