Phyllis Pollack

Mar 15, 2024 | mediate.com | Phyllis Pollack

This article was first published on the PGP Mediation Blog. Recently, the Harvard Program on Negotiation posted a blog about “Emotional Intelligence as a Negotiating Skill” (By Katie Shonk- February 12, 2024). It noted that  experts predicted that  those scoring high on emotional intelligence would have better negotiated outcomes and discusses a 2015 study by researchers Kihwan Kim of Buena Vista University, Nicole L. A.

Feb 27, 2024 | mediate.com | Phyllis Pollack

The other day, I opened one of the French doors in our house to let the dog outside where he proceeded to sun himself. Unbeknownst to me, a hummingbird took the open door as an invitation to come inside. I did not realize it until an hour or  so later when I heard a noise coming from our skylight which is in the center of the house. The hummingbird was flying up against the skylight, trying to get outside.

Feb 15, 2024 | mediate.com | Phyllis Pollack

A colleague of mine- Jan Frankl Shau, Esq. recently published an article in the Los Angeles Daily Journal entitled “ A New Paradigm for Mediation: the Role of “bearing witness” (July 28, 2023). In it, she notes that sometimes the job of the mediator is simply to “bear witness” or simply to listen without judgment and without trying to use her negotiation skills to settle the case.

Jan 26, 2024 | mediate.com | Phyllis Pollack

In social psychology, there is a cognitive bias known as “naïve realism” which “is the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, orbiased.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology) That is, they are idiots. Which brings me to the book I recently read for our book club: Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson (St. Martin’s Essentials, New York 2019).

Aug 22, 2023 | mediate.com | Clare Fowler |Phyllis Pollack |Carole Conn |Roger Moss

Do this instead, says Clare Fowler, author of ‘Rising Above Office Conflict’[This article was originally published on August 16, 2023 by The Harvard Gazette, Samantha Laine Perfas, Harvard Staff Writer.]There’s no such thing as an office free of conflict. Unfortunately, most of us are really bad at dealing with it.