"Yes, But Are They Talking?"

The crosscultural training experience throughout Latin America during the past year has invited me to reconsider my training approach and habits. Time and again I have concluded that we “trainers” should make our “knowledge” and “expertise” permanently problematic. That is, we cannot “take-for-granted” that what we know is an answer to their questions, nor that what they know is superficial or irrelevant. Mediation training seminars can and should become a laboratory for the development of “appropriate technology” in conflict management. Such a technology has one basic foundation: It is accessible and applicable because it emerges as a local, natural resource to local problems…