Dispute Resolution Center Harris County, Texas Mediation Matters January 2020

The Year Ahead...

As we embark on a new decade, the Dispute Resolution Center (DRC) will continue to adapt procedures to provide better services, and faster case processing, for disputants in Harris County. Credit card debt and automobile debt cases will now be administered through our Community Program, increasing the number of case managers available to schedule mediations. This change should reduce the time between the initial intake and final disposition of these cases.

2020 includes the divesting of the DRC Community Outreach Program. Unfortunately, this program did not yield the returns we hoped for and we can no longer justify its expense. When invited, we will rely on volunteers to staff booths at public events. The DRC will

continue to work closely with the United Way and other community organizations, but in a reduced capacity.

We anticipate continued growth of our services at the Justice of the Peace courts, including a possible increase in credit card debt cases after September 1, 2020. On that date, the jurisdictional limit of those courts will increase from the present $10,000 limit to $20,000.

Other policy and procedural tweaks are planned, and as always, we are interested in feedback from our clients and volunteers. We foresee a robust 2020, enabled through the dedication, commitment and talents of our volunteers.

Frank Garrettson Evans III 1928 - 2019

Judge Frank Evans, widely known as the “father of alternative dispute resolution in Texas” passed away on November 9, 2019.

Judge Evans was instrumental in founding the Dispute Resolution Center in 1980 and a principal draftsman of the 1987 ADR Procedures Act that established new policies seeking Texas courts to encourage peaceable resolution of civil disputes.

He was interred in the Texas State Cemetery in recognition of his “significant contribution to Texas history and culture in the field of justice.”

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Mediator Tip

Improving Your Services and Self-Satisfaction

By Samuel Dinnar

If you are an experienced mediator who has mediated many disputes to a successful agreement, then you have probably established a reputation and feel confident in your mediation skills. But when was the last time you really challenged yourself, challenged your way of doing things, or thought

strategically with other experienced mediators about how you can continue to build your practice and revitalize yourself?

Here are five tips for improving your services and self-satisfaction:

Reflect on your Practice:

Take some time to describe your practice in a neutral (non-marketing) voice. Think about the type of cases you handle and which ones you would refuse to handle. Revisit your intake process, mediation agreement and opening statements: are they still reflective of who you are and who you want to be? Have you articulated to yourself and others how you deal with the ethical dilemmas that often arise in mediation? Are you clear about what situations would cause you to call a halt to a mediation?

Role-play:

Find situations where you can safely participate in simulated mediations. Mediation is a practice that requires practice, and as such it is good to simulate some extreme situations where you are forced out of your comfort zone. Doing so with like-minded colleagues can help you reflect together to identify things that worked-well and things that could have been done better. This is where most new learning occurs. As an experienced mediator you will learn a lot by playing the role of a party, or by putting yourself in the shoes of the attorney in a simulated dispute. Experiencing things viscerally from the other perspectives provides invaluable insights!

Improve your self-awareness:

Whether through the help of observers or through your own self-reflection, you should constantly

improve your efforts to be self-aware of your own habits, triggers, intuitive-reactions and biases. This is

especially important if the last time you made this conscious effort was many years ago. Do you really

know how you behave and how you are perceived? Can you tell when you are emotionally “triggered” and

how that impacts your body and your mediator’s mind? What can you do to improve your ability to “go to

the balcony” and remain centered in mediation? Improving these skills will help you perform better as well

as feel better, both at the table and during the rest of your day.

Mediator Tip Continued...

Find a peer support person or network:

Mediation can be a lonely profession. The people around us (litigators, associates, spouses and others) may not understand what we are dealing with, and may not be able to provide us the advice and support we need. Finding a peer mentor, a “buddy” or a support network is especially valuable when facing surprising challenges and tough “burn-out” moments. But it is even more useful when used to implement continued learning and making your practice more fun. Imagine how you would benefit from implementing a regular monthly call with a colleague where you would both trade stories about one major “win”, one major “challenge” and your “milestone progress”. This will provide you both with peer support, an independent perspective, improved learning and an increased commitment to growth.

Develop your Theory of Practice:

By reflecting on your actions (using the tips above) you can find some useful lessons-learned. You will be able to identify mistakes that you made, or nearly made, and how you may have prevented them with increased self-awareness. Continuously using what we call the Entrepreneurial Negotiation Loop of Learning (prevent - detect & respond - reflect), you will be able to develop your own Theory of Practice: a collection of tips-to-self about how you conduct your practice, and how you aspire to be as a mediator.

Following the above five tips will help you take your mediation practice to the next level, no matter where

in the world you mediate and no matter what type of dispute you specialize in. As a matter of fact, I

believe that the level of reflection and learning is increased when openly comparing and contrasting

different cultures, contexts and norms of mediation.

Samuel Dinnar is a business mediator, instructor at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and a faculty member of the Advanced Mediation Workshop at the Harvard Negotiation Institute (along with distinguished mediators David Hoffman, Larry Susskind, Susan Podziba and Audrey Lee).

As founder and President of Meedance, Dinnar provides global consulting

services and serves as a mediator specializing in business conflicts that

involve founders, executives, investors, and board members. Dinnar is the

co-author of the award-winning book “Entrepreneurial Negotiation” with

Larry Susskind.

2020 Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year will be celebrated on January 25, 2020 and is the Year of the Metal Rat.

This year will be conducive to business and professional promotions provided you trust your instincts and emotions. Ambition and opportunism in all areas are reinforced in this year; but it is always best to be on guard since jealousy can bloom profusely.

RACE INFORMATION

Saturday, February 15, 2020 - Sam Houston Park, 1100 Bagby, Downtown Houston

Since 1986, the Houston Bar Association has raised over $1 Million for The Center for Pursuit.

Please join us in continuing to support this worthwhile cause by participating in the 8K Race, the Children's Run or the 1-Mile Family Walk.

1K Children's Run 7:30 a.m. 8K Wheelchair Division 7:50 a.m. 8K Run 8:00 a.m. 1-Mile Family Walk 8:30 a.m. RETURNING! Race registrants receive T-Shirts with entry.

The 8K course is certified and the 8K race is sanctioned by USATF. The 8K Run is an official Spring Series Race of the Houston Area Road Runners Association (HARRA.)

Register online HERE, at Packet Pickup, and on Race Day!

ADR Funnies

Trust Me - I’m a Mediator

People decide on your trustworthiness in a tenth of a second.

Princeton researchers found this out by giving one group of university students 100 milliseconds to rate the attractiveness, competence, likability, aggressiveness, and trustworthiness of actors' faces.

Members of another group were able to take as long as they wanted. Their judgments were the same for most of the traits as the folks who had only a tenth of a second.

Much of that judgement is based on things you can't really change. For instance, research suggests that more feminine, baby-like, and happy faces are perceived to be more trustworthy.

You can alter your body language to boost others' trust in you. As Business Insider previously reported, try smiling more, leaning forward, looking people in the eye, and mimicking the other person's body language.

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. - Saul Alinsky

Crucial Confrontations

by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

The authors of the New York Times bestseller Crucial Conversations show you how to achieve personal, team, and organizational success by healing broken promises, resolving violated expectations, and influencing good behavior.

Discover skills to resolve touchy, controversial, and complex issues at work and at home--now available in this follow-up to the internationally popular Crucial Conversations.

Behind the problems that routinely plague organizations and families, you'll find individuals who are either unwilling or unable to deal with failed promises. Others have broken rules, missed deadlines, failed to live up to

commitments, or just plain behaved badly--and nobody steps up to the issue. Or they do, but do a lousy job and create a whole new set of problems. Accountability suffers and new problems spring up. New research demonstrates that these disappointments aren't just irritating, they're costly--sapping organizational performance by twenty to fifty percent and accounting for up to ninety percent of divorces.

Crucial Confrontations teaches skills drawn from 10,000 hours of real-life observations to increase confidence in facing issues like:

- An employee speaks to you in an insulting tone that crosses the line between sarcasm and insubordination. Now what?

- Your boss just committed you to a deadline you know you can't meet--and not-so-subtly hinted he doesn't want to hear complaints about it.

- Your son walks through the door sporting colorful new body art that raises your blood pressure by forty points. Speak now, pay later.

- An accountant wonders how to step up to a client who is violating the law. Can you spell unemployment?

- Family members fret over how to tell granddad that he should no longer drive his car. This is going to get ugly.

- A nurse worries about what to say to an abusive physician. She quickly remembers "how things work around here" and decides not to say anything.

Book Review

Continued on next page...

Everyone knows how to run for cover, or if adequately provoked, step up to these confrontations in a way that causes a real ruckus. That we have down pat. Crucial Confrontations teaches you how to deal with violated expectations in a way that solves the problem at hand, and doesn't harm the relationship--and in fact, even strengthens it. Crucial Confrontations borrows from twenty years of research involving two groups. More than 25,000 people helped the authors identify those who were most influential during crucial confrontations. They spent 10,000 hours watching these people, documented what they saw, and then trained and tested with more than 300,000 people. Second, they measured the impact of crucial confrontations improvements on organizational and team performance--the results were immediate and sustainable: twenty to fifty percent improvements in measurable performance.

About the Author: Kerry Patterson

Kerry is a prolific writer who has coauthored numerous articles and award-winning training programs. Kerry taught at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management and then cofounded Interact Performance Systems, where he worked for ten years as vice president of research and development.

Kerry is coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. Kerry has com-pleted doctoral work at Stanford University. He is a recipient of the Mentor of the Year Award and the 2004 William G. Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award from Brigham Young University.

Review provided by staff writers at Amazon.com

Book Review Continued...

Thank you to all our volunteers who took time to mediate with us in 2019!

Adams, Kym

Adkins, Robert

Albarran, Cynthia

Alkhalifa, Hannan

Almaguer, Adrian

Altsuler, Kent

Amos, Kesha

Anderson, Alexis

Armstrong, Andrea

Arntz, Jill

Autrey-Turner, Brandy

Bacon, Lynelle

Bain, Bruce

Barahona, Kimberly

Barclay, Alex

Bautsch, Cameron

Beckham, Allison

Bell, Carol

Blasingame, Chad

Bond, Jasmine

Bouley, Jessie

Briscoe, Betsy

Brown, Kim

Bryant, Jennifer

Bushman, Patricia

Buss, Brian

Cabello, David

Caflisch, George

Cantrell, Carol

Casavant, Geoff

Casciato-Northrup, Janet S.

Chan, David

Chaney, Tanya

Chang, David

Charania, Barkat A.

Chen, Victoria

Chitolie, Synther

Cordell, Thomas

Cosey, Henry

Crosby, Natasha

Dale, Randy

Davis Smith, Shelly

Davis, Diane

Davis, Heather

De La Garza, Delia G.

DeSoto, David

Devlin, Robert G.

Disch, Annette

Donovan, John

Ducoff, Russell C.

Durrschmidt, Michael

Eaker, Clotilde

Eaton, Velda

Edelman, Richard

English, Lloyd

Evans, Sarah

Flenniken, Patricia

Fortson, Alicia

Freeman, Linnie

Gage, Sunshine

Galagaza, Joseph

Gammell, Bradley

Gao, Ge Eva

Garcia, Maria

Gaughan, James D.

Gee, Erin

Geiger, Kathryn

Giasson, Robert

Gold, Jeffrey

Greene, Chaylyn

Gross, Catherine

Guy, Brenda

Halliburton, Samantha

Hancock, Mary Jane

Haney, Michael

Hawash, Michael

Hayes, Sarah

Hearn, Coral

Heath, Audley

Hebinck, Bernard L.

Heitzer, Linda

Henensey, Ethan Shane

Hernandez, Robert

Herron, Chetiqua

Hill Carter, Misti

Hillin, Stephanie

Horn, Andrea

Thank you to all our volunteers who took time to mediate with us in 2019!

Howard, Nichole

Howard, Steven

Huang, Vivian

Hughes, James

Husbands, Sarah

Ilhan, Busra S.

Imobioh, Omon

Isaacs, Bertam

Jackson-Matthews, Sheryl

Jacques, Janice

Jacques, Marva

James, Delphine

James, Fay

Jaroudi, Sami

Johnson, Johnny

Jones, Charlotte

Jordan, Trace

Jorgensen, Coble

Kades, Liliya

Kawaja, Suzanne

Kenneally, Cecilia

Kessler, Bruce

Ketai, Lisa

Kim, Eva

Kim, Young Y.

King, Carol

Knight, Joe

Kreider, Stephen

Krieger, Paul

Kuaiwa, Kalei

Lagway, Denise

Lapidus, Mark

Larkin, Lee M.

Lawson, Deborah

Ledet, Shirley

LeUnes, Christopher

Lewis, Jack

Liburd, Tamarie

Ligums, Ann Bradford

Linden, Joanne

Love, William

Lowe, DAngelo

Lunceford, Erin

Lyon, Chris

Madison, Necitha

Magdaleno, Anthony

Mann, June

Marsh, Rebecca

Marteeny, Kathryn

Martin, Ernest

Martin, Paige

Matta, Linda

Matthews, Marc

Mays, Shannon

McAdams, Arnold

McCollam, Aletha

McCoy, LaJonda

McDonough, Shari

McFarlane, Heather

McHan, Chris

McKenna, Jack

Medrano, Nichole

Melcher, John

Mergel, Debra

Michel, Tina

Minott, Lisa

Mira, Susannah

Mitchell, Kendrick

Mixa, Jack

Moehlman, Michael

Mohammed, Shalah Soraya

Montalvo, Francisco

Montgomery, James

Mora, David

Moran, Leigh Ann

Morrow, Morgan

Murray, Megan

Nashef, Minna

Navarro, Jr., Guadalupe

Neal, Kristi

Nelson, Deloris

O'Connell, Candace

Olmeda, Maria

Orellana, Heidy

Osadchey, Lidya

Osime, Joshua

O'Toole, Austin

Thank you to all our volunteers who took time to mediate with us in 2019!

THANK YOU!

Overton, Tommy

Page, Brenda

Pagel, Elizabeth

Patel, Harry

Patel, Mahesh

Patel, Ranjitkumar

Payne, Louise

Pennacchi, Gaetano

Penso, Jeffrey

Pettway, Deborah

Polasek, John

Prillaman, Samuel

Putman, Margie

Quisenberry, Dale

Raborn, John Michael

Reid, Dorothy

Reiner, Raymond

Rendon, Josefina

Revere, Elizabeth

Rice, Robert

Rider, Roger

Ritchie, Mark

Rodriguez, Amelia

Rogers, John

Rokes, Susan

Romberg, Benjamin

Sanchez-Cifuentes, Alvaro

Santire, Stanley

Schein, Salomon

Schneidler, Norman

Schwartzberg, Scot

Scofield, Jason

Scott, Millie

Shults, Robert

Simonson, Jennifer

Slaughter, Janice P.

Smith, Cheryl

Smith, Denice

Smith, Gary

Smith, Naomi

Spears, Shantrell

Spelman, Kyle

St Julian, Alexa

Stagg, Nicole

Sterling, Chaunte

Stevens, Rhea

Tabangay-Vigilla, April

Taft, Andrew

Taylor, Alexia

Taylor, Ashton

Taylor, Nina

Taylor, Warren

Thiagarajan, Radha

Thompson, Darcy

Thompson, James

Tice, Marc

Titus, Christina

Tuck, Ahmal

Unger, Fred

Urquhart, Jack

Van Brunt Gilbert, Sherra

Villa Gomez, Randall

Emmanuel

Vilt, Karen

Wagner, Frederick

Wai, Jeanette

Walker, Jennifer

Washington, Mickey L

Watler, Mark C.

Wells, Judy

Welsh, Florita

Wilkins, Cara

Wilmot, Esther

Wink, Dulcie

Winton, Tecee

Wise, Mark

Wood, Michaela

Wright, Eric

Yauch, Michael S.

Young, Fredrick E.

Yung, Priscilla

Zamanian, Ali

Zimmerman, Alvin L.

Zimmerman, Gary

Zucker, Noya

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