I don’t know about you, but I left no calorie untouched this holiday season! And even though I faithfully walked my dog every day (except the days I didn’t 😊), I can’t say I spent any consistent time on my workout schedule either. Which makes it easy to know where to start with my own personal New Year’s resolutions for 2019!  I read an article recently, however, that challenged me to go beyond my personal life and consider making resolutions about my work life, too. It was so persuasive I decided to give it a try this year. As a mediator, there are some key behaviors I’d like to sharpen up in 2019. Here are my top five:

Welcome to Citizens Mediation Service’s awesome new website! We are grateful to Working Zombies Studios for their hard work and patience in bringing this site to life. Every month we’ll use this space to bring you opinions, perspectives, and voices that reflect the wide world of Community Dispute Resolution Centers. We hope you will find it useful and thought-provoking.

Intimidation can only occur in the presence of real or perceived power imbalances. It can be an insidious and potent strategy for wielding power in a mediation. The mediator can protect against the negative impact of intimidation on the less powerful party by knowing the sources of power imbalances.

As mediators, we frequently encounter volatile mediation situations. Sometimes it can even be hard to keep our own anger in check as we focus on maintaining our neutrality in high conflict mediations. Anger, however, can actually be our ally in moving toward resolution if we know how to leverage its positive power.