What I’ve Been Reading

This new book by Robert C. Bordone (negotiation professor) and Joel Salinas (behavioural neurologist) is essential reading for everyone! It asks the question “Have we lost the capacity to engage constructively in conflict?”, exploring what this might look like, potential causes, and most importantly, strategies to help people re-engage. The authors define conflict resilience as […]

I’ve been able to avoid much of the controversy around AI, just playing around with it for fun when I’ve had some spare time, until recently. However, two things really piqued my interest. One was working with iResolve on an AI Conflict Coach (which despite my dubiousness, turned out to be astonishingly good).  The second

While this article is about the development of mediation as a field in the U.S. most of the points made apply equally to the Australia context. Welsh describes the idealised introduction of mediation in the 1970s as a “democracy-and-self-determination-enhancing, social justice ethos” which then became institutionalised into a process aimed solely at getting parties from

This book is a memoir spanning generations of the Kwa family on different continents (including Australia where Mimi Kwa was born and lives).  It’s a book about culture, family and conflict.  At times shocking, at other times heart breaking, and in between sometimes hilarious, the book covers the challenges of conflict across families, generations and

This is a fascinating article that provides an overview of research into the individual, team and systemic level factors that contribute to conflict between clinicians within emergency departments. The researchers found that conflict often occurred during referrals or admissions from ED to inpatient or admitting units. Individual-level contributors to conflict include a lack of trust

Thanks to Rebecca Kornmehl for recommending this book to me! I learnt so much from this book that is essential for my role as parent of an autistic child, and a practitioner who frequently works with neurodivergent clients. Most importantly, the book helped me understand better the distinction between autism as seen through a pathology

I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, they are always a terrific read, even if he is prone to overstatements and lack of rigorous research.  In this latest book, he reviews his earlier book The Tipping Point and its hypothesis that little things can make a big difference. Twenty-five years later, it’s a very

This book was first published in 2015 and updated in 2022. I’m sure with the speed of technology developments they could probably write another edition already!  The authors are a father, Richard, who has spent  more than 30 years working on transforming the way that lawyers and courts work. His co-author son Daniel is an

This book is about how to develop artistry (not mastery) in your coaching. It’s not about adding tools to your toolkit. It’s not about developing your skills, or learning new clever questions to add to your repertoire. Rather it’s about how you, as a person, show up in your coaching relationships.  The overall question the

I have read a lot of books about autism, but this is honestly one of the best. Written by Autistic professor of social psychology, Dr Devon Price, this book explores Autism as a social disability, in a world in which conforming to neurotypical expectations is desired and frequently required. The book describes the experiences of