A MESSAGE FROM OUR FOUNDER
Hello!
Whew! We made it through all the excitement of May with graduations, a 16
th
birthday in my house, lacrosse tournaments, and friends weddings. My trip to Edinburgh, Scotland with the International Academy of Mediators was also amazing including our signing at the Parliament the Edinburgh Declaration of International Mediators, the honoring of Distinguished Fellows and my being asked to join at table for two dinners with
Getting to Yes
and
Going to the Balcony
author and international negotiator Bill Ury and his daughter Gabi, one at the Edinburgh music hall --where you won’t believe but as I ascended the beautiful grand staircase, I caught out of the corner of my eye a billboard welcoming an upcoming event there with our own Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conductor Marin Alsop, who also believes in and has supported our work at Baltimore Mediation—it was a relational moment and I was so proud as she is truly an inspiring and gifted
tour de force
—and the other dinner we were onboard Her Majesty (the Queen’s) yacht, Britannia. The chief UK organizer rolled out the Scottish red carpet for a most memorable induction and trip! Thank you, John Sturrock.
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My commercial mediation colleagues from around the globe are also avid golfers, and while I have never played a game in my life, I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity while in Scotland. So I took two lessons to prepare me (laugh!) to play the gorgeous and famous Scottish course at Elie, Fife. Yes, I played all 18 holes with 3 other excellent golfers, 2 of whom came in second and third in the first IAM championship! They suffered me well. And, I loved the game! It felt natural. Golf is wonderful for focus and close up concentration and then a big breath of fresh air and big picture horizon gazing. I just loved it. And plan to play more. And since we were golfing on (American) Mother’s Day, my dear children surprised me with a delivery of fresh flowers the day before to my hotel room! I am surrounded and I know you are too by such goodness. Breathing in gratitude right now.
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Here’s a picture as I took those beauties with me a few days later on the train to Yorkshire so I could share them with a friend. That was a sight too! Many smiles as I traipsed the station with large suitcases containing all the costume changes as they say in the UK and flowers in a vase! Priorities! We have more writings with the American Bar Association blog and our Training Team is preparing for our fabulous reported-as -life-changing–for-many weeklong immersion in relational approaches and conflict transformation and negotiation skills training this month June 18-22 in Baltimore. We have a full house and look forward to shaping more leaders in Relational Advocacy and Transformative Mediation Skills to use in daily personal and professional life. Come join us! And happy summer.
Sending love,
Louise
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GRATITUDE…. ACCOLADE HIGH FIVES!
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Louise Phipps Senft was inducted as a Distinguished Fellow into the International Academy of Mediators (IAM) last month in Edinburgh, Scotland! IAM rolled out the red carpet for her and her colleagues from around the globe as they dined and engaged in discussions of best commercial mediation practices at the Parliament at the Edinburgh castle and a dinner on her Royal Majesty's yacht Britannia.
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Posing in front of the Queen's favorite spots to have her picture taken on her yacht
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Dinner on her Royal Majesty the Queen's yacht with Bill and Gabi Ury
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Jeremy Lack from Switzerland, Louise, and Cliff Hendler from Canada, IAM Distinguished Fellows
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CLIENT HIGHLIGHT – Sandra Alguire
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Sandra Alguire is a Nursing Instructor /Course Leader in Pharmacology and Diagnostics for Nursing II at Red River University in Winnipeg, Canada. She is a graduate of the Adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Program and has worked most of her career in the Medical ICU at Health Sciences Centre. Sandy has her Master of Nursing Degree and is continuing her graduate education as a Doctoral Student in Nursing at the U of M. Her professional memberships include the Honor Society of Nursing Sigma Theta Tau and CACCN.
Louise and Sandy have developed interactive video teaching hospital tools for Relational Engagement in hospitals. uses
Being Relational: The Seven Ways to Quality Interaction & Lasting Change
as a textbook for her nursing students throughout the nursing curriculum at Red River University.
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TIP OF THE DAY:
THE SEVEN WAYS OF BEING RELATIONAL: BE GROUNDED
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This month, we are going to focus on the
third way
of being - Being Grounded.
Are you familiar with the expression "maybe, maybe not"? It is one of our favorites. In mediation, participants often are making judgments about themselves and others, and about their options, motivations, and so on. The concept of maybe, maybe not helps us to see that other realities are possible if we can relax our attachment to the one we have seized upon. When a statement is made by another person or when you feel the urge to make a statement assessing a situation or passing judgment, you can give yourself space and time to consider alternatives by thinking to yourself or possibly saying out loud to another person, "maybe, maybe not." By doing so you remain open to other possibilities, other views, other judgments.
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I CAN RELATE BLOG...
"
Daily, weekly, we all encounter
Tribe Think.
I'm speaking of the kind of thinking we join with that gains its momentum by opposing another person or group that espouses a different point of view. The examples are myriad these days from politics to the environment to healthcare. I want to resist joining in tribe think and respond instead with the kind of strength that is strong enough to love." Read the full May "I Can Relate!" blog titled,
I Have a Dream
here
.
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OUR TRAININGS
Our June training is just around the corner! We are eager to meet and work with our June training participants. For those who could not make it to our June training and are interested in attending a training, see a list of our offerings below!
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SPEAKING EVENTS
Louise hosted a Webinar,
"
How to Advocate through Crisis and Beyond for People and Families Living with Paralysis"
on May 23rd as a part of the
Reeve Foundation Paralysis Community Live Better series.
She explained a relational use of mediation and conflict transformation skills to challenge and shift in-the-box medical thinking and siloed medical practice
to help people living with paralysis as well as their families better advocate for their needs. View the webinar
here
.
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Partnering with Don Gordon, Louise Phipps Senft will be hosting an advanced workshop at the
Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Conference
in Washington, DC on June 8th. The workshop will focus on Mediation Integrated with Online Skill Training & Relational Interactions for High Conflict Parents. For more, visit Don's website:
https://www.highconflictsolutions.com/
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Louise is available to speak at events, conferences, schools, companies and more. Her speech themes include but are not limited to Relational Leadership for You, for women, executives, politicians, physicians, families; Are you Transactional or Relational?; Transformative Mediation: what it is and why you need it; Stories from the Trenches; How to Transform the Adversarial Ethic in Your Life; Where is God in Crisis?; Relational Advocacy in Healthcare: Crossing Silos and Moving Mountains; and Creative Miracles for Healthcare and Well-Being: The Side-by-Side Partnership of Integrative Medicine and Western Medicine.
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IN A RECENT…
Mediation and Facilitation training
, our participants learned about the ability to rebound and recover from the alienating effects of conflict. Specifically, there are shifts along two dimensions that people can make while conflict unfolds. The first is
Empowerment
, where the person shifts toward increasing clarity, confidence, personal strength, organization and decisiveness. The second is
Recognition
, where the person shifts toward increasing attentiveness to other, responsiveness to other, openness to other's humanity, and appreciation for the other's situation. The first authors to name these shifts were Baruch Bush and Joe Folger. Louise was their pilot mediation trainer.
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TEAM
HIGHLIGHT
– Dusty Rhoades
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Dusty Rhoades
joined Baltimore Mediation in 2009, after many years of Baltimore Mediation providing training for the two community centers in Maryland which Dusty helped found: the Community Mediation Centers of Calvert and St. Mary’s County, Maryland. He is past president of the Board of Directors of the Community Mediation Center of St. Mary’s County. He has mediation experience with hundreds of cases involving family, community, District and Circuit Court, discrimination and foster care cases. Dusty is very involved in The Big Conversation Series, sponsored by Middleham and St. Peter’s Parish in Lusby and provides an opportunity for community wide civil conversation on topics of concern.This most recent topic was dismantling racism, which took place in January 2018.
He is a member of the Maryland Program for Mediator Excellence and the Association for Conflict Resolution. Dusty has trained with leaders in the field of transformative mediation, including Baruch Bush, Joe Folger, Louise Phipps Senft, Nancy Good, Tom Wahlrab and Irv Foster. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and the Defense Systems Management College, Program Manager’s Course. He is an Associate Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He loves his new home on Solomon's Island with his wife Vicki. When he isn't engaged with Baltimore Mediation and his meditation work, you can imagine Dusty in one of those coast to coast airplanes traveling back and forth regularly to see his grandsons in California.
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MEDIATION PARTICIPANTS ARE SAYING…
"Transformative Mediation has the ability to open and empower individuals towards a better communication and understanding with each other. Baltimore Mediation's method is so much more than mediation - it is a life changing agent."
-
Ellen Meyer,
Anne Arundel County Public Schools
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QUOTE FOR THE MONTH:
"As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of unthruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not"
- Jack Kornfield
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Being Relational
became a best-seller in 2015. Available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and your local independent book store. Louise Phipps Senft is now available for book signings, book talks, corporate speeches, organizational retreats, and conference keynotes! Have her visit your company, your local
bookstore, school, conference, retreat or organization.
Call us today to schedule!
443-524-0833
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