Finding the Voice That Fits the Audience

¶ … Personal Situations

Career Exploration -- choose an article relevant to your field of study

I chose this article because disputes occur in any discipline, field of study, or human endeavor:

James Groton, "The Standing Neutral: a 'Real Time' Resolution Procedure that also Can Prevent Disputes" Alternatives, December 2009.

Identify your audience, purpose and appropriate format for your document

The audience: Colleagues in the work place.

The annual working retreat of my team.

The format: A blog post that was included in the pre-retreat planning blog set up by the organizers.

Note that people who will attend the retreat were encouraged to prepare by submitting a single blog post that identified a substantive issue, concern, or topic they would like to see discussed at the retreat.

Step 3: Write your document

Hey Team!

I am so excited about our upcoming retreat. And I am really pleased that we are taking this pre-retreat time to communicate about matters that are important to us, and that impact our ability to meet our team goals -- and even the larger goals of the company.

Write an informal, personal document that summarizes the author's main point and supporting ideas and explains the implications of this issue for either you or someone you know.

I read an article recently that really helped me clarify my thinking on dealing with disputes. The article is James Groton, "The Standing Neutral: a 'Real Time' Resolution Procedure that also Can Prevent Disputes," written by James Groton and published in December 2009 in a periodical named Alternatives. Interestingly, the article comes from professional dealmakers -- a field I didn't even know existed. The origin of the article made me think about our work -- about the deals we make everyday. These are smaller deals, no doubt, than professional dealmakers accomplish. But our deals have important repercussions for our work, and for the service we provide our clients.

Since the article is written for professional dealmakers, there is a lot of discussion about contracts. Still, it seems that the basic principles apply, and that we can easily substitute standard operating procedures (SIPs) for contracts. As a team, we have described particular ways of doing things that help us to streamline our work and keep from spinning our wheels when something unexpected comes along. That is pretty much what a contract does in a business agreement. So I don't think we are far off the mark.

The basic elements of the standing neutral process are:

Conflict happens so be prepared for it.

Establish incentives for cooperation.

Allocate the risk fairly.