President Obama came to prominence in 2004 with a speech in which he argued that there isn’t a red America and a blue America but rather a single United States of America. Looking back twelve years later, this may seem like a rather odd notion in a country riven by intense political polarization. President Obama … Continue reading Presidential Lecture on Listening and Compromise
Good. Now I have your attention . . . for the nanosecond before you check your Facebook page. I just read two articles about the difficulties of “single-tasking,” aka paying attention. A cute piece in the New York Times identifies a number of problems with multi-tasking with electronic devices and quotes psychologist Kelly McGonigal who … Continue reading Please Put Away Your Damn Phone and Pay Attention
The New York Times just published a piece that really grabs me. It is a collection of photos and quotes of Iranians about their expectations from the recent agreement prohibiting Iranian nuclear weapon development. For one thing, the photos are wonderfully compelling and artistic images. They display the faces of people from a country considered … Continue reading Seeing Through Others’ Eyes
In a recent post, I mentioned that as a DR person, I particularly like the Serial podcast, and Erin Archerd asked why. I really love the way that the program seeks to learn and portray the complex realities of the stories it covers. It looks at them from many angles so that listeners get a … Continue reading Appreciation of Serial
This seems like an appropriate time to review that best-selling negotiation guide written in the 1980s. I refer, of course, to The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump. (What – you were expecting Getting to Yes?) The leading presidential candidates from both major political parties have a lot of professional negotiation experience and … Continue reading Review of Best-Selling Negotiation Text
You might like to read the cover story in the November 2015 issue of the ABA Journal, “Lawyers Shackled by Fear, Fear Not: While Feelings of Dread May Be Endemic to the Legal Profession, They Can Be Transformed to Positive Effect,” which features my article, Escaping from Lawyers’ Prison of Fear. (Click on the title … Continue reading Escaping Lawyers’ Prison of Fear in Litigation and Negotiation
Following my post summarizing Lawrence Krieger and Kennon Sheldon’s research on what makes lawyers (and law students) happy, I just saw this blog post with Krieger’s concise and practical message to students based on that research. He tells students that they can focus on extrinsic motivations, competing with other students, and try to survive in … Continue reading Law Students Can Choose to Thrive or Merely Survive
Money can’t buy me love. – Paul McCartney As a corollary to psychologist McCartney’s insight, money can’t buy lawyers (much) happiness. That’s one of the key findings of Lawrence Krieger and Kennon Sheldon’s impressive study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success. This post includes excerpts from this article, sans … Continue reading What Makes Lawyers Happy? – And How Can You Help?
An article in the New York Times, The Rationality of Rage, summarizes the findings of several studies about when expressing anger can be productive. Despite the catchy title of the article, expressing rage generally isn’t helpful. But expressing anger can be useful in some situations. The article distinguishes three types of negotiations – primarily cooperative … Continue reading Good Anger
Life can be darn irritating. In a NYT op-ed piece, Arthur Brooks argues that “When I am working for myself, any disappointing outcome is a stressful, unpleasant reflection on me. When I am serving, on the other hand, the work is always intrinsically valuable because of its intention. Adopting a service mind-set guarantees some measure … Continue reading Satisfaction Through Service
