Many of you know that I taught mediation and conflict resolution at the graduate level for many years, serving as one of four core faculty members in Woodbury College’s well-regarded program in Mediation and Applied Conflict Studies. During my decade-long tenure on the core faculty there, I founded a blog for students and colleagues, Mastering Mediation. The blog was intended as a way to explore what it takes to teach and learn truly elegant mediation. About a year after I left my teaching post, the blog fell by the wayside and passed away quietly.
I miss thinking about how to help people learn to be masterful mediators and translating my ideas into learning experiences that create light-bulb moments. And, truth be told, I’ve felt a bit stale here at Making Mediation Your Day Job. While I enjoy writing about building a successful practice and about leveraging technology to build and manage business, something’s been missing.
What’s missing whispered to me in December when I read Geoff Sharp’s Five things I learnt this year (and should have known already). I heard another whisper recently while pondering Vickie Pynchon’s Separating the People from the Problem at the ABA DRS Conference. And the whisper grew louder as I caught up on my blog reading with Diane Levin’s What about clients? Time at last to consider what they want from mediation.
There’s a discourse going on about mediation and with all due respect to my three colleagues above, all of whom are also attorneys (the enlightened kind, I hasten to add), the blogged discourse needs to include the voices of people who have extensive mediation experience and training, have taught it extensively in and outside of academe for years, and who hail from professions and graduate degrees other than law (my doctorate’s in education with an emphasis on leadership and human behavior). People like me. Attorneys alone should not be shaping the online discourse about the craft of mediation.
So, starting today, I’m going to return to writing about teaching and learning the craft of mediation as part of my work here. It’ll become a topic I write about in addition to mediation marketing, tech tips, and profiles of successful mediators.
My hope, of course, isn’t just that it’ll serve me, my interests, and my desire to join the discourse. I hope it’ll offer you some insights into strengthening your craft, whether you’re a neophyte or a seasoned practitioner. As I said in my book, building a healthy business – making mediation your day job – is as much about being a good mediator as it is about being a good entrepreneur. So this new chapter of the blog will speak directly to that.
One of the things I’ll be doing first is reprinting some of the articles I wrote for Mastering Mediation. I hope you’ll join me in the conversation about our craft.
Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.com.
Tammy, great news!
You know us lawyers, we populate any open spaces and make them our own.
Geoff, you are such a hoot — and a national treasure.
Yay!! Hooray!!!!! Hip hip hip hippee hip hip hooray!!! I love your conflict zen & I so want your voice in the “where is mediation going” conversation. And of course Geoff’s right. Given Halloween the leisure to create Christmas and all you get is a Halloween Christmas (Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas). Give lawyers interest-based processes and they’ll start to proceduralize and right/remedy it. Welcome back to steering mediation in the course it started on — as a true alternative to the adversarial system, not that system’s convenient side-car.
Vickie, I really appreciate your sidecar image — it captures a lot about what’s troubling me. And I’m so pleased that folks like you, Geoff and Diane are helping steer this conversation, because you have credibility with your peers — and deservedly so.
Tammy, I could not agree more with your call to broaden the conversation. Disputes do not belong to the law alone, and most disputes stand outside the law, far beyond the reach of the shadow the courthouse casts. Law of course can be one path to resolution, but others, many others, exist. The many questions that our field faces demand the contributions of those from across the spectrum of philosophies, professions, experience, and education. Even those new to mediation may contribute; but we urgently need the wisdom of those, like you, who have put down deep roots in our field. Thanks for your call to action. I’m glad you’ve challenged us all to think, to open up our ears. As for me, here I am, ready, and listening.
Diane, I consider yours one of the most articulate voices about the direction our field should take and look forward to many future conversations — online and off.