There are all kinds of time and we’ve each developed a diverse menu of time types. How each individual handles time and how time decisions affect others are often a source of conflict. Time causes conflicts. Time can resolve conflicts too.
MV Mediation Celebrates Women’s History Month with a Spotlight on Several Women who have Made an Impact during Our 40 - Year History
Martha’s Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation Comes Through for the Youth Program
MV Mediation is pleased to announce a $2,500 grant from the Martha’s Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation to support the Youth Mediation Program and Peace Curriculum. The Peace Curriculum, developed by Executive Director Sara Barnes, is a 10-week conflict resolution and positive communication program designed to teach conflict resolution to the students of Martha’s Vineyard. Using integrative and hands-on activities, students learn to apply skills to resolve conflict in their day-to-day lives.
Mediation Musings: Stay in Your Lane
Mediation Musings: Conflict History
How and when and where did you learn about how to handle conflicts? Most of us have learned our personal conflict management approaches from the modeling of others. Throughout your life you were watching, observing, considering, and trying out new methods and developing your own style as a conflict resolver.
Mediation Musings: Optimism
It’s rough out there. Wars, atrocities, mass shootings, global warming, toxic polarization, free-floating anger and anxiety. We are often asked at MV Mediation about what we can do about world problems. Global conflicts and intractable societal problems weigh heavily on conflict resolvers’ minds just as they do for everyone. I thought that I’d offer approaches that have helped me, thinking they might help others during difficult times.
This month’s links for your reading, listening, and viewing pleasure
In recognition of Veteran’s Day:
5 veterans’ skills to apply to conflict resolution
In recognition of National Kindness Day:
How to show kindness in professional settings
Making tough decisions with compassion
Here are some reflective questions that might facilitate kindness when in conflict
Kind conflict resolution in the classroom
Preparing for family and holiday conflicts:
Dealing with difficult relationships
Conflict-free visits: Is this realistic?
Managing unresolved conflict
Other:
Don’t take it personally
Learning mutuality
Using a neutral to talk to your team about difficult news and current events
Conflict narratives and emotions
Here’s a link to one of our favorite websites on peace and conflict; lots of resources here
Four ways to create quality connections at work
The impact of pressure to accommodate others on conflict resolution
How curiosity can transform your relationships
Where one sits is important
DEIJ+B: DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, JUSTICE + BELONGING
In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, October 9...
We acknowledge that we are standing on the land of the Wôpanâak (Wampanoag) people and nation, who settled this land at least 12,000 years ago and still celebrate it as home today. Although commonly referred to as Martha’s Vineyard, this island has a much older name, a Wôpanâak name: Noëpe. Through this acknowledgement, we wish to celebrate Wôpanâak culture, creativity, and perspective. We hope to honor Wôpanâak perseverance in the face of colonialism, invisibility, and cultural genocide. And we commit to restorative relationships and practices with the Wôpanâak people of Noëpe. After all, it is important to remember that no matter where you go in what is now the United States, you are always on indigenous land.
Featured Community Partnership–– CAP Communication Ambassador Partnership
Do you know about the CAP organization? Communication Ambassador Partnership of Martha’s Vineyard is a local nonprofit organization whose vision is language access for all on Martha’s Vineyard and beyond. CAP provides interpreting and translation services along with other services that promote and support the assets of multilingualism and multiculturalism.
MV MEDIATION BOARD CORNER: September
FEATURED SERVICE: Group Facilitation
MV Mediation and other community mediation centers offer the service of facilitating meetings for various organizations and groups. As neutral facilitators, our service providers can take charge, make sure there is balanced participation, and help the group to be clear about agenda items, decisions and future action items.
Mediation Musings: Clarity, Consistency, and Dog Negotiation
A number of years ago a friend was having difficulties with her son. I thought that watching the kind and firm dog trainer on TV might help her to learn how to stay more consistent and clear with her son. A few weeks later she had recorded a number of episodes, and her son asked her, “Are we getting a dog?”
FEATURED SERVICE: Small Claims Matters
“I was terrified when I came into the court. It seemed like the end of the world. Thanks to my compassionate and understanding mediators, I was able to have a productive conversation with someone I considered an adversary. I couldn’t believe we were able to work it out without going in front of a judge. Thank you, MVMP.”
Mediation Musings: Metaphors, Symbols, Figurative Language
Conflict and dispute resolution is a difficult process for folks to wrap their heads around. As mediators and other conflict resolution service providers seek help participants, they find themselves drawing upon various types of figurative and symbolic language. As Tammy Lenski, conflict resolution researcher and practitioner, writes: “The way we frame a problem has a powerful impact on the solutions we can see . . . metaphor(s) orients us differently to a conflict and influences how we think, act, and resolve it.”
Mediation Musings: Monsters Are People, Too
Mediation Musings: June Freedom
Honeysuckle scent, sleeping late, warm days with no schedule, corn on the cob, fireflies. These describe my childhood memories of June freedom. I grew up in the Northeast of the United States, where the summer season was eagerly awaited throughout the cold and dank months. June freedom meant our lives were free and easy.
Featured Service: Productive Conversations and Elderly & Aging Mediation
“Mediation gave me a voice . . . I was able to speak for myself in an environment where my family was encouraged to try to come up with positive constructive solutions that everyone could buy into. We were able to listen to each other instead of just reacting as we have for so many years.” This sentiment is shared by many participants who avail themselves of elderly mediation and productive conversations services.
Mediation Musings: Timing, Design, and Saying Yes
“My dad told me that if someone needs you, they call you, and if they need you, you go.” Most experienced mediators have said something similar to this quote from Jerry Roscoe. He is the mediator that was called in at the eleventh hour to the Dominion/Fox court case. If you haven’t been paying attention, the case settled at the very last minute, as attorneys were loading up their court slide decks and the jury was ready to be seated.
