Tag Archives: conflict

Collaboration: An Endangered Competence?

By Jim Selman | Bio

I cannot remember having experienced or even having read about a time when there have been so many “extremes” co-existing in terms of political points of view and ways of understanding the world. All seem to simultaneously have the quality of being both ‘life threatening’ AND intractable. Whether we’re discussing climate change, social justice, lifestyles, civil rights, the economy, our political process or the price of oil, everyone seems to have a strongly held point of view without much evident interest in learning or working toward some common resolution of our differences. It would seem collaboration is fast becoming extinct—an endangered competence.

Collaboration isn’t the same as compromise or negotiation. Collaboration is not about winning an argument or making the strongest case for a particular point of view. Collaboration is grounded in the simple notion that we can’t accomplish something alone. To collaborate means to accept and value our differences, rather than attempting to homogenize our thinking into some sort of bland agreement. Collaboration, like coaching, is primarily a process of creative

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Philosophy: Hard Questions for Hard Times

By Jim Selman | Bio

One of the things I appreciate most about the Internet is
being ‘surprised’ when I stumble onto something or someone that I didn’t know
existed. This weekend a friend mentioned a new PBS series called “Justice
presented by a Harvard professor Michael J Sandel.
A few minutes

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Musing on Beliefs

By Shae Hadden | Bio

I was in an interesting conversation recently about how we can interact with people who hold different beliefs than ours. The question posed was, “How can one be with someone whose beliefs are the antithesis of our own?” An important inquiry to engage in, considering that a clash of beliefs is at the heart of most conflict and strife between people.

Responses from the group varied from escape (“We can’t be with them at all, so we leave”) and avoidance (“We can’t

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International Conflict Resolution Day

The third Thursday of October marks the second International Conflict Resolution Day. The World Mediation Forum and the Association for Conflict Resolution co-sponsored the first event. At the same time last year, the International Coalition of Concerned Mediators (ICCM) presented a Call to Action at their annual conference and began working to create a global community of like value-minded Alternative Dispute Resolution professionals and members

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Building Bridges

I was listening to an interview on CBC’s wonderful Sunday program called "Our World”. They were speaking with Charles Taylor, a 76-year-old Canadian philosopher and political activist who was recently awarded the Templeton Prize to research how spiritual aspirations shape society and politics. In this interview, he came across as one of the most optimistic commentators on the state of the world I’ve heard and he was positive without being unrealistic or naïve.

The essence of his message

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