On Cognitive Dissonance
November 10, 2017
Cognitive dissonance. That word has come up a lot over the past year in different contexts and I thought I should spend some time reflecting on it. Leon Festinger, an American social psychologist, proposed that, as human beings, we strive for psychological consisten…
Big Ears, Big Heart
September 27, 2017
The biggest communication problem is that we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply. (Unknown) Recently, my 11-year-old son and I…
Leveraging HR Partnerships to Optimize Organizational Health: Best Practices in Conflict Management
September 22, 2017
The call was like many others that our mediation firm has received over the years. A Senior HR leader was calling about a particular department that had been experiencing acute tensions on the team. What had initially started as interpersonal strain between a manager and a…
Let Them Fight
September 14, 2017
13 years ago, I took my second son, then a newborn, to the office to meet my coworkers. I will never forget how ecstatic one of my colleagues was at the news we had two little boys. Boys are the best, Adrian exclaims. His eyes dance with life. They will grow up to be best…
Where Does Mediation Fit in a Workplace Complaint Process? 4 Considerations
September 7, 2017
Recently I fielded a call from an HR manager who was contacting me because the outcome of a workplace investigation recommended mediation. This is actually not that unusual. Workplace investigators (both internal HR specialists and external consultants) commonly recommend…
Resonant Leadership and Compassion: Practice Compassion Through Coaching
May 23, 2017
Part Three in the series on Leadership, Mindfulness, Hope & Compassion by Eleanor Moore. In Part One and Two in this series on Resonant Leadership, the focus was on how Leaders sustain themselves so that they can “stay in the game”. Compassion is the third element tha…
Resonant Leadership and Hope: 4 ideas to help build optimism
April 24, 2017
Part Two in the series on Leadership, Mindfulness, Hope & Compassion by Eleanor Moore. In Part One of this series, we looked at how leaders sustain themselves. Not just by taking time out through rest and relaxation, important for “recharging”, but by really digging in…
Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion? Oh My!
April 3, 2017
Part One of Three: Resonant Leadership and Mindfulness Author: Eleanor Moore So how do qualities like mindfulness, hope and compassion factor in to Leadership? Why should we, or the organizations we work with, care if the leader is benevolent as long as they operate in a fair, ev…
Unburden yourself through forgiveness
March 9, 2017
Authored by: Louise Pelletier I recently attended an advanced training session on Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Mediation with Kenneth Cloke. In the mediation world, Ken is known as a guru so I was fairly confident that the sessions would be valuable. If I can walk away with…
Positional and Relational Authority
February 24, 2017
While title and position are an important source of authority, leaders must also develop relational authority to be able to develop and maintain an engaged, accountable, and resilient team. When healthy positional and relational authority are in place, teams work with their leade…