It is natural to surround ourselves with like-minded people while avoiding the discomfort and tension that comes when we engage with those with beliefs and opinions contrary to ours. These days pumping gas or going to the grocery store can put us on the defensive, not to mention talking with relatives at the dinner table or co-workers around the water cooler.

The problem with this avoidance is that we rob ourselves and others of increasing the richness of our lives through lost, meaningful connections. In this webinar, we’ll explore how we can have these conversations in a constructive and meaningful way that is personally satisfying while fostering growth by deploying the principles of the Understanding-Based Model in our everyday lives. Benchmarks will help test these conversations’ value while building on our shared commitment to understanding as a way-station to intimacy.

November 16, 2022

12 PM PDT • 3 PM EDT • 9 PM CEST

Cost $47

All webinars are free for CUC Connect members. Click here to learn more.

Gary J. Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California since 1976, integrating mediative principles into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. Co-founder of the Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly the Center for Mediation in Law), he has been teaching mediation since 1980. Prior to his work as a mediator, he practiced law as a trial lawyer with Friedman and Friedman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After several years as an advocate, he sought a new approach to resolving disputes through increasing the participation of the parties in the resolution of their differences. At that time, he and his colleague, Jack Himmelstein, began to develop the Understanding-based model that is now practiced extensively in the United States and Europe. As one of the first lawyer mediators and a primary force in the current mediation movement, he has used this model to complete over one thousand mediations in the last two decades He has mediated numerous two-party and multi-party disputes in the commercial and non-profit realms, in the area of intellectual property, real estate, corporate, personnel, partnership formations and dissolutions, and family law.