23/6/2022 True Cultural Disconnect“A thug might think twice about kicking in your gate, throwing traffic cones around your street or hurling abuse into the night sky if they thought they might get picked up by the police, taken to a cashpoint and asked to pay on the spot fine of, for example, £100 “
So said Tony Blair in 2000 when he announced a new big idea for dealing with anti-social behaviour Embodied in his words, and his proposed policy, is a prime example of Cultural Disconnect. The assumptions are legion. 23/6/2022 What's in someone saying a Name?If it’s supposed to be good, why does it jar so much?
I recently read a Dale Carnegie quote (he of ‘Making Friends and Influencing People’ fame) “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” I have read that if you want to connect with someone you should use their name frequently. Repeating their name in every situation, I am told, helps you to remember it. Also there is lots of advice that using a person’s name is the fastest and most reliable way of building rapport and creating a good first impression. It’s so powerful that some organisations insist on it: apparently at the Four Seasons hotel chain, staff are supposed to use your name 3 times in each transaction. So why does it jar so much with me when people do it? 23/6/2022 Give a Little, Get a Lot?McDonalds is a worldwide success - its restaurants sell a totally amazing 2.36 billion burgers every year.
And, given the amount of footfall the restaurants get, they have become a familiar place for psychological research. I was recently listening to a podcast which described some of the research centred on reciprocity. In one piece of research, families arriving at McDonalds were given a balloon for each of their children, in another instance, families were given a balloon as they left. 23/6/2022 Smile and the World Smiles with YouJust heard that research has found that if you have your phone with you, even if you are not using it, you smile 30% less.
Wow !! When you smile, your brain releases tiny molecules called neuropeptides that fight off stress. Your brain also produces dopamine and serotonin, which can boost your mood. And as our brains automatically notice and interpret other people's facial expressions, and often mimics them, smiles are truly contagious. So they make everyone feel better. That's a very good reason for us not to have our phones anywhere near us when we have difficult conversations, or we are trying to settle a dispute. The act of smiling may well help to defuse the situation, make a connection, gain trust. Another good reason why I never have my phone anywhere near me in mediations. I want to make sure I am smiling as much as possible. Building rapport, making people smile. All helping build the right environment to reach a settlement. So today, if you are meeting someone, want to boost other people's moods, or just your own, try leaving your phone behind, or at the very least, out of sight. So you’ve seen the photo before you. Did you think the dress was white and gold, or blue and black?
How did you feel when friends, family and colleagues saw a different colour? It was infuriating, wasn’t it? You were convinced of the colour of the dress, other people explicitly said it was a different colour. What we're looking at is a Bistable Image. And our brains warp reality to deal with it. 20/5/2022 Not Setting Boundaries??One of the weirdest facts about land ownership is that there is rarely a definitive line to show where the boundary is. And where boundary features have moved or are not clear then it can be nigh on impossible to determine. Even the experts will argue over where the line is.
Therefore sadly it is often a dispute that can trundle on, getting more and more expensive and acrimonious as it goes, waiting for the Judge to give a final decision. Which may or may not be a fudge over the available evidence. And there is often much more than just the boundary; it's often about past disputes and interactions between the warring parties, which is why these are often referred to as Neighbour Disputes rather than Boundary Disputes. It's why mediation is the key; it can help unlock and resolve a wide range of issues, as well as allowing a compromise rather than Court action 'winner takes all' mentality that then leads itself nicely into the next thing that the neighbours can find to argue about. Definitely one to settle if you can! 20/5/2022 I wrote the BEST EVER Linkedin postI can say that because you will never see it to contradict me
After posting it, after it automatically asking me if I wanted to post it on my Striving to Settle account as well, it appeared in my feed. Then it was no more. I have no idea what happened but it's gone. And as I typed it 'on the fly' on the Linkedin site I have no way of getting it back. But I can promise you it was the BEST EVER !!! So instead you get a photo of me from a shoot that I had done when I launched my website. Because I currently have nothing else to publish... I've just been listening to an interview with BJ Fogg about his research into tiny habits.
He spoke about how amazed he has been to see tiny habits, those that start off really small, like flossing one tooth each day before working up to a full mouth, causes people to then make huge changes in their lives. Today's mediation settled, but before it did, when we were still in 'close but no banana' territory, one of the parties said something very nice.
"You have the most lovely pleasant manner, if anyone can help settle this, it's you" I'm so glad I made someone feel like that. And we did settle. in that moment though you could see that having said it out loud, she was already processing it in a new way.
A while ago I conducted a mediation where the parties both seemed to want to settle but one of them was holding back from fully engaging in the process. There was a part of the picture that I wasn’t seeing. It came about (I have just read) due to the Statute of Quia Emptores in 1290 and grew into a widely adopted system which, as with anything 'legal', has spawned huge amounts of case law, and complicated provisions.
I think of all the time I have thought about how to value it (being the amount of the rent for the land only, rather than for the building itself that inevitably stands on it) or of the 'marriage value' (the amount that represents the additional value created by merging interests). 20/5/2022 His Suit and His Other Suit"Dad wears a suit every day of his life – not a smart suit, just a working suit, though always with a waistcoat. He has this suit and what he calls ‘My Other Suit’, which he keeps for best. Except that one is more worn than the other, they are identical and when the working suit gets too worn the Other Suit is demoted to be the working suit, and he buys a replacement, exactly the same, for best."
So the great Alan Bennett described his father's wardrobe. 20/5/2022 "Hope is optimism with a plan""Hope is optimism with a plan"
It immediately caught my attention. I rewound the podcast to listen to it again. It’s true to say much depends on your definition of ‘hope’ and ‘optimism’, but the essence is that in order to succeed, you need more than just a sunny disposition, and some positive thinking. This chimed with me as a mediator. As a mediator, I use reframing to re-word or re-state what the client has said in a more constructive manner. Some people call it a linguistic tool, but I think of it more as 'mind over matter'; the act of reframing, a change in perception, can allow a person to have power over events and feelings.
And we can apply it throughout our lives. 3/2/2022 Collaborative OverlappingCollaborative Overlapping is a fabulous conversational concept but it can be a euphemism for interrupting.
It can tell us a lot about the status of people in the conversation. And it can be seen as a difference in the way men treat women when they talk. |
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AuthorRichard Marshall is an Accredited Civil and Commercial Mediator with over 25 years experience as a Litigation Solicitor, as well as being a qualified Solicitor-Advocate. He is the founder of Striving to Settle, through which he works as a mediator and provides negotiation training. www.strivingtosettle.co.uk Archives
August 2022
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