Obama and the Future of the ADR Profession

Mediator Robert Benjamin offers reasons to hope that President-Elect Barack Obama will be a boon to the alternative dispute resolution field and a valuable endorsement of mediation:

• Obama appears to think in a systemic frame, as opposed to a linear frame, and he operates from a more flexible protean perspective, un-tethered to any particular ideology or orthodoxy.
• Obama’s personal history, being from a multi-racial and cultural background, offers him up as the embodiment of the ‘protean self’ suggested by Robert J. Lifton.
• Obama’s leadership style offers a model for the highest quality of negotiation and mediation practice and invites emulation and application in other areas.

Benjamin concludes that professional conflict practitioners should prepare to capitalize on Obama's leadership and the example he sets. (Mediate.com.)