Year End Review

Every year, since 1990, I have prepared a year end review. I find the practice very beneficial. What I do is simply create a written snap-shot of where I am - my impressions - of each area/aspect of my life and the major players in my immediate inner circle. This year I am going to add the following questions to my review. I cannot take credit for these questions. They came to me from my fellow MasterMinder, business coach Nanette Saylor, who credits them to coach, Milana Leshinsky.

- What's your biggest business objective in 2009?

- What's your biggest personal objective in 2009?

- Where are your biggest opportunities right now?

- Where do you see a gap in your market, what's not being offered?

- What do your customers and clients complain about?

- Where are you leaving money on the table?

- What new revenue streams can you easily add next year?

- What are your top 3 time eaters and energy drainers?

- What is your "Biggest Opportunity Project" for 2009?

- What are the top 5 marketing strategies you'll focus on?

- How will you know you've had a great year?

Thursday Night 10pm

I am getting a ton of holiday cards this year. Most of them are so blah, so impersonal. Why bother if it doesn't express your true sentiments or your essence? What a waste of time, money, and paper. Bah humbug!

Tonight was the final episode of our AM radio show. Yes - I am so ready to give it up but still have mixed feelings. Oh well - onward and upward.

CME tomorrow and we have a big crowd coming. Better get to sleep. Nighty, night.

What is Mediation?

Behind almost every human conflict someone feels dismissed, discounted, disenfranchised, or disrespected. There are five basic strategies that we humans use in response to conflict and the emotions it triggers. The strategies are to avoid, accommodate, combat, compromise, or collaborate. Only compromising and collaborating provide both a benefit to the relationship and a focus on attaining an individual goal. However, when we are emotionally triggered it is often difficult to compromise or collaborate and instead we go into fight, flight or freeze mode and we avoid, accommodate, or combat. One of the mediator's jobs is to take parties in conflict away from avoid, accommodate, or combat and bring them to compromise and/or collaborate. The process is often not pretty. In fact, it can be downright ugly. However, an effective mediator will know how to lead the parties through the muck by setting the stage, gathering information, defining the issues, developing an agenda, facilitating the discussion, and generating movement using a variety of investigative and persuasive techniques that are geared towards opening the parties minds and hearts and removing their blinders.

As you know I am on a mission to change the way we look at conflict and divorce. Here is my most recent contribution to the cause - http://www.lawcrossing.com/article/index.php?id=4755