New Year’s Negotiation Resolution: Dialogue With The Public Conversations Project

Link to the Public Conversations Project and join me in my New Year’s resolutions to focus on our similarities and common interests rather than on our differences and conflicting goals; find common ground; share the experiences from which our opinions dervice (our stories); set aside argument in favor of dialogue; remember that each one of us is struggling with some great burden despite outward appearances; and, that squeezing the last nickel or concession out of our bargaining partner fails to recognize that we are all in this together.

For the many spiritual holidays being celebrated at year’s end, I offer my own favorite prayer from my own religious upbringing, the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Happy Hannukah, Kwanza, Festivus, Solstice, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

                       

Victoria Pynchon

Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon is a panelist with ADR Services, Inc. Ms. Pynchon was awarded her LL.M Degree in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute in May of 2006, after 25 years of complex commercial litigation practice, with sub-specialties in intellectual property, securities fraud, antitrust, insurance coverage, consumer class actions and all… MORE >