An inner city teacher in St. Louis stayed after school to help a student, even though her superiors warned her to leave the building for her own safety, once classes were dismissed. A stranger entered the room and demanded she take off her clothes. This incident happened, though it had a better outcome than you might expect. So did the following: A metropolitan police officer arrested a man at a housing project, only to exit the building to find an angry mob of sixty people surrounding his car, demanding that he let the man go. Both the teacher and policeman had recently been trained in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and both escaped with their lives. Their secret weapon? They engaged the people who were ready to act on their violent urges in a conversational process that diffused the danger. The teacher escaped her rapist and the policeman calmed the crowd. Both incidents are recounted by Marshall Rosenberg in his book, Nonviolent Communication, A Language for Life....read more
Healing Through Victim-Offender Mediation
Back in 2001 a young teenager, whose real name is not David, joined his friend in a robbery. While a family in their neighborhood was away, they broke in and stole a coin collection, an old watch, and other items that David and his friend could fence for cash. The plan went off without a hitch, except that David and his friend were arrested when law officers linked them to the crime. David qualified for a community mediation program between victims and offenders that he agreed to participate in on the advice of his family and attorney. Read more...
When A Mediated Agreement Could Drive You To Drink;-)
Imagine this conversation: A woman walks into a bar, takes a seat, and says to the bartender: "Pour me a stiff one. I just gave my ex-landlord every penny he sued me for, plus a $1,500.00 bonus." "Whoa," responds the bartender, pouring her a shot, "there must be a story there." The woman smiles, leans in to take a sip, and begins to tell the bartender her story. Fade out. Okay, this scenario is a complete fabrication. But the back story below, explaining this woman's interaction with her landlord, is real. So, read on, but don't expect to find any clues as to what she might tell the bartender. Without a court TV exit interview, the answer to that mystery is unknowable. Read more...
Using Personal Stories To Elevate The Conversation
Use a quiet voice. Lower your voice. That’s an outside voice, use an inside voice. Watch your voice, please. No voices!
As children we get a lot of messages to keep quiet. As a result, many of us skid into adulthood, slam into relationship walls, and find ourselves speechless. Either we never developed good communication habits to begin with or we’ve learned to deal with our emotions by silently shutting down. Learning to talk as babies can be far easier than finding our voices later in life.
Teenagers have an especially difficult time. Peer pressure and self-consciousness can silence the strongest voices. For foster care children, the stress and turmoil of being displaced from home can compound the teenage drift toward silence. But there are programs working to combat the silence. Read more
Teenagers have an especially difficult time. Peer pressure and self-consciousness can silence the strongest voices. For foster care children, the stress and turmoil of being displaced from home can compound the teenage drift toward silence. But there are programs working to combat the silence. Read more
Brown Bag Meetings Ensure Reflection
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This summer’s Conflict Resolution Quarterly, featuring multiple articles on mediator neutrality and power, arrived at my office at the perfect time...right on the heels of an interesting mediator discussion on neutrality at our courthouse “brown bag” meeting. Every month ten or more mediators gather to talk about our experiences, with the goal of sharing information and learning from one another. At our last meeting we discussed how we describe ourselves to our clients in our opening introductions. Do we call ourselves “neutral” or “multi-partial?” Practice guidelines identify mediators as “neutral,” but some at our meeting prefer to use the word “multi-partial,” believing this term speaks to our desire to work for both sides. A lively discussion ensued, and mediators left with lots to chew on.
In Arghavan Gerami’s Quarterly article, “Bridging the Theory and Practice Gap: Mediator Power in Practice,” the concept of mediator neutrality is exploded as an impossible theoretical construct. The author asserts that mediators exercise a significant amount of authority and power in their roles constructing and transforming conflicts. In mediators' efforts to bring the hidden interests of the parties to the surface, Gerami argues, they attend to the content of the agreement so that all interests are represented. Whether refocusing the issues, reframing the client’s statements, or reconstructing the contours of the conflict, mediators shape and exert control over the conversation. This mediator power, unchecked and unexamined, can derail the mediator's ethical responsibility to remain neutral.
According to Gerami, most mediators fall into two camps. In the first group are those who are settlement driven, often offering suggestions, reframing issues or putting forth reality checks, with an eye on helping the parties reach a settlement. In the second group are mediators who primarily focus on enhancing communication and constructive dialogue to encourage the parties to bring forth their needs, concerns and interests. Whatever camp a mediator falls into, he or she is an “active and influential agent of change” - a participant in a three way dialogue. Mediators from both camps employ techniques to break down the whole into smaller more manageable pieces, while “repolarizing” and making more attractive the pieces to bring about resolution. Accordingly, “if the mediator truly succeeds in not exercising any power, then the process is not all that much different from straight negotiation, with an additional person present but not adding anything more.”
As it turns out, our brown bag talks are Gerami’s solution to dealing with the challenges of mediator neutrality and power. Collaborative professional meetings give mediators a chance to share their experiences in “continuous, self-critical, non-defensive and open dialogues.” Our own brown bag meeting never delivered a final verdict on which term, multi-partial or neutral, we should use. Calling ourselves multi-partial is a subtle indication to our clients that we want both sides to leave the mediation feeling satisfied with the outcome. On the other hand, sitting in the client’s chair, it might feel more important to hear that the mediator neither endorses nor opposes a point of view. Calling ourselves neutral may be the only way to convey this. The takeaway is that ethical mediators, in our professional discussions and in our individual practices, must stay alert to neutrality and power pitfalls, choosing to acknowledge our power while neutrally “steering the wheel” to bring the parties toward their desired outcome.
www.peacewisemediation.com
In Arghavan Gerami’s Quarterly article, “Bridging the Theory and Practice Gap: Mediator Power in Practice,” the concept of mediator neutrality is exploded as an impossible theoretical construct. The author asserts that mediators exercise a significant amount of authority and power in their roles constructing and transforming conflicts. In mediators' efforts to bring the hidden interests of the parties to the surface, Gerami argues, they attend to the content of the agreement so that all interests are represented. Whether refocusing the issues, reframing the client’s statements, or reconstructing the contours of the conflict, mediators shape and exert control over the conversation. This mediator power, unchecked and unexamined, can derail the mediator's ethical responsibility to remain neutral.
According to Gerami, most mediators fall into two camps. In the first group are those who are settlement driven, often offering suggestions, reframing issues or putting forth reality checks, with an eye on helping the parties reach a settlement. In the second group are mediators who primarily focus on enhancing communication and constructive dialogue to encourage the parties to bring forth their needs, concerns and interests. Whatever camp a mediator falls into, he or she is an “active and influential agent of change” - a participant in a three way dialogue. Mediators from both camps employ techniques to break down the whole into smaller more manageable pieces, while “repolarizing” and making more attractive the pieces to bring about resolution. Accordingly, “if the mediator truly succeeds in not exercising any power, then the process is not all that much different from straight negotiation, with an additional person present but not adding anything more.”
As it turns out, our brown bag talks are Gerami’s solution to dealing with the challenges of mediator neutrality and power. Collaborative professional meetings give mediators a chance to share their experiences in “continuous, self-critical, non-defensive and open dialogues.” Our own brown bag meeting never delivered a final verdict on which term, multi-partial or neutral, we should use. Calling ourselves multi-partial is a subtle indication to our clients that we want both sides to leave the mediation feeling satisfied with the outcome. On the other hand, sitting in the client’s chair, it might feel more important to hear that the mediator neither endorses nor opposes a point of view. Calling ourselves neutral may be the only way to convey this. The takeaway is that ethical mediators, in our professional discussions and in our individual practices, must stay alert to neutrality and power pitfalls, choosing to acknowledge our power while neutrally “steering the wheel” to bring the parties toward their desired outcome.
www.peacewisemediation.com
President Obama Offers the Takeaway
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Arguments are settled everyday, in formal and informal settings, under official and unofficial circumstances. Teachers break up student fights, neighbors step in to solve neighborhood disputes, parents sit their kids down to work out grievances while therapists counsel unhappy couples. Which of these disputes are refereed and which are mediated, and what’s the difference? Perhaps it helps to look at the role of the person in the middle.
A referee is someone to whom a problem is referred, hence the name. He or she has the task of rendering a settlement or a decision. Essentially, a referee is a judge…someone to whom both parties give the final say. The referee is impartial, otherwise the contest is a farce. The problem, of course, is that every referee shows up to the task with a bias - a blind spot, a dulled sense, a prior belief, an expectation, a thought that makes him or her less than neutral. This is human nature.
A transformative mediator, by contrast, has a lighter burden than the referee. He or she may sit in the middle, but the outcome is in the hands of the disputing parties. Transformative mediators have the luxury of claiming multi-partiality, as long as we empower both sides equally to settle their dispute in whatever way they see fit. We can want both sides to do well and to feel satisfied with the outcome. We pay attention to the process that allows the parties to work through their dispute, without having to weigh the merits of the arguments that make up the content of the dispute.
This attention to a mediator or referee’s role is germane tonight as Barack Obama hosts Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley at the White House. Is President Obama a referee or mediator? Cynics might say neither; he’s just doing damage control to deflate the hype over Gatesgate with a “Beer Summit.” Yet the moniker “The Mediator President” was attached to Obama well before this incident. His people skills, verbal and listening skills, ability to think outside of the box, to process complex lines of reasoning on the spot, and to remain calm under pressure, all make him an excellent mediator. Tonight sitting at the table with his friend and the policeman, he is more mediator than referee.
Let Obama’s generous offer to sit in the middle of this conflict be an example to the rest of us to seize opportunities to mediate conflict. Whenever we can encourage friends or colleagues to sit and talk, we create opportunities for better understanding. We don’t have to be judge or referee. Often guiding the process is all the parties involved need to begin the work to understand one another better. Though Obama wouldn’t comment on the confidential conversation that took place between Crowley and Gates tonight at the White House, he offered a takeaway that speaks to why mediation is such a powerful tool in resolving conflict: "I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart.”
www.peacewisemediation.com
Arguments are settled everyday, in formal and informal settings, under official and unofficial circumstances. Teachers break up student fights, neighbors step in to solve neighborhood disputes, parents sit their kids down to work out grievances while therapists counsel unhappy couples. Which of these disputes are refereed and which are mediated, and what’s the difference? Perhaps it helps to look at the role of the person in the middle.
A referee is someone to whom a problem is referred, hence the name. He or she has the task of rendering a settlement or a decision. Essentially, a referee is a judge…someone to whom both parties give the final say. The referee is impartial, otherwise the contest is a farce. The problem, of course, is that every referee shows up to the task with a bias - a blind spot, a dulled sense, a prior belief, an expectation, a thought that makes him or her less than neutral. This is human nature.
A transformative mediator, by contrast, has a lighter burden than the referee. He or she may sit in the middle, but the outcome is in the hands of the disputing parties. Transformative mediators have the luxury of claiming multi-partiality, as long as we empower both sides equally to settle their dispute in whatever way they see fit. We can want both sides to do well and to feel satisfied with the outcome. We pay attention to the process that allows the parties to work through their dispute, without having to weigh the merits of the arguments that make up the content of the dispute.
This attention to a mediator or referee’s role is germane tonight as Barack Obama hosts Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley at the White House. Is President Obama a referee or mediator? Cynics might say neither; he’s just doing damage control to deflate the hype over Gatesgate with a “Beer Summit.” Yet the moniker “The Mediator President” was attached to Obama well before this incident. His people skills, verbal and listening skills, ability to think outside of the box, to process complex lines of reasoning on the spot, and to remain calm under pressure, all make him an excellent mediator. Tonight sitting at the table with his friend and the policeman, he is more mediator than referee.
Let Obama’s generous offer to sit in the middle of this conflict be an example to the rest of us to seize opportunities to mediate conflict. Whenever we can encourage friends or colleagues to sit and talk, we create opportunities for better understanding. We don’t have to be judge or referee. Often guiding the process is all the parties involved need to begin the work to understand one another better. Though Obama wouldn’t comment on the confidential conversation that took place between Crowley and Gates tonight at the White House, he offered a takeaway that speaks to why mediation is such a powerful tool in resolving conflict: "I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart.”
www.peacewisemediation.com
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