Great, thanks!

Just got mine -- it's great.

Didn't know you folks were going to just make these up and send them out. Didn't know it would use the data from the business and job description fields. I had used those fields for other things to tweak the display on my profile page. That'll teach me to follow the rules!

I've now changed my profile so my business name shows in the business name field, and my job in my job field. Just in case there's another go-round of badge production.

Lara, might there be another batch of badge-production happening ever at some point again?

Stellar. Just stellar. Gonna turn your gorgeous prose into an action-item checklist. Rated it "9" -- and I never ever rate any article a 9. Yowzah.

Oh, I can't go! Do it again, willya?

Thank you for the clear picture of how pragmatic paying it forward can be.

Jeff

Nicely put! Tweeting is a way of connecting. And connecting is necessary to business.

Imagine someone saying "I don't talk, because people usually talk about trivial stuff." That person just isn't going to get anywhere (Okay, unless he's Thomas Aquinas ...)

Jeff

Sara,

As suggested above, from a negotiating standpoint, your potential client's response can simply be seen as a clumsy opening gambit.

But it's also hugely telling about this person and his values. Your gut told you that.

The client may have no objective measure of value. Value for him is determined subjectively when he's able to bargain down from an original set asking price.

It suggests the client values price over business relationship. He either didn't understand the effect his gambit would have on you, or he knew and didn't care.

All this is good information. Your gut is processing it all very effectively. Go with the gut!

Jeff

Howard,

Thank you for identifying that conflict can be a positive force. It is neither good nor bad -- it is what we think of it, and do with it, that makes it so. And rarely does any valuable change occur without there being some conflict in the system somewhere.

Kate, the conflict in the meeting that ends in the unanimous "Yes!" may have been the tension between the group and the status quo. That they found a unanimous resolution quickly doesn't mean they didn't deal with a healthy bit of conflict -- they just didn't necessarily experience it between themselves or identify each other with it.

And if the Unanimous Yes group is always unanimously saying "Yes!," question whether they may be missing something, as Howard suggests. The Swedish Proverb says if two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary!

And a thousand times yes, Howard: for positive change to come from conflict, trust is key.

Now put this all together. Can we imagine leaving a meeting feeling good, precisely because we trusted each other to engage in healthy conflict to reach a resolution that dealt with what was most important? That's what I'd call a successful mediation.

Jeff

Bill,

This is an excellent reminder that we need to find the team of those people we can rely on, because no one does it alone. Not even solopreuners. We've got to find people to collaborate with to do what we do.

I love the irony that it is the experience of competition in the marketplace -- provocatively imagined as combat in your article -- that awakens the need to find our collaborative team.

We can see corporations as collections of people who have aligned their interests to watch out for each other. You've brought it to the Biznik community by identifying the team of paid professional advisors who can do that for solopreuners.

And Biznik itself is premised on the idea that for solopreuners can rely on each other. The taglines "Collaboration Beats Competition" and "Going it Alone, Together" demonstrate this. What's radical about this idea is that the individuals in the Biznik community are not directly aligned together in their economic interest.

We're not doing it because we're all employees of the same corporation. We're not doing it because one of us is paying the other (though those relationships can form, and we hope they do).

We're doing it because we have beliefs in abundance and collaboration. For many of us, they have supplanted the beliefs in scarcity and competition that served us so well in the corporate world.

When we see competition, scarcity, collaboration and abundance as beliefs, we can then choose when to hold them, and when to drop them. We then see we have the opportunity to extend our belief in collaboration beyond our co-employees, beyond our small circle of advisors. When we realize that we don't have to see a direct economic link to believe in the value of collaboration, we can then to other solopreuners in the Biznik community.

Why stop there?

Imagine going a step further: extending our belief in collaboration even to include people who once were our "competitors."

Why stop there?

The challenge in my work is helping people see that they can extend their belief in collaboration even to include people with whom they disagree.

Dina,

Great synopsis of the what happens -- and what we can do -- at the first choicepoint where we can become aware of conflict.

I love your initial focus on awareness. If we follow that up with curiosity it can teach us a lot about ourselves. "Huh, that's interesting -- here's my reaction to something someone just did -- what is that? What's that about? What am I feeling?"

Sometimes that feeling is an inward-focused guilt for being silent -- for not taking care of ourselves by saying something. Or it can be a silent outward-focused resentment toward the other person for putting us in this spot!

Love your emphasis on observation, stripped-down to what we perceive, and checking it out with the other person.

One thing I've found is asking a "why" question can engage them in a way that might not be productive. "Why" seems to speak directly to rationalized process and encourages a defensive response. What we're really wanting here is a dialog in which we can come to understand the other person, and "why" doesn't always get us there.

So in these situations I suggest making the observation and then asking if you can talk about that. "I see you put your dirty dishes in the sink -- can you tell me about that?

Great article! Love seeing conflict/dispute and working-it-out on Biznik. Thank you!

Jeff Bean

Russ,

I really appreciate your focus on the humans here. I'm always intrigued when people either rant or rave about technology -- it's still always humans using it. And at a very basic level, as a species we don't change much -- at least not that quickly.

Back in the early 80's a mentor told me "when you computerize chaos, you just make it faster." Now I'd say when you automate community, you make it faster, too.

I am encouraged that new tools can help build connections, business relationships, trust and community.

Jeff

David, sounds like you've got a winner of a program here! As many say "do it again!"

Jeff

So well put, Don. And think how this is all really just common courtesy. But like common sense, as Voltaire said, maybe it's not so common. Thanks for educating!

Jeff

An incredible event. Incredible people. Incredible community. Amazing what people can do when they approach life from a spirit of generosity and an attitude of abundance. And no doubt many solid relationships of support and partnership will result. I'm happy to have attended, glad for the people I met (like Cherie!), what I learned, and will look to volunteer the next time!

Oh, John, proving yourself a bigger man than your big mistake! I've never seen anyone eat crow so elegantly -- bravisimo! As was once said, better learn from others mistakes, because you won't live long enough to make them all yourself. Thank you so much for sharing your learning from yours.

And Kate, yes, for all learnings about Tweet Breach (love it!), the reaction to it from the followers is just as interesting. It is amazing just how creatively we can craft a complete story out of the little data we know, and ascribe intention and motivations to others, to make the world fit with our preconceptions. And you can't get much littler data than a single tweet!

Jim,

I love this. Just say no. You're making me think of "no" outside the context where I coach folks to use it, which is in dispute resolution negotiations.

Often what needs to happen in conflict is for the people to feel the power of asserting their own interests. And your description is wonderfully put: if either doesn't like what's happening -- if it doesn't meet their interests -- they can just say "no." There's a lot of power in that!

Nice synopsis, Joe!

One idea for something else to do during the small group work - besides enjoying a tasty beverage - is to make the rounds of the groups and listen in.

Monitor the "airtime." Some may be verbal and talkative, others quiet and reticent. You can help everyone have their say by tossing the conversational banter-ball around.

Be sure to reflect what's been said, especially by the talkative ones. They may be talking a lot because they haven't felt heard.

Elke,

Asking questions is a key part of moving toward resolution in the mediation I practice. The right questions can help illuminate assumptions and what's behind them. As Richard put it, we can't avoid making assumptions. But we can be aware of when we're making them, and why.

In conflict, even the most self-aware of us are challenged in our ability to examine our assumptions. What has to happen first is to create an environment where people feel safe to express what's most important to them, and to be able to hear the same from the other person. Sounds like your mediator was able to do that for you.

But what I love most about your mediation story is that you were able to ask the clarifying question yourself! That provided, as Ira Glass calls it, "the transforming moment."

Whether that's because of your inclinations or the mediators skill or a combination doesn't matter -- what matters is you got there.

I moved from litigation to dispute resolution because I learned that our legal system is an amazing and noble way for a society to resolve disputes among its citizens. But it's a lousy way for two people to work out their conflicts.

People aren't aware that they have a choice beyond fight or flight -- beyond beating each other with lawsuits or walking away. It's a false choice. There's a different way.

Mediation has been used to resolve most lawsuits for some time now, but that's not the mediation you experienced. Your mediation -- even though it was in a courthouse and begun moments away from a trial -- was held outside the shadow of the law.

What you experienced is a style of mediation well-established in volunteer community mediation centers, among some divorce mediators, in complex public policy disputes, in international relations and even in armed conflict. But it's not readily available to people in their family and businesses relationships. I want to change that.

Jeff

I have enjoyed this series! And am so happy to see an encouragement to question assumptions in business decision-making.

There's a billboard for a large investment firm: "Invest in facts, not feelings." I have to chuckle every time I see that. People don't act on "facts." They act on how they feel about the "facts."

Having moved from litigation to dispute resolution, I'm very aware of how true this is. There was never a single lawsuit I worked on that didn't arise from actions taken on unexamined feelings. There is no conflict in which unexamined assumptions did not play some part.

The key as you say, Elke, to be conscious of those assumptions, to be aware of those feelings through which we are perceiving our "facts" and on which we are basing our decisions.

Looking forward to that book!

Shannon,

Yes, completely! That now squares with the relativistic narrative viewpoint my brain got stuck on.

Thank you for the primer for this link-newbie!