Blog
Luncheon featuring David P. Dowling
Thursday, November 15th, 2018
David P. Dowling was the speaker for the November 15, 2018 Luncheon event.
David Dowling is the owner of Dowling Mediation Services, co-owner of the California Family Mediation Center, and an adjunct professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University, School of Law. 
Mr. Dowling's topic was "Key Skills and Practices for Effective Negotiators." Mr. Dowling spoke about how to recognize different types of negotiations and how to seek out win-win outcomes where possible. Mr. Dowling related an exercise that he performs with his students where asks the student to pair up and to take each other's hands with elbows on the table, in a classic arm wrestling stance. He then tells the students that they are competing against the other groups and that each pair can score points by touching their hands to the table. Some of the pairs of students then engage in an adversarial arm wrestle, while other pairs of students realize that they can score more points by cooperating together to go back an forth touching each other's hand to the table, without working against each other. Sometimes a cooperative approach can be more productive than an adversarial attitude.