Lee Jay Berman's EYE ON CONFLICT

As a mediator and leadership coach, I have to say this:  While generally I don’t disagree with most of what Meryl Streep said during her acceptance speech for the Hollywood Foreign Press’s Lifetime Achievement Award at tonight’s Golden Globe awards, she did miss an incredible opportunity.

First, she used her audience, her station, and her status the same way she accuses President-Elect Trump of using his.  Then, by attacking him, all she did was up the ante and unify his supporters (half of our country), while ensuring that Newton’s third law of physics persists:  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  As long as any of us advocate for one “side” over another, or argue over who/what is right/wrong, and frame it as “us and them”, we simply continue volleying in the same game.  The only way to unify us as a people, and appeal to the vast middle of the bell curve, is instead to catch the ball, stop the game, walk to the middle of the court and have real dialogue, with listening, understanding, and acknowledgement.

If you were cheering her speech, you may be caught up in the game, too.  We call it confirmation bias, where you seek out what you agree with because it feels good.  If you are booing it, maybe you should listen again and hear her words.  The fact that she delivered them in advocacy doesn’t mean that they are wrong; it only means she said them in a way that some couldn’t hear them.  And perhaps with a little too much judgment.

As a mediator, I know that telling people they are wrong doesn’t change their minds.  And as one who regularly mediates with the biggest celebrities in “Hollywood”, I know that even the ballroom before her was divided.  I also know that her talk made it unsafe for any who disagreed to speak up.  That’s why the election polls were so inaccurate.

We should be seeking to make people stop and scratch their heads and think in a new way about things they hadn’t before considered, rather than seeking to make the majority cheer and raise a fist.  As long as both sides persist in the latter, we are trapped in this volley for the unforeseeable future.

I call upon my mediator and leadership colleagues, and on all of you reading this, to help change the game and create dialogue, modeling more inquiry and active listening than advocacy.  It is up to all of us.

Tags: celebrities, Dialogue, Golden Globes, leadership, Mediation, Meryl Streep, politics
Posted in Celebrities, Entertainment & Sports, Current Events, leadership, Mediation Field, Mediation Skills, Politics & World Events | 1 Comment »

Just one week ago, members of the mediation community gathered in Los Angeles to celebrate the life of our dear friend and mentor Richard Millen (see Mediation World Loses a Patriarch).  My friend Phyllis Pollack wrote a wonderful summary of that night in her blog.

Today, we lost the great teacher and coach John R. Wooden, long time and legendary UCLA basketball coach.

I’m wondering with these teachers now gone, will we continue to follow their lessons?  I’m wondering with them now gone, the Dalai Lama turning 75 and Nelson Mandella turning 92 next month, I’m wondering who will be our next great teachers?  Who will walk the talk and live a life that embodies both greatness and goodness?

Wondering this makes me proud to have been in the company of Ken Cloke last week.  Ken was a co-founder of Mediators Beyond Borders and has published prolifically.  Ken is a great teacher who lives a life of compassion and grace.  Erica Ariel Fox is another.  She founded the Global Negotiation Insight Institute and is working on her first book.  I see many other great mediator friends doing incredible work – teaching conflict resolution skills in prisons, or to children.  Most of them are growing and preparing into our next great generation of teachers.

Sports might offer us Coach K at Duke basketball or Phil Jackson and his blend of Native American,  Zen and Christian learnings, known for giving his multi-millionaire players books on philosophy, spirituality and balance.

I don’t think we’re going to see teachers of the caliber of Richard Millen and John Wooden any time soon.  They had so much in common, not the least of which was, to quote Kareen Abdul Jabbar on Coach Wooden, “he sent a lot of good people into this world.”

Coach Wooden had said that his proudest accomplishment as a player was being named Scholar Athlete of the Year at Purdue.  Richard Millen, a humble young man from Tennessee  became a Harvard Law graduate.  The national college basketball players of the year (man and woman) receives the John R. Wooden Award; the Southern California Mediation Association’s peacemaker of the year receives the Cloke-Millen Award.  Both men were selfless – Coach Wooden was paid $32,500 in his final year at UCLA in 1975; Richard Millen also made a small fraction of those mediators who he mentored.  Coach lived by, “Success is the peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of being.”  While Richard Millen would agree, perhaps his favorite was, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say:  ‘we did it ourselves’.”

Who will lead us next?  Who will be our next great teacher?  Who will be worthy of us learning from?  Will it be you?

Tags: basketball, Coach K, Dalai Lama, Erica Ariel Fox, John R. Wooden, John Wooden, Ken Cloke, leader, leadership, Nelson Mandella, patriarch, Phil Jackson, philosophy, richard millen, spirituality, sports, teacher, Wooden Award, Zen
Posted in Celebrities, Entertainment & Sports, Current Events, leadership, Mediation Field | 4 Comments »

Late last month, New York Times writer Steven Greenhouse reported that the Obama Administration will seek to “prod” companies to improve wages and benefits by altering how the federal government awards contracts.  Companies in violation of labor and environmental laws will be disqualified while those that offer “better” pay, pensions, health plans and other benefits will receive more favorable consideration.  The goal is “to lift more families into the middle class.”  See “Plan to Seek Use of U.S. Contracts as a Wage Lever.”

Isn’t that a pendulum swinging too far to the left in response to having swung too far right during the previous administration?

Any group who feels suppressed will eventually attempt to dominate its suppressors. Employees who felt their rights were neglected under Bush now will secure their immediate future by making business owners experience the same pain and frustration that workers did, ensuring that leadership rallies and flexes their muscles as soon as they regain power.  Today, the majority of our politicians perpetuate this “us vs. them” mentality through extreme rhetoric to ensure their own re-election, and what passes for the news media these days assists them because the conflict drives readership.

If management didn’t view laborers as nameless, faceless commodities, and if labor didn’t view management as greedy fat cats trying to amass wealth at the expense of the laborer’s health, security and dignity, then capitalism could actually thrive.  But when management exploits labor, causing — and I mean causing — labor to organize and elect a politician who is almost socialist-leaning whose followers believe that a CEO’s salary should be determined by a multiple of the average worker’s pay, then it’s no wonder we end up with lawmakers who believe restraints on commerce are good ideas if they can force business to conform to the latest political thought (and I use that term loosely).  It’s no surprise that management outsources work to third-world countries!

The problem is our leaders are trying to resolve conflict through power struggles, rather than collaboration (or even cooperation), using polarizing positions instead of reasonableness, and a process of trying to win over “them”, rather than trying to win them over.  This short-sighted self interest in taking back the hill just lost only ensures another battle over the same hill with renewed insurgency from the defeated.  But do our politicians recognize how entrenched they are?  No, they just know they need to take the hill, whether that hill is healthcare or taxes or a village in Iraq.

Operating this way without seeing the big picture guarantees that the pendulum will continue to swing wildly between extremes and that career politicians will continue to be extremists rather than leaders.  What we need is a leader who leads with reason, rather than one who simply turns the power of the position the opposite direction from his or her predecessor.  Perhaps then we will have less conflict (too often intentional) and more actual leadership.

Tags: CEO Salary, conflict, extremist, federal contracts, leadership, Lee Jay Berman, Mediation, middle class, New York Times, Obama administration, politics, power struggles, Stven Greenhouse, U.S. Contracts, wage lever
Posted in Current Events, Politics & World Events | 3 Comments »