I am not really one for elevator pitches. But I did hear one the other day about creating impact in a very short space of time, and I was struck by its relevance to mediation. Essentially, the message was that the people we meet make up their minds about us based on two key criteria,…

“Hi, I’m Rick. I’m your mediator for today. I can’t decide what happens in this dumb dispute or how you resolve issues. My job is just to help people who are incapable of resolving conflict, like yourselves, find areas that you can agree on. That means I get to control what appears in the messages,…

Geoff Sharp’s recent blog posting, Biased is better and Partiality is In, challenges the conventional mediation wisdom that views impartiality and neutrality as hallmarks of the mediation process. Here impartiality refers to a disinterestedness in the outcome of the dispute and the absence of real and perceived conflicts of interest in relation to the matter….