News & Announcements
Early Bird Registration Now Available – Fall Conference
Take advantage of special Early Bird pricing for the Annual Fall Conference on November 6th! Registration and payment can be completed online, via phone, fax or by mail. The Fall Conference Registration page has all the details.
Santa Monica/Westside Study Group Returns
SCMA is pleased to inform everyone that the study group hosted by Wendy Kramer has returned!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
6:30 PM
2001 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 201, Santa Monica, CA
For all the details, here is a message from Wendy:
Hello Everyone:
The hiatus is over and I miss you all! Please join me on October 6, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. for our study group.
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Professional Development Meeting Announced!
Professional Development Meeting
HOW CONFLICTING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES CAN SINK YOUR MEDIATION
September 23, 2010
Santa Monica Library
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Cultural Values are like the underlying issues in ma mediation. Fail to recognize and address them and you run the risk of reaching an unsatisfactory resolution, or no resolution at all. This presentation describes a way of recognizing organizational values so you can use them to analyze a dispute and find a path to a fully satisfactory resolution, using case studies of how understanding cultural values helped to resolve the dispute.
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Peacemaker Award Goes To Incarcerated Women
How is it that women with dark pasts, serving time for murder and manslaughter, can be honored as Peacemakers? Their story is one of personal commitment to a community in which most are destined to live out their lives.
Susan Russo, a lifer at Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, CA wrote over 50 handwritten letters to California Mediators, requesting training for inmates.
One of these letters made its way to Laurel Kaufer who phoned colleague, and frequent SCMA event speaker, Doug Noll. The two of them took action and twelve weeks later, 15 inmates were fully trained
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Save The Date – Annual SCMA Fall Conference On November 6th
November 6 – Annual Fall Conference: The Business of Mediation: (A Frank Dialogue about the Practice of Mediation)
Details to follow…
Online Magazine
At Work: There is no disputing the need for mediators
If your neighbor doesn’t pick up after his dog on your front lawn, don’t get even.
Talk it out.
That’s the advice of Hermosa Beach resident Lance Widman.
Widman serves as executive director of the South Bay Center for Dispute Resolution, a local mediation group.
For the past decade, Widman, 64, has run the organization out of his home. He serves as one of three
Mediating the Litigated Case: An Open Letter by Judge Heeseman
Dear Everyone,
Click here to view an open letter sent to us by Judge Heeseman, who is the Chair of the court ADR Committee. If you are interested please contact the persons indicated in the letter. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Phyllis Pollack
SCMA President Phyllis G. Pollack, Esq. Interview on BlogTalk!
Negotiate! Radio is a nonprofit community service initiative. Its objectives are to collect and diffuse information on negotiation, mediation, and alternative dispute resolution (ADR), both in theory and by analyzing case studies. It is my aspiration that listeners will use the information learned in the shows, especially conflict resolution techniques, in their personal lives, thus living a more peaceful,
prosperous, and fulfilling life.
Conflict Coaching
Conflict Coaching is becoming a larger and larger part of my practice. One of the many applications: Coaching one party in a dispute is a great Plan B when only one party is willing to come to the table.
Ideally, mediators would like to sit down with both (or all if there are more than two) parties in a dispute and do what we are trained to do: facilitate discussion, define the issues, guide the process to the transformative “Ah-Ha” moment, hammer away at the solutions and craft an agreement that everyone feels
good about and to which all the parties can adhere. But what happens when despite the mediators best efforts to convene a case, only one party is interested in coming to the table? There is still hope for a peaceful process, and I have found that conflict coaching can be really effective in these situations.
Civil Harassment Mediation: A Settlement-Friendly Environment
Abstract: Civil harassment mediation, from an outsider’s perspective, seems to be a daunting environment in which to achieve a settlement. Parties have an emotional dispute, are not likely to cooperate with each other, and mediation time is limited. Nevertheless, settlements are achieved by applying well known concepts from basic mediator training.
