This summer, I registered for an Independent Study course. I decided to create a course in order to supplement my degree in Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU has been kind enough to allow me to focus my studies on Conflict Resolution, loosely based on a conflict resolution degree I began at another school. VCU does not offer much in the way of traditional conflict resolution courses, so my coursework so far has included several classes on conflict theory, some adult learning courses, counseling classes, organizational development topics, and more. As a department of one- me – I felt like I was missing some key elements of a conflict resolution degree, and also, since I hope to graduate in May, I wanted to learn more about the ‘real world’ of conflict resolution. My career goals include eventually getting certified in mediation, and I thought that I should have a firmer grasp of this process that is at the core of what many conflict resolution practitioners do. Thus, I created a reading course to learn more about conflict resolution, and specifically about mediation.
So Many Books, So Little Time…
With the help of Dr. Carter (my advisor for this course), I narrowed down a very long list of books related to conflict and mediation to 6 or so that I thought seemed seminal, intriguing, and useful. I chose these 6 from suggested reading lists from Northern Virginia Mediation Services, an excellent mediation center in Fairfax, VA. Aside from offering mediation services to the community, NVMS also offers a mediation certification course, so their website provided a good reading list. I also compared that list to book searches on the topic of “conflict mediation” on amazon.com, Google searches, and general literature reviews. Some of the books I had heard of (particularly Getting to yes) and knew that these would be required reading for the field. Others, like Erich Fromm’s Anatomy of human destructiveness, were not necessarily traditional conflict resolution reading but certainly related. Ultimately, I chose 6 books that I hoped would cover the basics of mediation theory and practice without repeating each other, and threw in some psychology with Fromm. Here are the books I selected:
Collaborative approaches to resolving conflict (Isenhart, M. & Spangle, M., 2000)
The promise of mediation (Bush, R. & Folger, J., 2005)
The anatomy of human destructiveness (Fromm, E., 1973)
The mediation process (Moore, C., 2003)
Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in (Fisher, Ury & Patton, 1991)
The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes (Deutsch, 1973)
Why Blog?
Initially, I was going to write a paper discussing the readings through the lens of a particular theme. However, I soon realized that the books did not lend themselves well to any certain theme. Several of them were basically textbooks, and while they did vary a great deal, there was also a lot of standard information in them. Notwithstanding, I actually did enjoy all of the books a great deal. Dr. Carter had the excellent idea of writing a blog instead of trying to force a paper topic. She suggested that I simply write what I had learned from these books in the form of a blog. I think a blog is a perfect forum for all of the thoughts that crossed my mind while reading these books, and hopefully someone will come along who can add their own comments, ideas and questions to my own. In the end, I decided to narrow my blog topic down to ten things that I learned from my summer reading. Many of these things are specific to mediation, but in many cases the lessons apply to conflict in general too.
And here they are!
#1: Not all mediation is created equal.
What I knew about mediation before reading these books was… not a lot. I was a peer mediator in middle school, and I remember the fairly standard dialogue and procedure that we used; it was essentially the same routine for each conflict mediated: very generic and not generally well received by fellow students. I suppose it was engrained in my head that all mediation sessions looked more or less the same. Not true, I soon learned. Not only do the mediation styles vary wildly, there are entirely different schools of thought on the purpose and goals of mediation (more on that in a minute), and the roles of the practitioner. In short, the actual practice of mediation can happen in many different ways. Most of these schools of thought and styles are equal in theory, but since certain styles and approaches work better (or worse) with different kinds of conflict, it is definitely true that some mediation sessions go much better than others!
Also, the quality of mediation can range quite a bit too. Several of the authors mentioned that a current concern among practitioners surrounds the training and certification of mediators. Some mediators are certified with hardly any training hours; better programs require at least 40 hours of actual mediation practice. Current mediators also have differing opinions on whether formal education programs (like my masters’ program!) are really necessary, or are sufficient without hands on training (Moore, 2003). In my opinion, high quality training is probably sufficient for mediators, but not for other types of conflict resolution practitioners, and vice-versa: a degree in conflict resolution will not, alone, prepare me to mediate. As someone who will be working towards certification within the next year or so, this was very helpful information. As I search for a certification program, I will definitely be looking for quality and not just a crash course in mediation.
#2: There are various schools of thought that disagree on the ultimate goal of mediation.
Here again, my naïveté led me to oversimplify the mediation process, and all of these authors (except Deutsch and Fromm) spend a great deal of time discussing the debate over what the ultimate goal of mediation should be. In its most basic form, mediation is a process that leads to the settlement or resolution of a dispute. For some practitioners, this is all mediation needs to do: find a solution. After all, isn’t that what people are paying us to do? There are several other schools of though that disagree, saying that, while settlements and resolutions of course are a part of the process, focusing solely on those answers ignores all of the potential that mediation has for truly changing a conflict from a destructive to a constructive process.
Other schools of thought argue that “dialogue, relationship and organizational change” are more important, particularly if we wish to prevent future conflicts (Isenhart & Spangle, 2000, 73). Here, mediation uses more of a systems approach to ensure that not only is there an issue-specific solution, but processes and relationships have been altered enough to hopefully prevent future conflicts. Still others promote mediation as a tool for social change, in that mediators have the unique capacity to help balance a playing field for parties with less power, and are often in a position to help improve social ills or wrongdoing. Opponents of this view find that this approach is in direct conflict with a mediator’s call to be completely neutral. Lastly, Bush and Folger (2005) opine that mediation can, and should be, truly transformative. This approach posits that mediation has the capacity to “generate two important dynamic effects: empowerment and recognition” (p. 22). When done correctly, Bush and Folger argue that mediation can help change conflict from a destructive to a constructive process, transforming the relationships and the thought processes of parties in ways that ultimately will be more beneficial and effective than just coming up with a solution could ever be.
While these viewpoints are very diverse, most of the authors agree that all of them work some of the time. No one, for example, is opposed to reaching a settlement. But, depending on the conflict, just reaching a settlement may not be enough. In some situations, a mediator may feel that correcting a social ill is beyond his or her scope; in others, it may be essential to address it in order to move past an impasse. All of the authors suggest that new mediators should be thoughtful about which type of mediation is right for them, and for each conflict. I’ll talk more about my own preferences in a minute. Here is a good video example of a mediation case that achieved several of the goals above. Through mediation, the parties do find a workable, win-win solution, the parties, as well as a larger community is transformed, and with its focus on human and workers’ rights, this case clearly used mediation as a tool for social change:
Guatemala Transformative Mediation
#3: I always see various shades of gray.
As I just mentioned, the authors suggest that practitioners spend some time considering what they believe the goal of mediation is, and also developing their own personal style with clients. This was difficult for me, as I am never a cut and dry person. See if you can keep up with my train of thought here….
The pragmatist in me knows that if I am receiving a paycheck, then I should aim to at least deliver a short term solution. Many disputes, after all, are business disputes that are resolved with a reallocation of resources and a hand-shake, and life goes on. On the other hand, I do consider myself an activist of sorts, and I wonder if I could ignore social justice issues that arose in a mediated session. At the same time, I wonder if I would be able to stay impartial if I took a social justice approach to a conflict. That seems very tricky to me, but to ignore an offensive social problem would not be in my character. I also believe in using systems thinking and approaching a whole problem, but again, it really depends on the conflict.
As for transformative mediation, I think this is really where I find myself, but not without confusion! As a facilitator at a teambuilding company, I think this is what we try to do there. We ask people to dig deep, examine not just the conflict but the conditions surrounding the conflict, the feelings that accompany it, and the way that they have been approaching it. We work towards a total rethinking of the processes and relationships that have created a problem and hope not just to find a better way but to leave people totally recommitted to looking at each other and their conflicts differently. So while I think that mediators should never toss finding a settlement out of the window, I do believe that mediation is powerful exactly because of its transformational ability. I appreciate the transformative beliefs that conflict resolution should be more than just an answer; it should be an attempt to help parties recognize their behaviors, challenge assumptions, and hopefully leave mediation not only with an answer but with a slightly changed outlook on the opposite party and on conflict.
For now, that’s where I stand philosophically. It may change when I actually enter the field and start practicing. But the real lesson here isn’t that I like transformative mediation. It’s that the approach I take will probably depend on the conflict itself, and likely it will always include a tinge of all of the above. I just don’t think a mediator can say that every conflict will require transformative mediation’s goals, or that a solution is all that’s ever needed.
#4: Mediation is not always the answer. 
Mediation, as it turns out, is not a self-promoting field! Perhaps because it is often an avenue approached after other attempts have failed, I supposed that mediators would have to try twice as hard to convince people to use it. I stand corrected, because these authors made a clear point that mediation is NOT right for all cases. Mediation is most likely to be successful when the parties to a conflict have interdependent interests; they have to need each other to want to reach a resolution. Also, the parties should be committed to the process of mediation and have a willingness to be open and honest, and be accepting of the mediator (Isenberg & Spangle, 2000). In the absence of these and other qualities, mediation is likely to be fruitless. On the other end, once mediation has begun, there are several times when mediation is no longer appropriate or useful. A few examples of when it may be appropriate to suspend mediation are if the parties hit a stalemate and refuse to consider positions, if one party purposefully deceives or misleads the other, or if any party or the mediator feels that the issue would be better handled in a different forum.
More specifically, Fisher, Ury and Patton (1991) write that every party should develop a “BATNA”, which stands for “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. A party’s BATNA is the best resolution that the party could hope for outside of mediation. Anytime that a party feels that its BATNA is better than what is likely to happen in mediation, there is a chance that the party will choose to end discussions. The mediator’s task is to continue discussions until both parties are getting better than their BATNAs, it is determined that the BATNAs are the best way to go, or mediation is suspended for another reason such as those above.
I have to interject my own “lay person” thoughts here. Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I keep thinking of situations in my life where I might have tried to mediate a conflict, and well, maybe I’m just hanging out with the wrong people, but I had to wonder if the authors ever encountered a person that really just wanted the other person to suffer and not get their way! Of course they have. And they address the issue by saying when parties are unable to move to a more principled style of negotiating, or cannot commit to stopping overt violence long enough to mediate, perhaps it’s time for the mediation session to end. Or, maybe that’s when a more rigid style of settlement is required. An example that comes to mind is mediation with children. I have worked with challenging kids in many environments, and there are always the typical kid fights where one kid poured glue all in the other’s hair “just because”. No, that’s not a true example, by the way! For that matter, I work with grown adults here in Richmond who often don’t seem to care about getting to a better solution. For lack of a better word, it seems that mediators might encounter folks that are just plain selfish, who might have no desire to ‘dig deeper’, and who really have no inclination to work towards a better relationship with the opposite party.
I know that the obvious answer here might be that mediation, when done correctly, is designed to help move people out of exactly these positions and into a frame of reference where they are ready to look at what is really bothering them, and what the conflict is really about. It may be that mediation will take a rrreeaaalllly long time, or maybe these people aren’t ready for mediation yet. Or even possibly that what these people need is counseling, not mediation. But as I tried to fit situations in the book to people or scenarios I’ve encountered, I kept thinking that one requirement of mediation may be a certain maturity level of the parties. If that maturity level is not present, then the mediation style of the practitioner is certainly going to need to adjust for the immaturity factor for mediation to have a chance. And if people really can’t commit to the process, then it’s probably best to end it. Mediation, after all, is attractive exactly because it is not a courtroom and people often come to it because they do truly want a solution that is self-generated; if you have to force it, it probably isn’t genuine and it most likely won’t stick.
I always wondered what happened if the parties just could not reach an agreement. I guess I thought they had to sit there until they worked it out. Now I know. Who says summer reading is a bad thing…
#5: Interest-Based Bargaining is the way to go, Mom and Dad!
One of the most useful things I learned in my readings came from Getting to yes (Fisher, Ury & Patton, 1991) and that was the concept of using interest-based bargaining techniques instead of positional bargaining. This is one of those ideas that I vaguely was aware of, but did not have a name for it. Now I know, and I feel like this is such a better way to discuss just about anything! Essentially, positional bargaining is often how most of us negotiate. It means that we pick a position and refuse to budge from it. We say, “I want everything and the kitchen sink, and not a penny less!”, and then we sit and wait for the other side to give in. The problem is that positional bargaining typically does not work, and it also does not really get to the heart of the matter. On the other hand, interest-based negotiation gets past petty positions and asks people to focus on what it is they really want, what it is that is really bothering them. It gets parties down to their real interests and not just on holding a firm position or appearing strong in negotiations. It also opens up a TON of new and creative solutions when people begin focusing on what people really value, need or want, and not on some arbitrary, stubborn position where they have decided to stop negotiating.
I saw a recent example of this in my own family. My mom recently realized that my dad is spending approximately $39 a month on items she has deemed “wasteful”. In an effort to show my dad what a waste of money it is, she has decided to take $39 per month herself, and spend it on “junk”. My mom was describing this to me with glee, as she really thinks she will teach my dad a lesson with this. I sigh as she describes her “great plan” to me, knowing that, really, what will happen is that my dad will think that is a stupid idea and he will get irritated. And of course my mother will stick to her guns, declaring that if he gets $39 a month to spend on silly things, so does she. They will solve nothing, and they will bicker for days, and everyone else will get very tired of both of them.
It just so happened that I was reading about the difference between positional and interest-based negotiating the very same day that my mother was telling me about her “new-found money” that she had come into. “A-ha!” I thought, “Positional bargaining!” I then tried to get my mom to state what she really wanted out of the situation, and what she was really concerned about; clearly, it isn’t the $39 a month allowance. She would not change her mind. If I were to add an 11th thing I’ve learned about mediation, it is that no matter what degree or certification you have, you cannot mediate your parents. They will not let you, and even if they let you try, they will never take you seriously. I can just hear my dad calling me “Carmie-warmie” and asking me to fix him a sandwich while I’m in caucus with him…
Oh, and just for the record, my parents have been married for over 30 years, and have been using positional bargaining probably ALL of that time. So, at least we know that it doesn’t have to destroy a relationship, even if it does make life more irritating and problems much harder to resolve. At least in my own life, I think I will make a more concerted effort to use interest-based bargaining. In fact, whether you are interested in mediation or not, this is definitely the one topic that is VERY useful to know, as it affects how you handle any type of discussion, argument or dispute. I highly recommend Getting to yes for that reason!
#6: You can do it, mediators can help.
I had to borrow Home Depot’s motto for this one! Their motto applies very well to the role of the mediator, specifically in a transformative mediation session. I earlier stated that I find myself most drawn to the transformative school of thought. However, another lesson I’ve learned is that transformative mediation, at least as practiced by Bush and Folger, is stylistically the one most different from my personality! This means that I will need a lot of practice!
Bush and Folger’s description of the role of the mediator, and the case studies they use to demonstrate, really struck me. In transformative mediation, the mediator acts as a facilitator more than anything, and almost never says anything that is not a reframe, clarifying statement, clarifying question, or another type of restatement technique. In a mediation scenario from their book, the authors point out several times that the mediator does not run the show. The mediator allowed periods of extreme discomfort, flaring tempers and delicate topics to continue and let the parties work them out on their own without saying hardly a WORD. Though the mediator was compassionate, invested and supportive, at some points in the dialogue he offered so little to the discussion that I kept waiting for one of the characters to ask him what he was being paid for! I truly was struck by all that the mediator did NOT say. At the same time, I was also struck by how creative, purposeful, practical and compassionate many of the settlements and solutions were in these examples. And they were not created by the mediator, typically, but by the parties themselves. People do know what they need, and they come to mediation not to have someone tell them. They could go to a courtroom for that. They come to mediation because often people just need a safe space and someone to encourage them to be assertive enough to state what they really need or want.
As I read, I recognized how hard that would be for me, and what a tough yet crucial skill it is to learn to let people work out their own problems, to trust that the parties can and will solve their dispute. I left the books with a much clearer picture of the role of the mediator as someone who creates and holds a safe space for conflict dialogue to happen, often helping by clarifying information or asking questions, but rarely offering solutions or adding more than what the participants have already said. And while I recognize that this is a skill I will need to work on, I do also appreciate why it is this way, and how empowering it must be to the parties to not be told what to do. That is, again, one of the reasons people choose mediation over courts or arbitration.
A last thought on this lesson… I read many examples and scenarios of mediation in these books, and most of them were not as quiet in their approach as the one in The promise of mediation. Other transformative mediators may still have a range of styles that go from very directive to not very directive, like Bush and Folger. Isenhart and Spangle (2000) explain that a more directive mediator may in fact be firmer and offer more structure to the discussion than in the scenario described above. The mediator may call out inconsistencies, wonder aloud at solutions that have loop-holes, ask about the feasibility to monitor a solution, and so on. But at the heart of all of the scenarios was the transformative mediation notion that people can do it, and mediators just help. Ideas were not forced or shot down, discussion not stifled nor carried on endlessly, and undue pressure not given to the parties unless they did these things themselves.
Slipping back into my many shades of gray, I’d say that again, it depends on the conflict, and the people themselves. The authors make note that, for example, if two people in mediation are going nowhere, breaking their word, not being honest or just lost in confusion, the mediator may need to use a more directive, “in charge” style to move the process through. (Bush and Folger would disagree- they are never directive!) But the important thing is that the decisions and the solutions are owned by the participants and not by the mediator.
#7: Know when to mediate what.
This is a very technical piece that I found useful in Moore’s book (2003). He writes that while going through the process of trade-offs, when the parties are making offers, concessions and responses to those offers and concessions, it is sometimes wise to juggle which aspects of the conflict are on the table at once. More simply stated there is an art to knowing what to bargain first, last and in the middle. Moore says that if relationships are poor and there is a lot of mistrust in the room or about the process, start the discussions with something easy, where a solution is likely to be found quickly and painlessly. This gives the parties a positive feeling, an awareness that mediation can “work” and begins to help them see the other party more positively. You then can move on to bigger issues, but can always return to an easy aspect if you need another win-win solution to re-energize the participants.
This technique can also mean that certain agreed upon trade-offs may be up for re-negotiation after other agreements have been made. This is particularly true as parties come to realize which interests are most important to them. In a simple example, if two divorcing parents are negotiating child custody, they may have agreed to how to pay for child education already. Later, when discussing one parent’s religious views on how to raise a child, that parent may realize that they are more flexible on education than on religion, and perhaps a concession can be made for that parent to pay more towards college costs as long as the child will attend religious services each week.
There really is an art to mediation, and it’s a delicate act that requires the utmost attention to what is being played out at the table. A skilled mediator watches and moves at the moment he or she realizes that the time is ripe for an issue to be discussed that was previously too tenuous, or suggests to participants that they examine certain concessions they may make in order to get what they really want. There were a million examples in these books, and they frequently amazed me…which brings me to my next lesson learned.
#8: Stay in the conflict chaos for a while to generate the best solutions.
Another valuable tip I learned is that people tend to enter mediation and want to race straight to the solutions. There is an inherent move towards figuring out the answer, often before the problem is fully understood. Moore (2003) writes that often mediators will need to convince parties of the need to generate multiple solution options before deciding. As I read through case studies and examples, I was struck by how creative and out-of-the-box many of the solutions were, and I it became very clear that many of those unique, win-win solutions could not have been discovered or agreed upon earlier in the session.
Parties sometimes dismiss the “rest” of mediation- everything but the ultimate discussion on ‘who gets what’- as fluff. But trying to agree on a solution without hearing and truly understanding the other side’s point of view, or in a heated, angry environment, or before all of the issues have been discussed is not likely to work well. If you want great solutions, you have to really invest time in the first two-thirds of the mediation process: explaining mediation, building relationships, hearing the stories, discussing interests (not positions!), and brainstorming many, many ideas for solutions. Most of the authors say that if you can get parties to move towards interest-based bargaining, you can find out what their real interests are, what they truly care about or desire. Then, you can design solutions that really will satisfy them. The authors present these very touching examples of people who really “come around” to mediation, albeit not easily, and create these ingenious solutions that work for everyone. Mediating in this way increases your chances for reaching that one really great solution (or many really great solutions!) due mostly to the fact that you have built a relationship between parties, and their common interests and shared concerns now provide a basis for a good, working agreement.
I note this as a lesson because the authors agree that this is a frequent mistake of mediators: they rush through the beginning and later realize that they have not built enough common ground on which to build a solution.
#9: And now a word from Fromm and Deutsch
So far, I haven’t mentioned Eric Fromm or Morton Deutsch at all, mainly because their books (Anatomy of human destructiveness and The resolution of conflict, respectively) dealt more with the psychological or philosophical sides of conflict. But they do provide useful insights into why people get into conflict in the first place. Fromm’s book tackles the extremely dense topic of why humans are destructive. As he writes it, while other species are violent, no other species is violent just for the fun of it. Other animals may fight and kill, but only by virtue of their instincts and needs for food, safety, preservation, etc. Humans have the sad distinction of being the only species which kills, rapes, and more without any inherent, instinctual need. While others have written this off as man’s nature, Fromm argues that based on evidence from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, psychology and others, men are not naturally evil, but are instead products of an increasingly complex civilization.
If I can attempt to summarize what is an extremely long and dense book, Fromm eventually posits that humankind has created a society that is anti-natural and man-made, and in doing so, has created in humans a sort of existential crisis where people are so far removed from a natural state that even heinous acts do not feel real or bear much weight on the soul. That is a huge shrinking of what Fromm says, to be sure! Below, in his words, is a description of this “death culture” we live in (bear in mind that he was previously talking about necrophiliacs, so the quotation starts out a bit startling!):
The new type of man, after all, is not interested in feces or corpses: in fact, he is so phobic toward corpses that he makes them look more alive than the person was when living. (This does not seem to be a reaction formation, but rather a part of the whole orientation that denies natural, not man-made reality.) But he does something more drastic. He turns his interest away from life, persons, nature, ideas- in short form everything that is alive; he transforms all life into things, including himself and the manifestations of his human faculties of reason, seeing, hearing, tasting, loving. Sexuality becomes a technical skill (the “love machine”), feelings are flattened and sometimes substituted by sentimentality; joy, the expression of intense aliveness, is replaced by “fun” or excitement; and whatever love and tenderness man has is directed toward machines and gadgets. (389)
In another passage, he writes:
Let us begin with the consideration of the simplest and most obvious characteristics of contemporary industrial man: the stifling of his focal interest in people, nature and living structures, together with the increasing attraction of mechanical, nonalive artifacts. Examples abound. All over the industrialized world there are men who feel more tender toward, and are more interested in, their automobiles than their wives. They are proud of their car, they cherish it, they wash it… and in come countries many give it a loving nickname. They observe it and are concerned at the slightest symptom of a dysfunction. To be sure a car is not a sexual object- but it is an object of love; life without a car seems to some more intolerable than life without a woman. Is this attachment to automobiles not somewhat peculiar, or even perverse? (381)
And a last one:
Do we not have to admit that contemporary technical man is not motivated by a passion for destruction, but would be more properly described as a totally alienated man whose dominant orientation is cerebral, who feels little love but also little desire to destroy, who has become…an automaton, but not a destroyer? (387)
I apologize for so many long quotes, but it is pretty hard to paraphrase the intensity of Fromm’s writings! Before I discuss how this relates to my understanding of mediation, I’ll add Deutsch’s thoughts on a similar topic. Deutsch’s The resolution of conflict: constructive and destructive processes (1973) asks the question of what characteristics or conditions make a conflict constructive or destructive. He believes, as do most mediators, that conflict can and should be constructive. Conflicts, after all, can lead to new and creative solutions, better relationships, and improved understanding of our individual worlds. But often conflict occurs in such a destructive manner, and Deutsch explores what makes conflict less destructive, so that we might channel it to be that way.
One main argument he makes is that conflict tends to be more destructive when parties are in competition with each other. On the flip side, when groups or people are in a cooperative relationship, conflict tends to be more constructive. He notes that in communities, cultures or relationships where there exist cross-cutting ties, it becomes harder for conflict to take on a destructive nature. If we know and understand someone or some group, it becomes harder to create an enemy out of them. He suggests that this is why racial (or religious, or ethnic…) conflicts are often so deep and entrenched. When people and groups begin to see others as themselves, it begins to create an environment where cooperation is more likely.
I think the link to mediation is pretty clear here. The other four authors all stress, in various ways, the role of the relationship between the parties. Whether it’s not rushing to a solution, allowing parties time to present their stories, seating parties on the same side of the table instead of across from each other, or asking questions such as “If you were in his shoes, would that be an acceptable solution for you?”, mediators are continually trying to bridge the seemingly large gap between parties, helping them find common ground and shared interests, and focusing on their shared needs rather than their opposing ones. Fromm’s thoughts on man removed from a natural state includes the sad (but often true) idea that humans no longer know how to relate to each other. We are all about processes and objects. Mediation has as its strength, and its challenge, the ability to help people re-connect to that basic need to know, understand and love others, and to have those things in return. If Deutsch is correct, and I believe he is, we can facilitate more successfully if we can assist parties in relating to each other so that they are more willing to be cooperative instead of competitive.
Particularly in divorce mediation, one of the most frequent responses to mediated cases is that the parties leave feeling more human, and less like the monster that the divorce had created. But even in the business world, the need for human relationships is not lessened. Examples in the texts abound. For instance, in environmental disputes, mediators frequently had environmental representatives as well as business people talk about their children and families and what the outdoors meant to them as a way to connect these opposing groups, and to show that even with contradicting desires about land usage or the environment, both groups felt a personal connection to an area.
I could really write another 30 or so lessons that I have learned about mediation from these books. Many of them would have something to do with the emphasis on relationships that every author writes is essential. The idea of mediation as a tool to re-humanize people and their problems is encouraging and refreshing. It is why I am drawn to it as a practice.
#10: Easier read than done.
The last thing I have learned is that, while I have learned so much from reading these texts, I am now faced with the overwhelming awareness that reading, understanding, agreeing with and believing in all of these ideas, attitudes and procedures is NOT AT ALL the same as being able to successfully mediate! I finish these books with the resignation that it will take nothing more than good old fashioned practice, practice, practice. I will need to get certified, certainly, but even beyond that, I have a long way to go in discerning my own style and approach in mediation, developing the techniques that I read about, and becoming better at relating to people in mediation, and helping them relate to each other.
In a few weeks, I am going to the national conference on Conflict Resolution. At the conference, there are a ton of great workshops that will continue to broaden my understanding of the field and its practice. I also hope to begin the certification process next spring, and it will be interesting to compare that process to what I’ve begun to learn now. What I can say is that I feel like reading these books has definitely increased my interest in mediation as an avenue to pursue, by changing my conception of mediation from a set-in-stone, step-by-step procedure to a much more collaborative, fluid, intuitive process. Previously, I had thought I would get certified just as a back-up in case I needed to mediate on the side. Now, I am excited by this much fuller idea of mediation and the ways that I can see myself using it in my future.
If you read this far, thank you! Stay tuned, and I will continue to post my thoughts and learnings as I continue this journey.
