Halow Dispute Resolutions Blog

I am excited to announce that I am now accepting domestic mediation (divorce and child custody) cases.

Although I will be mediating in this area using a variety of styles, depending on the needs of my clients, my preferred model is “Client-Centered Mediation.” In Client-Centered Mediation, the parties meet with their mediator 3 – 6 times, usually for roughly 2 hours per session.

The mediator helps the parties work through issues including:

- parenting plans

- child support obligations

- budgeting for the future

- the equitable division of property

- possible tax and other consequences of their decisions

- any other issues important to them

The mediator does not tell the parties what to do or provide them with legal or financial advice, but instead provides them with information and helps guide them through their decision-making process. The parties may make use of outside professionals (such as accountants, therapists, and attorneys) during the mediation process, but the goal is to keep things non-adversarial and let the parties reach decisions that work best for both of them.

At the conclusion of the mediation, the parties sign a memorandum of understanding setting forth their agreements, then take that memorandum to their respective attorneys for review and drafting of the final divorce documents.

I prefer the Client-Centered Mediation model because it provides more time for the parties to gather information, and to think through their decisions carefully before coming to a final agreement. It also represents the best opportunity to try to restore divorcing couples to a civil, working relationship by the end of the mediation, something particularly critical if they have children they will need to co-parent going forward.

Although Client-Centered Mediation is my preferred model, I will also be working with divorcing clients in more “traditional” mediation settings, including court-referred work and cases where the parties would prefer to hold one or two long mediation sessions in an attempt to settle their divorce more quickly.

I am looking forward to helping divorcing parties going through an extremely difficult transition avoid the stress and emotional pain of a long, dragged-out litigation, and move forward with their lives.

I recently set up a new listing on Thumbtack, an internet site that matches consumers with professional service providers. Please check out my listing here: Athens, Georgia Mediator, check out what Thumbtack has to offer, and leave a review if you are so inclined.

I will be presenting my workshop on Advance Directives (living wills and health care powers of attorney) at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Athens, Georgia on Thursday, July 7, 2011 from 12:30 PM to 2 PM. Please visit OLLI’s website at www.athenlir.org for more information if you are interested in attending the workshop.

If you are not eligible to attend OLLI workshops but are interested in having me present an advance directives workshop for your group or organization, please let me know. I present this workshop as a public service, and do not charge for my time. The only cost would be for copying the materials used to present the workshop.

What is the real cost of poor conflict management? Is it something abstract, or can an actual dollar amount be placed on it?

Poorly handled conflict has many clear “intangible” costs — stress, distraction, damaged relationships — but these intangibles have real-world consequences for your bottom line.

Take, for example, a health-care setting. Let’s say you work in a busy medical office with a large number of physicians. Two of the physicians are having trouble getting along. The other physicians and office staff are gradually starting to takes sides and divide into camps. Everyone knows the conflict is a problem, but nobody takes any actions to address it, in the vain hope it will go away on its own.

Before long, the situation results in a lot of real-world impacts to the office’s bottom line. Some staff members start calling off work so they won’t have to deal with the conflict. The staff who show up spend as much time gossiping about the latest fight than they do working. All of this results in decreased productivity and a serious hit to the office’s bottom line.

Patients pick up on the tension, and some decide to take their business elsewhere. The practice has trouble making long-term decisions, because the two physicians are locked into a battle against each other and oppose each other at every turn, regardless of the subject. As the situation deteriorates, individual members of the practice group start seriously considering leaving, and the practice itself is in danger of disintegrating.

If the conflict cannot be resolved and the practice put back on track, the cost to its members and their staff will be staggering, and will easily run into hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In a worst-case scenario, if the practice breaks up in a messy business divorce and lawuits are filed, the final cost in lost time and effort will run into the millions.

Good conflict management isn’t just a quality of life issue; it’s a critical part of helping your bottom line.

USA Network has a new show called Fairly Legal out which purports to depict the action-packed life of mediators. In all fairness, its just a TV show, and just like TV shows about attorneys and doctors, it isn’t realistic to expect it to be very . . . well, realistic, I suppose.

It’s not a show I plan to watch often; I’ve always found it difficult to watch lawyer shows (other than the original version of Law & Order) because I know first-hand just how unrealistic they are, and I just can’t get past that. The same rule will probably apply here. But, the fact that there is even a TV show centering around a mediator — however unrealistic the depiction may be — is probably a good thing, because it means that: (1) mediation is now enough a part of our culture to merit a TV show about it; and (2) it may help increase awareness of mediation as an option for parties in conflict.

For a good article presenting another mediator’s perspective on Fairly Legal, click here.

In my view, a great mediator has three goals in any mediation.

The first goal is to resolve the conflict (or in a legal setting, settle the case). It’s always up to the parties in a mediation to decide whether or not to settle, but a great mediator works actively and hard to get them there. A great mediator’s goal is to do this in a way that satisfies the parties. By saying the result should satisfy the parties, I don’t mean that they have to be doing handsprings and singing songs when they leave the mediation room — it’s great if that happens, but it’s not likely. But, at a minimum, the parties should feel like they can live with the result and that it is fundamentally fair.

The second goal of a great mediator is to build the relationship between the parties in a way that will help them resolve their conflict and avoid conflicts in the future. This goal may not be that important to the parties if they don’t expect to have ongoing dealings in the future. But, a great mediator always strives to put the parties in a position to leave the conflict behind them and move forward together if they so choose.

The third goal of a great mediator is to teach and build skills the parties can apply in future conflicts with other parties. In a great mediation, the parties should see things and learn things that, if they want, they can use the next time they get into a conflict situation, whether or not that conflict is with the same person.

These three goals are never contradictory. They build on and complement each other. Resolving a conflict opens the door for relationship building and teaches conflict resolution skills; building a relationship teaches skills and makes it much more likely the conflict will be resolved; teaching skills makes it more likely the parties will resolve their conflict and helps build their relationship. It isn’t always possible to achieve all three of these goals, but it is always possible to strive to achieve them.

HDR’s Fall 2010 newsletter is now available. The newsletter’s topic is conflict in faith communities. In it, I discuss what congregational conflict looks like, its costs, and resources to address it. You can view an on-line copy of the newsletter by clicking on this link: HDR Fall 2010 Newsletter.

If you would like to be on HDR’s e-newsletter mailing list, please sign up for that using the box below. The newsletter will be published quarterly and focus on dealing with conflict in different contexts each time. I will send out occasional announcements between newsletters about upcoming workshops and available services, but I promise not to fill anyone’s inbox, and you can unsubscribe at any time if you decide its not for you.

Let me know if you have any feedback about the newsletter by emailing me or adding a comment to this blog post.

I am happy to announce that I have added the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory to my conflict management tool set.

The Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory is a 20 question survey that helps people identify their “conflict style” — their favored way of dealing with conflict. The five conflict styles identified by the Kraybill instrument are Cooperating, Directing, Compromising, Avoiding, and Harmonizing. Each style has its particular strengths and weaknesses, and the Kraybill instrument provides a lot of practical guidance and insight into what those are.

The Kraybill Instrument takes into account that the way people deal with conflict tends to change depending on the level of the conflict and how much stress they are under, and can be adapted for use with people from different cultural backgrounds. It not only teaches people how to recognize conflict styles, it also provides practical guidance for how people using different conflict styles can work best with each other. It is a simple, effective, research-validated tool for learning conflict management skills.

If you are interested in learning more about the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory, or having me conduct a workshop using the Kraybill instrument for your group or organization, please contact me. I would be happy to send you an informative fact sheet about the Kraybill instrument, as well as advise you of available trainings using it.

In a post on March 22, 2010, I referenced a tragic grandparent visitation case in Illinois. In that case, an Illinois man was shot by the grandparent of his child as he was attempting to pick the child up for visitation from his estranged wife. After his death, his parents have not been able to visit their grandchild, and are now suing for visitation.

One development in the case back in March 2010 was that the woman who was accused of the shooting, Shirley Skinner, was convicted of his murder. While this unfortunately doesn’t resolve the visitation issue, it is an important development in the case. I will post a future update about the visitation case itself if one becomes available.

A link to my original post about this story is here.

A link to the news story about the conviction is available here.

The Georgia Conflict Center is a non-profit located in Athens, Georgia that has as its mission reducing levels of physical, verbal and emotional vioence. I am currently on the Board of the GCC, and I am pleased to announce on this blog that the GCC recently put up a website at www.georgiaconflictcenter.org. Please check it out and see all of the exciting work that the GCC is doing in Athens, Georgia and throughout northeast Georgia.