For this week’s Guest Post Friday here at Construction Law Musings, we welcome back Vickie Pynchon for a (record?) 5th time. Vickie (@mediatesuccess) mediates with ADR Services, Inc. in Los Angeles, arbitrates for the American Arbitration Association and is the co-founder of She Negotiates Consulting and Training (http://shenegotiates.com). Victoria has authored two books – The Grownups’ ABCs of Conflict Resolution and Success as a Mediator for Dummies (I personally recommend both). She is the “Dear Abby” of negotiation at The Daily Muse and write a thrice-weekly column at Forbes entitled “She Negotiates” (http://blogs.forbes.com/shenegotiates).
When Christopher graciously offered me his blog for a day to write about my new book – Success as a Mediator for Dummies – my first thought was that only mediators, not attorneys, were my market. Looking over the book now that it is published, I realize it contains a plethora of settlement and negotiation strategies and tactics that I badly needed to know and deploy throughout a twenty-five year commercial litigation career.
I also realized that I’d let Ury and Fisher’s seminal negotiation book, Getting to Yes, sit on my bookshelf unread for twenty years because I never wanted to settle. I wanted to win. The desire to win is what got me up every morning. I knew ninety percent of my cases would settle, but I believed they’d settle only if I made it abundantly clear to my opponents that they wouldn’t want to try their case against me. I believed settlement was all and only about power.
