I saw this item on KnockKnock and got a chuckle. Maybe I’ll start providing it to clients as one of my conflict prevention tools!
“This pad could save marriages, and relationships too. When you’re in a lousy mood, why leave emotional communication to chance? A note outlining state of mind is far more clear. Or [...]

One question I get frequently in my coaching and training work is how to successfully confront a colleague or boss without compromising one’s job.
This post on misbehaving.net references a 2004 New York Times article profiling Mary Callahan Erdoes, Chief Executive at JP Morgan Private Bank. Erdoes tells about an event early in her career [...]

Strategic Questioning: An Approach to Creating Personal and Social Change is a solid little online guide (also available in downloadable .pdf) to using questions for effective problem-solving. It’s based on a paper by Fran Peavey and edited by Vivian Hutchinson, and you can use it to broaden your conflict resolution, negotiation or leadership toolkit.

We can learn a lot from a monkey.
Last week’s Science edition of the New York had an interesting column by Carl Zimmer: Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don’t. The article’s not available for free viewing online anymore, but if you have access to a LexisNexis account you can acquire your own copy. [...]

My husband and I have an ongoing inside joke. 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 [...]

We have a terrific petsitter. She’s an animal lover, is very reliable, and spends some real time with our dogs when she comes to walk them on days when our schedules would otherwise make for a loooong stretch between walks. She’s also an excellent communicator, leaving us detailed notes about anything she noticed with [...]

Incrementalism may not be such a bad thing. Often disdainfully dismissed for being a copout behavior that preserves problematic systems by tweaking instead of overhauling them, incrementalism has its place in some negotiation situations.
This morning’s New York Times is reporting on yesterday’s drama in the Montreal climate talks. Harlan Watson, representing the Bush [...]