“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. . . Do not now look for the answers. . . At present you need to live the question.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet At the heart of the idea of mediation is the aim of…
Earlier this month the Supreme Court of Canada issued its unanimous decision in Union Carbide Canada Inc. v. Bombardier Inc., 2014 SCC 35. The reasons of Mr. Justice Wagner deal with an unfortunate situation in which Bombardier, which had been suing Union Carbide for more than a decade seeking CAN$30 million related to allegedly defective…
In his now famous Stanford Commencement Address in June 2005, Steve Jobs remarked: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life…. [and] to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” One of the choices that we all…
Whether two employees are fighting or a disgruntled client is on the verge of leaving, you—yes, you—can step in and help solve the problem. Here are some tricks of the trade. Conflict happens. It happens in all areas of business. When your employees spend 40 plus hours together each week, they are bound to run…
This post seeks to provide readers an update of a recent development in Singapore – the launch of the Primary Justice Project. While the Primary Justice Project does not relate specifically or solely to mediation, its goals are the same: the amicable resolution of disputes. During the State Courts Workplan 2013 (1 March 2013), the…
Intellectual life is beset by ‘gap’ problems. Philosophers wrestle with the ‘mind-body problem’: the gap between material and non-material aspects of human existence. All science can be construed as an attempt to bridge the gap between what is and what we can imagine: an inductive corrective to deductive supposition. Roger Cotterrell describes law’s gap problem…
Next week I am going to interview one of Hong Kong’s leading police negotiators, Dr Gilbert Wong, Commanding Officer of the Police Negotiation Cadre (PNC). When I first emailed with Gilbert, I was struck by the signature line of his email: “Who Cares Wins”. While it could be a mediator’s tagline, it is in fact,…
This isn’t going to be a long post but sometimes it only takes a few words to bring the point home. Recently I had a tough week. Tougher than usual anyway. Session after session of pain, anger, disappointment and frustration left me feeling a little burned out and generally fried. I felt like I had…
The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was once asked why he continued to practice at the age of 90. “Because” he replied, “I think I’m making progress”. It is an extraordinary acknowledgement from a man widely regarded as one of the greatest ever cellists. Let’s be clear – Casals was a colossus in his world. Fritz…
I have been reflecting recently on the individual and collective professional journeys we all undertake – and on the different stages we reach. My reading has taken me to a thought-provoking book by theologian Richard Rohr, entitled Falling Upward. Rohr’s thesis, put very simply, is that there are two stages to life. The first, necessary,…
