Ideas and Groups
Working as a group––its own complex puzzle. “The three main factors affecting a team’s cohesion (working together well) are: environmental, personal, and leadership.”[1]Varying perspectives, differing viewpoints, joined to solve a single complex problem. How can each member of the group be successful? How can one person assist, or resist, another to reach an optimal solution? […]
Finding Hidden Treasure
“All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy.” ––Samantha Power Standing in another’s shoes implies assuming a point of view different from one’s own. You’re seeing things from another’s frame of reference, from their sense of perspective. The angle of vision, the corridor of approach, the nature and extent of indistinct outline and […]
Naïve Realism and Photographic Evidence
Evidence is multipurpose, having both inclusive as well as exclusive components. Photographs. Photographs have at least two purposes. First, to depict the condition of a person, place, instrumentality, or object. That’s their inclusive purpose. But photographs serve another purpose as well––to demonstrate what’s not depicted. That’s their exclusive purpose. What a photograph does not show––this […]
Verbal Persuasion and the Observer-Expectancy Effect
How we speak to others makes all the difference. Not only our words, but our tone, body language, attitude, demeanor, and level of formality all play a role. As we speak, we’re influencing others. “Pardon me, could you please direct me to Michigan Avenue?” (said politely to a stranger on the street) differs from “Where’s […]
On Paralanguage and Metamessage
Lawyers have to persuade but before they can they have to communicate; that is, they have to teach. Effective lawyering is not typically expressed as a form of teaching, but, in many respects, it is: the best lawyers can in some sense be looked at as simply the most effective teachers. They make the complex […]
