Decision Resources

We all face tough choices: business executives, community leaders, and family members all struggle with difficult decisions on a daily basis. What we decide reveals what really matters to us; how we decide determines whether we succeed or fail. Developed over twenty years in settings as diverse as hospital bedsides and corporate boardrooms, "A Field Guide to Good Decisions" provides the skills to make decisions that reflect your core values while respecting those of others, including the long-term implications for all participants.

Illustrated through many real-life examples that will resonate with readers both professionally and personally, "A Field Guide to Good Decisions" offers practical tools and techniques for identifying individual and common goals, reaching consensus, and communicating the results effectively. The authors also show readers how to overcome common obstacles to good decision-making (psychological, cultural, and organizational). Ultimately, this book is about making decisions which, while not always a matter of life or death, nevertheless have a powerful effect on our sense of self, our credibility in the eyes of others, and the lives of those touched by the choices we make.

Endorsement from Martin Rutte, Co-author Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work:

"Years of hands-on experience inform this book. It is immersed in wisdom and rich in practical, workable tools. Buy this book to nourish your own soul and that of others."

Endorsement from Victor La Cerva, M.D. author of Worldwords and Pathways to Peace:

"Sifting through choices. Clarifying values. Exploring different perspectives. This fine book set me wondering about roads not taken in my life. It provides enormous insights into how to make personal and professional decisions with integrity and clarity."

Endorsement from Marilyn J. Mason, Ph.D, Psychologist and author of Igniting the Spirit at Work, and 12 Step Wisdom at Work: Transforming Your Life and Your Organization:

"At a time in our history when the word "values" has been widely trivialized, here is a thoughtful, clear, and coherent call to reclaim our personal integrity through an improved set of decision-making skills. Bennett and Gibson are clear-thinking guides able to move us forward in shaping decisions founded on known values, trust, and integrity. This remarkable book is a must read for anyone living in families, organizations, and work places! This is a work of hope!"

Endorsement from Tom Daly, Ph.D, Director of the Living Arts Foundation and Co-creator of the Art of Leadership Training Program:

"Bennett and Gibson take a stand for looking more deeply at essential values and how to make our decisions from an authentic values perspective. This is a thoughtful, powerful, and wonderfully insightful book written by people who clearly have wrestled with difficult real world decisions in a variety of contexts and have come away with deep wisdom and great questions that lead us into moral, ethical, and genuinely values driven decision-making. I look forward to making this wise book recommended reading for my colleagues, clients, students, groups, fellow board members".

This workbook is designed for basic mediation training. The authors take NITA's performance-based training for trial lawyers and adapt it to training for mediators. The authors have used these materials extensively in their mediation training classes at law schools and in programs open to the public.

"The Art of Mediation" sets the mediation process in context, provides basic definitions, contrasts mediation with other forms of dispute resolution, describes varieties of mediation, and lays out roles and functions of the mediators. The book takes NITA's performance-based training for lawyers and adapts it to training for mediators. The authors, Bennett and Hughes, have used these materials extensively in their mediation training classes at law schools and in programs open to the public. The Art of Mediation is in a second edition and has been used as a graduate school text and training manual in the United States, Canada, and Israel.

Endorsement from John Lande, Associate Professor and Director, LL.M. Program in Dispute Resolution, University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law Columbia:

I have used the first edition of The Art of Mediation in my classes for almost a decade and I definitely intend to use the second edition in the future. Students like the book because it is so practical and easy to read. I like it because it presents a variety of perspectives so that students learn that there is no one right or easy way to mediate.