by jcooper131 | Nov 16, 2013 | Compromise, Conflict, Disputes, Intervention, Mediate Conflicts, Mediation, Negotiation, Solving Conflicts, Third Party Mediator, Workplace Conflicts
Good negotiators do not negotiate extemporaneously, but almost always work from a script or plan. Like moves a chess player makes, negotiators execute a series of actions designed to overcome differences between parties in dispute and thereby bring an end to the conflict. Each move or action in a negotiation is structured in a manner that encourages the parties to discuss, and to ultimately select alternative outcomes consistent with the needs and requirements of the parties.
Mediation is much like negotiation in the sense that mediators also initiate actions. The key difference is that in a mediation the actions are based on a series of questions and comments constructed in a way that encourage the disputing parties to select positive outcomes, which in turn allow the parties to step back from entrenched positions, and explore alternatives. In this environment the mediator is not the negotiator and does not drive the conversation in a particular direction or toward a particular goal. While he or she may be an experienced negotiator, and may used techniques common in negotiation, the mediator should only use those techniques sparingly as a means of facilitating and fostering dialogue between the disputing parties.
In a negotiation, the negotiator is an integral part of the problem solving process, and is key to how the actions and moves play out between the parties. It is a problem solving dynamic that attempts to dismantle/disarm previously intractable concerns, and compromises are reached in stages as each aspect of the dispute is broken down and resolved.
Where a mediation is clearly different is that here the parties in dispute negotiate with each other, and the mediator is not a direct participant in the negotiations. His or her role is to facilitate the negotiators in their efforts to resolve the dispute, and should only intervene in the process for specific reasons. Some of those reasons include establishing a pause to collect data/clarify information, so that the parties can assess where they are at and document any agreements reached, to gain entry at a point the parties are approaching impasse, assist in assessing options, promote dialogue over argument, and verify each parties understanding of remaining actions. It must be emphasized that it is the mediators responsibility to control the environment, that responsibility must be executed with a light touch.
by jcooper131 | Nov 9, 2013 | Ethics
In an era of information overload from the internet, radio, and television, it is important that people take time to think about what they hear, and what they read. As a result of many reports about misconduct, and improper behavior across many agencies in the federal government, it is important to understand something about Ethics. Being ethical is not the same thing as following the law. Laws can deviate from what is ethical; (examples: tax laws allow variance from equal treatment principle//also, in some countries girls denied the right to an education.)
More than 3,000 years of history teaches us that ethics is not what a society finds acceptable. It is a given that in a society, most people conform to standards that are ethical. Yet societies often confront issues on which there is no consensus. Without getting into the pros and cons, no one living in America can argue that consensus does not exist on the issue of abortion.
No discussion of the subject can sustain itself unless we acknowledge that what we call ethics has evolved over several millennia, and to ignore that is to engage in intellectual dishonesty. We owe our modern day understanding of Ethics principally to philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato. It is Aristotle, however, that wrote one of the first recorded treatise on Ethics under a series of essays we know as the Nicomachean Ethics.
His essays, many of which survived, and can be studied today, provide some of the earliest examination of moral philosophy and he did this by developing a systematic and carefully constructed series of arguments.
At the core of Aristotle’s essays are questions of character or personality — what does it take for an individual human being to be a good person? Every activity has a final cause, the good at which it aims. Therefore true happiness can therefore be attained only through the cultivation of the virtues that make a human life complete.
Ethics is not an academic exercise found within the pages of a textbook. Ethics examines behavior and the values that underpin behavior. Because the central premise of ethics is to examine how humans are disposed to act in certain ways in response to similar situations, the habits of behaving in a certain way. The essential point is that ethics is a practical discipline that encourages individuals to construct good habits by repeated action and correction within a formalized process that can measure and provide constructive feedback.
