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    Conflict Management E-Newsletter

             November 2002 #34

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Contents:

1. Articles

2. Negotiation Cartoons

3. Court Permits Title VII Case Based On Sexual Orientation

4. Training Announcements

5. New Website: Resolving Campus Conflicts

6. Kenneth Boulding on Conflict Systems

7. Quotes

8. New Book: The 14 Day Stress Cure

9. U.C. San Francisco-The Problem Resolution Center

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1. Articles

Preparing For Your Mediation

By Tom Sebok

It is likely that you asked for or agreed to mediation because

the strategies you have already tried have not helped you

resolve your dispute. The purpose of this article is to help

you think - before your mediation - about what you can do as

a participant to give your mediation the best chance to succeed.

Mediation -The Best Way To Work It Out

By Carol Bloom

For decades now, and especially in the past ten years,

mediation has been used successfully in small, medium

and large companies nationwide to resolve a wide array

of disputes at very little cost to the business. So why

aren't more companies either contracting with outside

mediators or implementing their own internal programs?

The answer is a combination of both simple

and complex factors.

Listening to Conflict (Mediation Case Study)

By Seattle Federal Executive Board's ADR Consortium

The mediation involved two employees of a government

agency, the office manager and his administrative

assistant. Mary, the administrative assistant,

requested the mediation. She wanted Bob, the

office manager, to rescind a letter of reprimand

that she received for insubordination.

Coaching As a Learning Tool

By Kristin Cobble and Ed Gurowitz

Over the past several years, coaching has emerged

as a powerful new model for leadership and management.

Because coaching is a time- and cost-effective way to

support the learning process, it also can be an ideal

tool for managers wishing to build a participative

learning culture. This article describes four different

models of coaching and illustrates how each facilitates

organizational learning.

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2. Negotiation Cartoons

by Stu Rees, Esq.

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3. 9th Circuit Court Permits Title VII Discrimination

Case Based On Sexual Orientation

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that an employee

may pursue a Title VII sex discrimination claim based on

evidence that the harassment was motivated by his sexual

orientation. This differs from the court's prior decision

(DeSantis v. Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, 608 F2d. 327

(9th Cir., 1979)), in which it held that Title VII does

not prohibit sexual orientation discrimination. The decision

also conflicts with those of several other federal circuit

courts of appeals.

Medina Rene was a butler on a VIP floor of the MGM Grand Hotel

in Las Vegas (MGM). The floor was staffed by an all-male butler

and supervisory staff. Rene alleged that over a two-year

period he experienced physical and verbal abuse motivated by his

homosexuality. He did not allege that hostile treatment was

influenced by the sexual desire of co-workers, or by demand for

and refusal to engage in sexual activity. In the absence of

any female co-workers, he could not allege that he was

treated differently because he was male.

The 9th Circuit relied on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in

Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc. 523 U.S. 75 (1998),

which ruled that same-sex harassment constitutes discrimination

under Title VII. The court reasoned that the harassment Rene

suffered was "sexual in nature." Cases involving harassment of

women who experience unwanted sexual contact do not distinguish

between "straight" and lesbian women, but rather focus on the

sexual nature of the conduct, for example, the body parts that

are the subject of the unwanted touching. Although the motivating

factor in this case was Rene's sexual orientation, harassment

of a sexual nature is actionable under Title VII.

Medina Rene v. MGM Grand Hotel, Inc.

(9th Cir., September 24, 2002) No. 98-16924.

Source: California Chamber of Commerce

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4. Training Announcements

4.1 Workplace Competencies for Conflict Resolution

With Debra Dupree

Director of Training, Dana Mediation Institute, Inc.

San Diego 1/10/03: How To Mediate Employee Conflict...Helping Good

Employees do Good Work Together - for Managers, Supervisors, & Team

Leaders 1/11/03 How to Resolve Conflict with Others...Getting others

to

work with you, not against you - for ALL Employees

For registration details, email sandiego@mediationworks.com

4.2 Introduction to Mediation

with Judy Gordon

Would you like to become a better communicator?

Come and learn skills you can use both on the job

and at home.  In this introductory course,

you will discover the basic concepts of mediation. 

Through lecture, discussion, role plays and

improvisational games, you will gain theoretical

knowledge and practical skills to help you play a neutral

role as a third party in resolving conflicts.

Friday, November 15, 6 pm ­ 9 pm& Saturday, November 16, 9 am ­ 5 pm

To enroll: call John F. Kennedy University at (800) 557-1384 or

4.3 Leadership in Transition

With Beata Lewis and Eric Biggs

Join us for an exploration of embodied skills and practices that

allow you to navigate uncertainty and change with greater ease,

trust and personal power.

* Develop an effective leadership presence

so you are more powerful and congruent.

* Identify personal practices that give

you greater access to intuition and kinesthetic intelligence.

* Learn skills to build and restore authentic trust

for more productive and sustainable relationships.

* Experience how emotional intelligence makes you

more reliable and accessible as a leader.

* Expand your capacity and willingness to have

courageous conversations with others for the sake

of building a more positive future together.

November 23.2002 9AM- 5PM Tiburon, CA

To enroll:Call 415-332-8338 - beata@igc.org

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5.New Website Offers Tools and Tips for Resolving Campus

Conflicts

Campus-adr.org is a new web site with over 400 pages

of content that offers free tools and tips for resolving

conflicts and building conflict resolution systems. 

Designed for colleges and universities; faculty, staff

and students can access the site to learn how to prevent

disagreements from turning into time-consuming and

troubling conflicts.

Campus-adr.org has useful information for everybody.

Faculty will find mediation training role-plays, an

online syllabi collection and the Conflict Management

in Higher Education Report.  Staff and administrators

will find a policy archive, a MetaSearch tool and an

evaluation kit for campus mediation programs.

Students will find advice for handling roommate

conflicts, full-text articles and academic and career

information.  The website also has job postings,

discussion boards, training materials and much, much

more.

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6. Kenneth Boulding on Conflict Systems

"I got very interested in the question as to why some conflicts

were creative and some were not because if became very clear that

conflict itself wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It could

be very creative. But on the other hand, it could also be

terrible destructive. Then what was the difference? And is was

what got me into the theory of the integrative system. The

general theory that I came up with was that if you had conflict

within an integrative setting it could be creative."

"...All real conflict takes place in time and consists of a

succesion of states of situation or field. If this succession

is governed by fairly simple laws, so that there is a stable

relationship between the state of today and the state of

tomorrow or, say, betwen yesterday, today, and tomorrow,

then there is a dynamic system that can, in general, be

solved to predict the state of the system at any future

date. One of the great problems in social dynamics is that

the dynamic systems are not stable and are frequently

subject to unpredictable change. Nevertheless, the succession

of states of a social system is not random; some regularites

can usually be deteced, and even if the system is not stable

enough to permit unconditional prediction of its future states,

at least enough can usually be known about it to set limits

on the probability of various future positions."

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7.  Quotes

"Unless we change our direction we are likely to end up

where we are headed." Chinese Proverb

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what

you always got."   Mark Twain

"When one is to succeed in leading a person to a certain place,

one must above all take care to find out where he is and start there."

Soren Kierkegaard

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8. New Book

The 14 Day Stress Cure

By Mort Orman, M.D.

The 14 Day Stress Cure is an award-winning self- help book that

offers a new approach for dealing with everyday problems

and conflicts that affect us all.

The 14 Day Stress Cure debunks five key myths that are widely

promoted by stress management experts but that keep us from

dealing with our stress successfully. Specifically, it shows

that stress is not an inevitable part of modern life, that

there is no such thing as "good" or "healthy" stress, and

that managing stress can actually be harmful to our health

and well-being. It also shows that most stress experts,

including psychologists, psychiatrists, and other physicians,

have not been trained to understand stress correctly.

But the best part about this highly informative book is the

step-by-step coping method Dr. Orman recommends and which he

illustrates with numerous real-life examples. He talks very

candidly about his own anxieties and relationship problems in

college, medical school, and his early career as a physician.

Like most of us, he discovered that exercise, dietary changes,

meditation, and other stress management techniques failed to

cure him of his problems. But unlike most other people,

Dr. Orman used this failure to question the prevailing

"stress management mentality" of our times and to develop

a safe and effective alternative approach that really does

work. As he states in his Introduction, "I discovered what

it takes to win against stress, and the knowledge I gained

changed my life dramatically."

The 14 Day Stress Cure is divided into fourteen chapters,

each of which is to be read and reflected upon in a day.

Each chapter concludes with a few thought-provoking exercises.

The subjects Dr. Orman covers are of universal interest:

how to deal with anger, frustration, worry, guilt,

and other negative emotions; how to prevent or eliminate

relationship conflicts; how to reduce your stress at work;

how to cure yourself of stress-related physical complaints;

how to deal with the stress of public speaking, raising children,

retirement, financial crises, etc. Even the appendices

(four of them) are also of great value. And there's an

excellent Suggestions For Further Reading section,

annotated with the author's own comments and personal

recommendations.

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9. U.C. San Francisco-The Problem Resolution Center

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is committed to

providing individuals with a safe, neutral process for the resolution

of conflict. The Problem Resolution Center (PRC) was launched in Fall

1998 as one strategy under the Campus-wide Supportive Work

Environment Initiative. In time the PRC is envisioned to become

the nucleus for an exchange of activities, programs, services and

teachings on conflict management: prevention and resolution.

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10. Feedback and Subscriptions welcome

If you have any suggestions, tips, or other comments,

send an e-mail to johnford@mediate.com.

New subscriptions are welcome. Forward this to a

friend or colleague.

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