ROUNDTABLE BREAKFAST: The Intersectionality of Leadership and Conflict: Embracing 3.0 Best Practices with a Refined Playbook

Co-sponsored by ACR-GNY & CUNY Dispute Resolution Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF LEADERSHIP AND CONFLICT:

Embracing 3.0 Best Practices with a Refined Playbook!

ARTHUR T. MATTHEWS

The ebb and flow of conflict has demanded that we engage it differently than we did years ago or even in 2018.  While most of us have now embraced our implicit biases and microaggressions, do we truly understand algorithms and analytics and the role they can play in conflict resolution practice over the next 20 years?

Many of the rules of engagement have changed! Our ability to pivot is going to be key to our sustainability and survival as practitioners. Often lost in the mediation narrative is our de facto role as ADR Ambassadors. This framework should be embodied in the leadership, reputational capital and overall body of work that we portray to the stakeholders whose lives we touch.

This engaging session will discuss how both Appreciative and Authentic Leadership can have a strong nexis to conflict resolution. Arthur will share his Arthurisms that have been part of his development as a facilitator, negotiator, mediator, arbitrator and hearing officer. This session will be attractive to the visual, auditory and kinesthetic learner and will include a leadership inventory, small group exercises, large group exercises and multimedia.  

ARTHUR T. MATTHEWS is a change disrupter who has served as a facilitator, negotiator, mediator, arbitrator and hearing officer. His conflict resolution DNA was first cultivated as a student activist during his K-12 journey and further enriched in college and law school. His anchor was formulated in the South Bronx and further developed over the years. His work ranges from the National Conference for Community and Justice to his intervention in a protracted labor-management dispute in Bermuda. He has served as an intermediary with many organizations including Con Edison/Utility Workers Union of America, NYC Transit/Transport Workers Union, the American Arbitration Association and the NYS Board of Education/NYS United Teachers. Arthur has both management and union DNA having worked at NYC Transit as a departmental Director of Labor Relations and the Public Employees Federation as a Field Representative. 

This is his 30th year serving on the faculty at both NYU and Cornell ILR where he teaches Leadership, Leading Global Organizations, Labor Relations, Mediation and Ethics.  He designed and taught the first ever course in mediation at the Clinton School of Public Service  at the University of Arkansas in 2016.  He was invited to lecture at Harvard in 2017 where he presented to the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program as well as the Harvard Trade Union Program.  20 years ago he designed and continues to teach the first ADR course in the State of Arkansas that was not offered in a law school. In Spring 2019, he will teach at Howard University School of Law an unprecedented course in Labor-Management Cooperation.

Arthur earned his J.D from Howard University School of Law where he served as the President of the Student Bar Association and led law students in the march in 1983 that helped lead to passage of Dr. Martin Luther King Day as a National Holiday.  He also proudly co-hosted one of last public appearances of Honorable Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.