The Impact of Culture and Gender onMediation and Negotiation
*Offers 2 MCLE hours for Legal Ethics and 6 MCLE hours for
Elimination of Bias.
Faculty: Nina Meierding and Chip Rose
The impact of culture and gender in dispute resolution poses both challenges and opportunities for mediators. This course will look at how culture and gender affect the way information is processed, communication and negotiation are experienced, language is used, power is exercised and understood, risks are evaluated, and decisions and agreements are reached. The focus of this session will be on practical mediation techniques for assisting the parties to address these dynamics in effective and creative ways.
You will learn:
- High and low power distance
- Linear, sequential processing and global processing
- Individual and collective cultures
- High and low context cultures
- High and low uncertainty avoidance v. situational trust issues
- The use of body language and physical spacing in negotiation
- Use of language, including hedging, cross talking, ritual opposition and rapport v. report talk
- The art of the apology and the importance of saving face
Nina Meierding has been the director and senior mediator of the Mediation Center for Family Law in Ventura since 1985, and has mediated over 3,000 disputes. She is an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University School of Law and Southern Methodist University. Meierding has held seminars in England, Ireland, Sweden, Scotland, India, the Netherlands, and throughout the U.S. She was a cofounder and president of the board of directors of the Ventura Center for Dispute Settlement. She has served as the president of the board of directors of the Academy of Family Mediators, and was on the board of directors of the Association for Conflict Resolution. In 2005 she received the John Haynes Distinguished Mediator Award.
Chip Rose is the director of the Mediation Center of Santa Cruz in California. Rose began his first experiences providing mediation for family law matters in 1980. He has worked to develop the most effective client-centered services first as a mediator and over the last decade for the collaborative practice model. He is recognized for his expertise in working with relationship conflict, developing creative and effective strategies that empower clients to success. He authored the chapter “Mediating Financial Issues” in the compendium edited by Jay Folberg, Divorce and Family Mediation (2004 Guilford Press). He has taught client-centered dispute resolution theory and practice throughout the United States, Canada, and in Europe.