I love Tammy Lenski – what can I say?  She is bright, fun, innovative and knows her stuff about mediation and more.  In an interesting site called Cafe Mediate,  she and another favorite of mine, Diane Levin, and two other interesting mediators team up and discuss current issues mediators should be thinking about.  I have really enjoyed Keeping Cool in Chaos (especially the part where Tammy relays a story of a lawyer at the mediation table basically trying to tell Tammy she does not know what she is doing! I haven’t been there yet but I know the experience is just around the corner for me)and What Makes a Great Mediator.

I love this line of work – really love it.  I believe in it with my whole heart.  Conflict is healthy and necessary not a bad word that should conjure up adversarial thoughts.  I think more education about it is necessary for all of us in order to make the mind shift from a two sided dispute that requires rigorous representation on both sides to a dispute that is able to be worked out through facilitation.  I was the aggressive litigator and I was pretty good at it, or so most of my clients said; however, I saw myself losing perspective on the value of human relationships and the necessity of them in order for us to experience happiness.  Anyway…I babble on…listen to these people speak…