About Us
About Mindful
Puzzles to be solved > battles to be won
Too often, we negotiate on autopilot—seeking to meet our needs without clear intention, awareness, or strategy. At Mindful Negotiating, we believe that when we approach negotiation with mindfulness—fully attuned to our context and open to new possibilities—we unlock outcomes that extend far beyond the conversation itself. The benefits ripple through our communities, organizations, and relationships.
Our work centers on empowering attorneys and incarcerated individuals, recognizing their profound influence on how society understands and navigates conflict.
Drawing from diverse schools of negotiation, leadership, and adult development, we integrate research conducted in collaboration with Professor Ellen Langer’s Lab at Harvard University’s Department of Psychology, exploring the social contagion of mindful behavior.
Our Goals
Demystify “negotiating”
“Negotiating” is a fancy way of talking about the process of making decisions. We are asked to make decisions every day - with colleagues, acquaintances, friends, and partners. In so far as we wake up with the competing inclinations to get out of and stay in bed, we find that we are negotiating, first with ourselves. This omni-present back table of the Self informs all of our external negotiations and is the place where we begin our training and is the root of leadership development and conducting difficult conversations.
3. Make the tools accessible
The skills of leadership, conflict resolution, and negotiation etc are typically reserved for those with access to higher education and corporate management training. This excludes those who could use these skills most, and comes too late for the high-stakes scenarios we all encounter well before adulthood. Our work with attorneys enables our low an pro-bono work in the prison system.
2. Create a community of practitioners to learn, cross-pollinate, and re-charge
Mindful Negotiating draws from several disciplines: Psychology, Game Theory, Behavioral Economics, International Relations, Sociology, Neuroscience, Family Systems, Adaptive Leadership, Psychodrama and others. Our fields are strongest when they consider multiple perspectives. At Mindful, practitioners put their different disciplines into conversation. If you’re a current practitioner or researcher, we’d love to hear from you!
