It’s funny how the books we read when we are young stick with us. One such book for me was Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, a science fiction story about a man, raised by Martians, who returns one day to Earth, and the clash of cultures and values that inevitably results.

What I recall most vividly were the Fair Witnesses, the licensed professionals that Heinlein invents for this book. Fair Witnesses receive extensive training in careful, impartial observation and assiduously avoid assumptions when called upon to provide their services.  In one memorable scene, one Fair Witness, Anne, demonstrates her unique skill to two other characters, Jubal and Jill. Jubal asks Anne, “That house on the hilltop — can you see what color they’ve painted it?” Anne  replies, “It’s white on this side.”

Jubal explains to Jill,

You see? It doesn’t occur to Anne to infer that the other side is white, too.  All the King’s horses couldn’t force her to commit herself…unless she went there and looked–and even then she wouldn’t assume that it stayed white after she left.

I never forgot what the Fair Witness said: “It’s white on this side.”  It’s unlikely that any of us is that precise or discerning when called upon to recount an incident or describe an object or problem.

Imagine the house on the hilltop. Now picture two people, each of whom stands facing a different side of the house, one person at the back, one at the front. Based on what they are able to see, front or back, each draws conclusions about the entire house – what color it is painted, what materials it is constructed of, whether repairs may be needed. But until each has left his original position and walked around the house, inspecting it from all sides, those conclusions remain suspect, based on incomplete data.

In teaching negotiation and mediation, I often discuss the scene from Heinlein’s book after administering an uncritical inference test known as “The Cash Register Exercise“. This exercise highlights the very human tendency to quickly fill in the gaps when information is missing and to draw assumptions about what we don’t know from what we do. (Click here to download the exercise and answer key in PDF.)

For those negotiating, information is indeed power. Examining issues from different angles can protect negotiators from bad deals or from missed opportunities.

For new mediators, the exercise and Heinlein’s story serve as a salutary reminder that our own assumptions can limit our effectiveness at the table. Cognitive error may blinker us, hampering us from helping those locked in conflict arrive at a more expansive understanding of the problems they face. The other lesson, too, is an obvious one: mediation offers fresh ways of looking at issues – from all sides, not just one, inviting parties to step away from their side of the house to see it in its entirety.

Seeing the house from all sides allows us to test or transcend our assumptions. Stepping away to gain a different view doesn’t mean giving up what you believe or need. With accurate and complete information, our conclusions can rest on surer ground. And it might even change our minds along with our vantage points.

Premier dispute resolution web site Mediate.com has demonstrated its support for raising awareness of gender bias in ADR. Showing leadership and its commitment to social justice issues, Mediate.com has created a new section on gender, as well as a page on gender bias links.  This is just one more reason among many to visit Mediate.com, the top web site for news, information, and resources on ADR and negotiation.

Other features that make this site outstanding include:

• A vast library of articles organized by Section or searchable by Topic, Term or Author
• An archive of over 100 video interviews featuring conversations with giants in the ADR field
• A round-up of the best each week in conflict resolution blogging

To my good friends at Mediate.com, thank you as always for your support.

Eye on Conflict is the latest addition to ADRblogs.com, the world catalog of blogs about dispute resolution, negotiation, and collaborative approaches to problem solving.

Published by L.A.-based commercial mediator and “Talk It Over Radio” host Lee Jay Berman, Eye on Conflict explores ADR and negotiation, using today’s headlines as a rich source of inspiration, from the recent tragedy at Sea World to the Pink Floyd/IMI dispute. Berman’s most recent post (as of today) pays touching tribute to mediation pioneer Richard Millen who recently passed away.

I hope you’ll join me in welcoming Lee Jay Berman and Eye on Conflict to the ADR blogosphere.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, Mediation Channel, and the Blogs of all other women who are making and recording the history of the United States of America every working day, that March is designated as Women’s History Month. Every woman blogger and every male blogger whose life has been enriched by the presence of women in it is requested to issue a proclamation each March, calling upon their fellow bloggers to observe March as Women’s History Month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.

This resolution, calling upon “the people of the United States to observe March as Women’s History Month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities” was passed by Congress in 1987 and successive years since then.  For more information about the origin of National Women’s History Month, or the activities of the National Women’s History Project, visit the National Women’s History Project.

This blog is celebrating National Women’s History Month by drawing attention to a series of posts on implicit gender bias in ADR.  The first two posts are written by me, and the subsequent five by my colleague, commercial mediator and author Victoria Pynchon:

• Diversity, bias, gender, and ADR: a hard fight to level the playing field
• Doing it backwards and in heels:  a prescription for remedying gender bias in ADR

Victoria Pynchon’s series on gender and bias:

• Negotiating Gender:  Why So Few Women Neutrals?
• Update on Gender Diversity in the Judiciary and ADR
• Combating Implicit Gender Bias in ADR
• Negotiating Gender:  the Old White Men Speak
• Negotiating Gender Bias in ADR:  the Commercial Client Speaks

Yesterday I pointed readers to an electrifying series by commercial mediator and arbitrator, Victoria Pynchon, which rips the lid off the ADR profession’s secret and unacknowledged shame: the absence of women and minorities from the prestigious ADR panels:

• “Negotiating Prejudice at U.C. San Diego“
• “Negotiating Gender: Why So Few Women Neutrals?“
• “Update on Gender Diversity in the Judiciary and in ADR“

Not content to merely name the problem, my colleague today proposes solutions in “Combatting Implicit Gender Bias in ADR“.

Turning to Americans for American Values for ideas, Pynchon identifies the cure, a detailed action plan, which you can read in her post.  It’s going to take strong medicine to cure what ails us.

It takes guts to do what she Pynchon has done. She warns readers “that the topic of implicit gender bias is ‘toxic’”,with the potential of poisoning her market against her and costing her opportunities. Her post stands as a challenge to other women – and men, too – in ADR to break the silence and speak out. In solidarity, I stand shoulder to shoulder with my colleague on the West Coast.  I issue a call to arms of my own:

It’s time for ADR membership organizations to make the vanquishing of implicit bias a local and national priority – and actually do something about it. The ABA Section on Dispute Resolution has a diversity committee, but it has apparently posted nothing new on its site in two years. This is also a committee limited in size with membership by appointment only. How about opening it up to those of us out here hungry for change and ready to act? The Association for Conflict Resolution has a diversity committee as well – what is it doing right now to actively battle implicit bias and improve access to business opportunities for all ADR professionals? What about the numerous regional and state associations for ADR professionals? NE-ACR? SCMA? TAM? This problem affects your membership – what will you do to make a difference? State bar associations with ADR committees, where are you on this? Exert your influence. And let the rest of know what needs to be done so we can roll up our sleeves and get to work.

There’s been time enough to talk. It’s time at last to do.

I’ve been active on social networking site Twitter for about a year now. It’s proven to be a good resource for useful links.  Last week one of the folks I follow, workshop facilitator Joe Gerstandt, pointed his readers to an article that appeared last November in the Globe and Mail, “Why smart people do dumb things“.

It’s an article on dysrationalia – how hard it is for us to think rationally, despite the intelligence we possess. Dysrationalia leads us to take shortcuts in solving problems, going for what seems the easy or obvious answer instead of working harder to identify the correct one.

This article poses some puzzles for readers to solve, including this one:

Bob is in a bar, looking at Susan. But she is looking at Pablo. Bob is married. Pablo is not.

Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? The answer could be (a) yes, (b) no or (c) cannot be determined.

The correct answer might surprise you. Click here to test yourself on this and the other brain teasers the article challenges readers to match their wits against.

Photo credit: Artem Chernyshevych.

As I was getting ready for the start of the mediation training I was teaching, one of the participants, just arrived, approached me to tell me to get him a cup of coffee. Despite my power suit and the flip chart markers in my hand, he had mistaken the lead trainer for a member of the support staff.

If you think that this is an isolated incident in the life of an ADR professional who happens to be a woman, think again. Challenge yourself by reading commercial mediator Victoria Pynchon’s gutsy series on gender, race, and diversity in the ADR profession:

“Negotiating Prejudice at U.C. San Diego”

“Negotiating Gender: Why So Few Women Neutrals?”

“Update on Gender Diversity in the Judiciary and in ADR”

Then do as Vickie suggests and take the awareness-raising tests at Project Implicit, an ongoing research project inquiring into the implicit biases that affect our judgment. What associations do you draw about identity, capability, and role?

In my ongoing one-woman effort to contribute to the improvement of public discourse, each month I discuss an example of a Fallacious Argument. In December I chose a particular favorite of mine, the ad hominem.

This month I revisit it. Why? Because accusing someone of committing a fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem can itself be a fallacy. Let us consider it.

As the saying goes, there’s an app for everything. Some enterprising soul, capitalizing on the American fondness for the gratuitous insult, has created the political insult generator app, one for conservatives and one for progressives.

Thanks to these digital innovations, iphone and ipod Touch owners need no longer be at a loss for words in any political debate. Confident that a witty retort is always handy, they can hurl at their opponents ready-made epithets such as “crunchy business-bashing libtards” or “puritanical Bible-banging bullies”. It’s all in har-har good fun.

It’s harder to laugh though when a visit to any online forum or the letters page of your daily paper shows how ready to hand the insult is, like a rock to be hurled. But who’s surprised? Marshaling evidence to demonstrate the flaws in an opponent’s reasoning takes hard mental work. It’s much more fun and requires less effort to simply heap verbal abuse upon your adversary to attack their patriotism, ancestry, food preferences, or taste in ties.

There are of course ways to respond to such tactics. Often, however, in response to the jeering, people mistakenly accuse their opponents of engaging in ad hominem attacks. This is the fallacy of the fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem.

In a true argumentum ad hominem, an individual uses an attack on the speaker to undermine the speaker’s argument. Declaring your opponent a “Nazi”, “socialist”, or other insult du jour doesn’t cut it. It may be childish, uncalled for, and do nothing to further discussion, but it is not an ad hominem. Sorry.

If you’re confused about the difference, one writer, Stephen Bond, offers guidance, parsing numerous examples of correct and incorrect uses of ad hominems (warning: some language not safe for kids). Here’s one :

A: “All politicians are liars, and you’re just another politician. Therefore, you’re a liar and your arguments are not to be trusted.”
B: “Yet another ad hominem argument.”

If you accept the premises, A’s argument is sound; but I think most of us would sympathise with B and class it as fallacious, and ad hominem. This is because we do not accept the premise that all politicians are liars. There is a false premise that lies behind all ad hominem arguments: the notion that all people of type X make bad arguments. A has just made this premise explicit.

When debaters throw mud, everyone gets splattered. Too bad that a good clean fight has never been in fashion.

In the third episode of ADR podcast series Cafe Mediate, I serve as host while professional mediator  and author Tammy Lenski, international business mediator Amanda Bucklow, New York City detective and conflict resolution professional Jeff Thompson, and commercial mediator Victoria Pynchon debate the question, “What kind of preparation is involved in becoming a mediator?”

You can pour yourself a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, pull up a chair, and enjoy the conversation in any of three ways:

• Stream the 40-minute audio from the Cafe Mediate site
• Download it from iTunes
• Subscribe to get notice automatically when new episodes become available

Each month Cafe Mediate (motto: “where conversation, not caffeine, is the stimulant”)  features conversation among ADR practitioners about topics relevant to the business, practice, and future of our field.

Coming up next time: a two-part discussion on mediator certification that is sure to produce sparks. Caution: avoid wearing flammable material while listening to that one.

Thanks so much to my wise, talented colleagues for another outstanding discussion about the issues that matter.

Lawyers are frequent targets for humor, the butt of countless stale jokes. With the exception perhaps of  “Wedding Crashers“, conflict resolution professionals so far have been spared the ribbing that comedians, cartoonists, and screenwriters so often heap on our brothers and sisters at the bar.

That may be changing. My colleague, ombuds and blogger Tom Kosakowski, alerted his readers that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, the popular comic strip that lampoons the workplace, has set his sights on an unsuspecting target: the corporate ombuds. In this week’s installment, Dilbert’s boss has hired an ombudsman, a pitch-fork-wielding demon who accepts souls in exchange for conferring favored treatment.

Although lawyers have been linked to devils before (as numerous jokes and at least one Hollywood film can attest), this is a first for the ombuds.

Is this a sign of the impending apocalypse? Hardly. As one anonymous commenter on Tom’s site observed, “Just getting the word ombudsman in cartoons raises awareness of our profession.” Or, as Oscar Wilde once put it, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”