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We have this stereotype of good salespeople as being smooth talkers but real professionals know that the key to better sales results is better listening.  It is said that hearing is physical but listening is mental. Hearing is physical but listening is mental! But can you become a better listener?  If my experience is any guide, the answer is emphatically yes!  Here are some ideas for becoming a better listener.  In a short, but interesting article titled “How to Become a Better Listener According to Science,” Organizational Psychologist Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik, provides a very simple formula: Shut up Listen Repeat Obviously a little pithy but there is a lot to be said for this simple formula.  Convincing someone else of your position in an adversarial setting like mediation, demands that you not only understand their position but that they believe you understand their position.  So, how do you become a

Does the “Why” Matter?​ As lawyers we are trained to discover the facts of a dispute and apply the law to those facts.  Lawyers are good at uncovering the what, when, where, who, and how of a dispute.  All necessary ingredients for good trial preparation.  But how often do you understand why?  Why are the parties in conflict?   Why can’t they resolve the conflict? Mediators have the luxury of hearing both sides of the story.  We hear those stories from both counsel and the party in conflict.  I am sometimes asked why, if everyone knows the mediation will come down to a money exchange, we do not just skip ahead to that negotiation.  The answer is that if that was all that mediation is, there would be little need for a mediator.  Understanding the conflict story almost always opens possible solutions that are otherwise obscured. Somewhere deep in the

I want to share a story I found in Professor Adam Grant’s book “Think Again.” The book is about the “skill” of re-thinking — critically and objectively evaluating — what we believe. To illustrate how difficult this skill is the book’s Prologue tells the story of Wagner Dodge and how he survived the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. In 1949, 15 smokejumpers parachuted into a wildfire in a Montana forest. The firefighters’ mission was to dig a fire break to contain the fire. As they headed toward the fire, they saw that it had leapt across a gulch and was heading straight for them very quickly. When they realized they couldn’t contain the fire they attempted to retreat back up the slope from where they had come. When they got within a couple hundred yards of safety, the crew’s foreman, Wagner Dodge, determined that the fire would overtake them before