9:00 AM – 12:00 PM Pacific • 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM Eastern • 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM Central Europe

One of the major tensions we are experiencing right now with the coronavirus is how much pressure people need to feel to cooperate in limiting the spread of the disease. This pressure can range from those who feel that maximum pressure through governmental order and enforcement is the best way to go—to the other end of the continuum, where there is a belief that if people understand the situation, they will recognize that their self interest requires social isolation and will voluntarily decide to self isolate.  This tension is present in all conflicts and figuring out how to manage the tension is a critical mediator skill. Pressure can come from all different directions, some of it is manageable but when it moves into coercion the mediator needs to step in to keep the conversation flowing in a balanced way.

In this workshop we will teach how to manage the tension and pressure—both by how to work with others and how to work within ourselves so that we can be most effective with others. Although this will be an online program, we will find ways to learn interactively including role plays. We’re excited to discover how we can most effectively teach and learn online.

Facilitators

Katherine Miller

Katherine Eisold Miller is an attorney practicing mediation and collaborative practice in Westchester County, NY. She has been practicing family law since 1987, first as a litigator and now exclusively outside the court system. She has taught family law at the White Institute and NYU as well as with the Center and lectures regularly on mediation and collaborative practice. She is a Board member of the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals.

Gary Friedman

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.