Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 1: Collaborative Informal Problem Solving

March 7, 2011

I am writing this post as I wait at the LAX airport for my flight back to New York, while the memories are still fresh.  The 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress is over.  It’s been my pleasure and privilege to spend three days with so many wonderful people, doing great work all over the [...]

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Video Review Series, Part 4: Humor in Conflict Is No Laughing Matter

February 25, 2011

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.” ~ Mark Twain When Nicole Eggert got harsh publicity from the media for gaining weight since her “Baywatch” days, she decided to use humor as her weapon against the tabloid attacks.  She teamed up with “Funny or Die” to create a video [...]

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7 Barriers to Active Listening

January 30, 2011

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.“ ~Thich Nhat Hanh Effective influencers master the art of listening, and they understand that people want to be heard.  In our fast-paced world, active and empathetic listening is a rarity, and it’s not as simple as it sounds.  Even if we know how to [...]

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Social media death spiral: U.S. Figure Skating deletes comments and disables fans’ updates on its Facebook page as 2011 U.S. Figure Skating Championships approach

January 22, 2011

It is not every day that a social media enthusiast gets to live the drama of a social media crisis.  Yesterday, apparently,  I took part in one after posting this comment to the U.S. Figure Skating Facebook fan page: I was surprised to discover a few hours later that my post was deleted, as were [...]

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Can computer games help us make better decisions in life?

January 20, 2011

Supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a team at Queen’s University Belfast is exploring whether people can be trained to make better decisions by improving their ability to recognize and make allowances for their subjective opinions and biases. This interdisciplinary project harnesses leading-edge expertise in mathematics, statistics, critical thinking, knowledge management [...]

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Video Review Series, Part 3: Leveraging Social Media for Crisis Communication

January 18, 2011

How hard could it be to undo bad publicity? In one of the questionnaires relayed to 160 Israeli directors as part of the study conducted by the Faculty of Management at the Tel Aviv University, the participants were asked to recall information on Israeli companies that was reported in the press.  The research revealed that [...]

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Book Review: “Welcome to My World” by Johnny Weir

January 11, 2011

I enjoy reading memoirs – uniquely personal experiences with universal truths. I especially looked forward to the recently published autobiography “Welcome to My World” by Johnny Weir, a world-famous figure-skater, three times U.S. National Champion and twice Olympian.   I won’t pretend to be unbiased.  I am a fan of his masterful skating.  I have [...]

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Video Review Series, Part 2: The Effective Video Apology “DOs” and “DON’Ts”

January 8, 2011

“The only way to put out a social media fire is with social media water,” says Ramon DeLeon, managing partner of several Chicago-area Domino’s Pizzas stores, and he should know, as his video apology campaign back in 2009 was hailed as a big success by social media gurus.  My 2010 video apology review wouldn’t be [...]

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Year 2010 in Video Review Series: What can these videos teach us about the social brain, conflict management and social media?

December 29, 2010

According to Socrates, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”  It is this time again when we look back at the year gone by to see what we can learn from it.  All the exciting happenings in neuroscience and the explorations of the brain, communication and social networks have rocked this Brain Alchemist’s boat, or, [...]

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The death spiral of negative comments: is it good or bad for online engagement?

December 17, 2010

We get more engaged when our buttons are pushed.  It’s no surprise that negative information captivates the brain and stirs emotions, you have to look no further than our news channels and newspapers.  Negativity keeps the audience captive, in part, because the brain is wired to be more sensitive to negativity.  Negative emotions are so [...]

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