A former mediation student of mine passed away last week and I’ve found my thoughts turning repeatedly to his wife and what she must be experiencing right now. Given David’s special kindness and his natural ability to reach out to others, I imagine that there are many in her community who are now trying to [...]

Penguins are definitely in fashion. Harvard B School prof and organizational change expert John Kotter certainly hasn’t missed the trend. With Holger Rathgeber, Kotter has penned a delightful, simple and informative change management fable based in an Antarctic penguin colony.
In Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions, the penguins discover their iceberg [...]

Some disputes are worth your effort. Some are worth turning your back and walking away. How do you when to talk and when to walk?
I offer the following seven questions as an informal litmus test for you to use when you’re trying to decide:

Can I let this go…really let it go? Sometimes you think you [...]

I’m still thinking about that 1950s Handbook of Preparedness from Rod’s scrapbook, in part because I’ve received so many notes from readers about it. Apparently I’m not alone in looking back at “duck and cover” with awe at the naivete!
There was another section of Rod’s booklet that offers an idea with merit for conflict resolution [...]

Remember “duck and cover”? If you’re in your 40s or older and grew up in the U.S., you probably do. I recall those classroom drills designed to help us survive a nuclear attack by hiding under our desks. Yeah, right.
Rod, a child during the height of the Cold War, was going through old scrapbooks last [...]

The Conflict Management Articles Vault is a monthly feature that dips into the archives and shares still-relevant articles from one year ago:

Interview: Liz Strauss, Publishing Consultant: Particularly relevant given the proximity of this post to SOBCon!
Conflict Hack: I Hear You: Good tip for when you think they’re not hearing you at all.
Certainty in the Asparagus [...]

I had the chance to learn from over 100 SOBs this past weekend. And true to their SOB-ness, they taught me a lot.
The SOBs were Successful and Outstanding Bloggers and the event was SOBCon ‘07. Attendees were all people who think of themselves in some form as “conversation architects” (with a nod to David Armano [...]