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General
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Free Sample Bi-Monthly 'Getting to Agreement' Newsletter
Benefit now by subscribing to our free Newsletter at the top of any page on our website. Our newsletter is packed with tips, advice, and topics such as communication focus, collaboration, mediation, negotiation strategies, questions and answers from subscribers and clients, recommended reading, case studies and website updates. Full of practical "how to" tools and techniques for communicating more effectively and achieving satisfying outcomes. Feel free to contact us for copies of back issues. We respect your privacy and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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Communication Skills
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Building Trust
The skill of opening up to others and creating an environment for others to open up in return, requires deep trust. This article provides a list of practices that BUILD trust and suggests further recommended reading.
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Finding Common Ground
In just about every profession and area of life we have to work and make decisions collaboratively. The power of collaboration in achieving mutually shared visions and solving problems is a reality for all of us, but one challenge is finding common ground. This article provides 10 practical ways to build common ground with others that can be used to help achieve better outcomes.
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Crucial Conversation Tools
Difficult conversations are part of everyday life. This article discusses emotional, controversial, high-stakes situations when there is a strong need to have the skills to actively listen, talk openly and appropriately. It explains three key factors to keep in mind when you have a difficult conversation you need to address.
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Listening Skills
We all want others to understand us. However, failure to really listen and then understand what is being said (miscommunication) is the most common root cause of disputes and communication problems. This article explains 'active listening' and highlights five important techniques to increase our comprehension and improve understanding when listening to others.
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Improving Non-Verbal Communication
Non-verbal communication is the single most powerful form of communication and daily we are responding to thousands of non-verbal cues which help let us in on what is going on in someone else’s mind. This article provides 8 vital tips on improving your skills in interpreting non-verbal communication clues which will enhance your ability to interact meaningfully with others and reduce misinterpretation of messages and conflict situations.
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Negotiation Skills, Tips & Principles
Practical checklist on Negotiation including: The 4 Basic Rules of Principled Negotiation; Principles to use at the Negotiating Table; The Art of Asking Questions; 13 Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Negotiations; Ten Key Negotiating Skills and a Recommended reading list.
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A Quick Reference Guide for Putting Conversations to Work
Café Conversations are an easy-to-use method for creating a living network of collaborative dialogue around questions that matter in service of the real work. Cafés in business have been named in many ways to meet specific goals, including Creative Cafés, Knowledge Cafés, Strategy Cafés, Leadership Cafés, Marketing Cafés, and Product Development Cafés. Most Café conversations are based on the principles and format developed by The World Cafe (see www.theworldcafe.com), a growing global movement to support conversations that matter in corporate, government and community settings around the world. Courtesy of The World Café Community.
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Rebuilding Trust Within Teams
This extract from the book 'Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace' by Dennis & Michelle Reina, discusses how trust is built, team expectations, keeping agreements, communication issues including admitting mistakes and telling the truth, as well as the abilities and skills of team members and the contribution they make to achieving group goals.
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‘Write It – Right It’ - ACT Fair Trading Department
This publication is designed to empower consumers to initiate an explanation and rectification of problems they encounter in a variety of common situations. Consumers can feel very frustrated when a product they purchase or a service they engage fails to perform adequately or does not provide the benefits they expect. Sometimes people are loath to pursue an explanation or redress because they fear doing so will cause acrimony or embarrassment. The material provides practical guidelines and sample letters for initiating inquiries or complaints to quickly resolve issues. Covers such topics as the complaint process, refunds, unsatisfactory services, cancelling lay-by agreements and door-to-door sales contracts, terminating motor vehicle sales agreements and unsatisfactory vehicle repairs and tenancy agreements.
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Handling Criticism with Honesty and Grace
Perhaps one of the most vulnerable of moments is when someone criticizes you. Gut instincts expert, Emmy-winner and former Wall Street Journal reporter, Kare Anderson shares her practical "AAAA" Approach to Responding to Criticism.
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Selling Your Ideas and Winning Agreement
Kare Anderson - Author 'SmartPartnering', 'LikeAbility' and 'Make Yourself Memorable'
provides over 30 ways to sell your ideas and reach better agreements with others more easily in everyday life.
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Your Likeability Quotient - Get Along Better Quiz
Do your gut instincts help or hinder your Likeability Quotient? From the research on behavioral and gut instincts, gain insights about how to say it better next time. Answer this quick nine-question quiz and get some tips. Some of the answers may surprise you. By Kare Anderson, Emmy-winner, former Wall Street Journal reporter and gut instincts expert.
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Rebuilding Trust Within Organisations
This article examines how to preserve and rebuild trust within organisations and certain actions leaders can take to have a positive impact on people. It provides seven practical steps for healing from betrayal or loss.
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Dispute Resolution
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10 Tips on our Attitude Towards Conflict
Tips to assist in shifting our attitude and behaviour from an adversarial approach to a co-operative or 'common ground' approach.
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Tips on Managing Conflict - 11 Practical Ways to Deal with Difficult Conversations
If you are in conflict with another party and are unsure how to deal with it, the following tips may help you prepare mentally and emotionally and work your way towards agreement.
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Mediation Case Study: Lessons Learned
A case involving a home building repair was resolved through mediation and reveals a number of lessons that can be learned by parties to any dispute.
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Pursuing Higher Ground in Public Arena Dispute Resolution: Establishing the Case for Transformative Facilitation
Growing disillusion with civil governance and a concern that social and environmental issues can no longer be entrusted uniquely to our elected leaders has generated a demand for public facilitation approaches involving elevated forms of community engagement. This paper argues that the critical nature of socio-environmental pressures in the 21st Century demands transformative facilitation be the core methodology for dealing with public arena conflict.
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Quick Tips to Getting Through Conflict to Agreement
Kare Anderson - speaker, Emmy-winning former journalist, author of the book ‘SmartPartnering and Resolving Conflict Sooner’ and publisher of two blogs, Moving From Me to We and Say it Better, with over 45,000 subscribers in 27 countries provides a list of helpful tips on relating to others and getting to agreement sooner.
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14 Conflict Tools
Kare Anderson, author of the book ‘SmartPartnering and Resolving Conflict Sooner’ answers many common questions on conflict: How do you handle conflict? Ignore it? Get defensive? Blame it on someone or something else? In this artilce she explains there are better ways to handle conflict and criticism.
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The Conflict Emergency Kit
Many conflicts get worse than they actually need to be because the participants lose control of themselves and retreat into self-reinforcing patterns of attack and counterattack. In this checklist, Dennis Rivers provides ten guidelines to help you navigate your way through everyday collisions of needs and come out still liking yourself and able to work with your "partners-in-conflict."
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Collaboration
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Dealing with Resistance to Collaboration
What do you do when you are part of a collaborative project but are faced with people who don’t possess a ‘collaborative mentality’ and refuse to improve their communication skills? What if a team member is a trouble-maker or dissenter? What if the only view that counts is theirs? What happens when they don’t perform their assigned tasks and this impacts on the group? This article addresses these key questions and explains the primary obstacle to collaboration with practical steps you can take when team members won't cooperate.
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Effective Teams
Teams come together for any number of reasons – to resolve problems, to be creative and innovate, to carry out a tactical response to a well-defined plan just to name a few. This article discusses a number of key factors to achieving successful outcomes.
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Common Ground – The Case for Collaboration between Anti-Poverty Advocates and Public Interest Intellectual Property Advocates
This article examines the previously unarticulated common ground between scholars and advocates who work to eliminate poverty, and scholars and advocates who work on intellectual property issues in the public interest. The article illustrates how scholars and advocates working on poverty and on public interest intellectual property have relied on 'rights talk' to frame their social movements and this has accentuated differences between the movements. However the movements share core principles. The paper suggests by reframing the goals of both social movements, common ground can be brought to the fore and demonstrates the benefits of collaboration.
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Guidelines and Issues to Consider in Planning a Collaborative Process
Increased public interest in decisions affecting the environment and natural resource use, combined with recognition of the limitations of traditional top-down approaches, have led to the development of collaborative processes. This research project involving a survey and three case studies, provides some general guidelines and principles of collaboration that reflect the experience gained by practitioners over recent years. This paper also raises the issue of power dynamics in collaborative decision-making. Reprinted with Permission: Paulson, Deborah D and Chamberlin, Katherine M, "Guidelines and Issues to Consider in Planning a Collaborative Process" (4 May 1998). University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071-3371 - Final Report submitted to the William D. Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources.
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How to Have More Effective Meetings
This document includes Meeting Process Recommendations; Meeting Norms; Agenda Template; Meeting Management: Determining the Participant List; Tips for Meeting Attendees; Checklist for Meeting Convener/Facilitator; Types/Modes of Meetings; and Vocabulary for Meetings. Courtesy of the University of California, Davis and Common Ground: Center for Cooperative Solutions.
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Reaching Out Across the Red-Blue Divide One Person at a Time
This Public Conversations Project guide offers a step-by-step approach to inviting one other person — someone whose perspectives differ from your own — into a conversation in which both parties agree to use collaborative practices. This practical guide will help prepare you to speak about your passions and concerns in ways that can be heard, and to hear others’ concerns and passions with new empathy and understanding — even if you continue to disagree. Click here for more information on the Public Conversations Project.
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Fostering Dialogues Across Divides
A very user-friendly ‘Nuts & Bolts Guide from the Public Conversations Project’ written as if the reader is a potential facilitator although it is intended for both experienced practitioners and beginners. The text offers general advice as well as very specific nuts and bolts tips for those who wish to convene, plan, and facilitate constructive conversations on deeply divisive issues.
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For Lawyers
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Mediation Guidelines - Law Council of Australia
The Law Council of Australia has developed guidelines to give assistance to lawyers representing clients in the mediation of civil and commercial disputes.
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Mediation - Information for Lawyers
A Collaborate Australia summary specifically designed to assist lawyers in deciding which cases are/not suitable for mediation; their role in the mediation process; timing considerations; involvement of experts and consultants in the process; and benefits for lawyers, clients and the court system.
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The Lawyer as Problem Solver
Advice to Litigation Lawyers on How to Make the Settlement Process Work - Paper prepared by William G MacLeod and Jane B Morley, QC for Continuing Legal Education Society of BC
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Want to find out more about us and what we do?
Learn new communication strategies and tips for free by signing up for our bi-monthly Newsletter "Getting to Agreement" which provides practical "how to" articles that you can put into practice in every issue. Topics include our regular communication focus, collaboration, mediation, negotiation strategies, questions and answers from subscribers and clients, recommended reading, case studies and website updates. Every issue has a specific article dedicated to an aspect of communication and is full of practical "how to" tools and techniques for communicating more effectively and achieving satisfying outcomes. Click here for a free sample of our Newsletter and start improving your skills today. You can subscribe from the top of any page of our website.
If you have further questions, or require more information and advice on how we may be of assistance in your particular situation, we invite you to contact us directly on 1300 36 22 33.
