The Qualities of a Mediator

A mediator needs to produce any abilities: 1) attentiveness 2) ethics 3) emotional intelligence 4) subject matter expertise 5) decisiveness.

The Qualities of a Mediator

The Qualities of a Mediator

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The Qualities of a Mediator

The Qualities of a Mediator

Attentiveness

The most foremost quality for a mediator is to pay attention. One eminent historian has written that our whole community suffers from attentiveness deficit. [Niall Ferguson: Colossus, 2004] The plain and awful truth is that citizen do not pay attention. They live their lives in data overload, reasoning about what to do or say next.

The word "attend" comes from the Latin attendere to bend to, notice. Attend has a estimate of meanings along with 1) to be gift at, 2) to accompany, 3) to take care of: priest to, devote one's services to, 4) to wait upon, 5) to take fee of, 6) to listen to, 7) to apply oneself, 8) to pay attention: listen or Watch attentively, 9) to be present.

If a mediator did easily nothing else but pay attention, the results would be remarkable.

Attention is an sharp quality. It can be fixed or floating. It can be focused or scattered. It can combine on one thing, or any things or many things. It can take in many things at once. A man who practices paying attentiveness will find it is quality easily developed, and will greatly growth one's awareness of what is going on.

Paying attention, properly understood, is not terribly hard work but on the contrary, has a Light and airy quality. For example, a man absorbed in a book or a movie or a piece of music or a football game is paying close attention, but without a great deal of effort. It is easy to pay attentiveness when one is concerned in the subject matter.

The opposite of attentiveness is distraction.

Chaos is complex; order is simple. Parties in disagreement are entangled in complexity. The job of the mediator is disentanglement and simplicity.

"Don't just do something; stand there." Albert Camus

Ethics

Ethical means: 1) pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principals of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct. 2) In accordance with the rules or standards for right show the way or practice, especially if the standards of a profession: "it is not carefully ethical for physicians to advertise." Synonym: moral, upright, honest, righteous, virtuous, honorable. [Webster's Dictionary]

The subject of ethics concerns itself with action, with right or wrong conduct. Possibly many citizen may not think much about ethical implications, as such, as they go about their daily business, but in fact, every day contains choices and decisions that implicate oneself and other people. Maybe some are more aware than others about consequences: nonetheless, all choices and decisions have consequences, and this is the subject of ethics.

The daily human preoccupation with ethics was never best expressed than by John Bunyan in the opportunity paragraph of his great work written in Bedford jail.

"And behold, I saw a man clothed with rags standing in a determined place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I Watched, and beheld him open the book and read therein, and as he read he wept and trembled, and not being longer able to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying: 'What shall I do?'"

"Pilgrim's Progress"

The inquire is not "who am I?" or "where have I come from?" or "why do I have to die?" or "what is my destiny?" but "what shall I do?" That inquire contains two qualities: (1) it refers to action, (2) it pertains to the future.

Because ethics concerns itself with right action, it pertains to the mediator who has a duty to be impartial as between the parties. Mediators are also called "neutrals", but, although that word has stuck, it does not successfully delineate the function of a mediator.

Neutral means: "(of a man or government) not taking part or giving aid is a dispute or war between others." It is a health in which the third party stays out of the conflict, giving no help to whether side. If a mediator were truly neutral, there would be wee point in seeking her assistance; the parties could use a stuffed doll instead.

"The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Impartial" is a dissimilar word with a dissimilar meaning. It means: "not partial or biased; fair; just: 'an impartial judge.'" Yet a judge has the accountability of judgment, of deciding in favor of one side; the judge may be impartial at the beginning of a case, but is entirely partial by the end. That is the function of a judge, but not a mediator. As used in association with mediation, "impartiality" suggests full yet even-handed involvement, giving as much aid as ethically possible to all sides in the conflict. Of course, the inquire always is: How much is ethically possible? That is why the unlikeness between evaluative and facilitative mediation is not merely a matter of style. A facilitative mediator has made the selection not to evaluate for the parties, while an evaluative mediator is willing to state an opinion. Such decisions necessarily involve considerations of right or wrong show the way in the context of mediation, that is to say, ethics.
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There is always a Power imbalance between parties to a dispute. Does the mediator seek to address, and adjust, the Power imbalance, by lending a bit more weight to the weaker side? Is such "tipping the scales" in favor of greater balance between the parties to be carefully an exercise in partiality or impartiality? Sometimes one party appears with an attorney, the other without one; the man with the attorney is nearly always at an advantage. Should the mediator effort to redress the Power imbalance by helping the unrepresented party understand the legal ramifications of the situation, and the possible perils buried within it? Or is the precise performance plainly to identify the power imbalance, and do nothing to prejudice the stronger position of one of the parties?

What if both parties are represented, one by an attorney who knows the file, the other by an attorney who is clearly unprepared? Should an experienced lend a hand to an fresh lawyer, or unrepresented party?

What if one attorney has overlooked something that will tilt the balance of the negotiation in favor of her client? What is the mediator's responsibility?

Is impartiality even possible, particularly after meeting the disputants and hearing their respective stories? Does the mediator not plainly incline to one side? The Standards of Mediation convention plainly advise: "A mediator shall avoid show the way that gives the appearance of partiality to towards one of the parties." How does one reconcile that accepted with the duty of honesty and transparency? This is not the problem of bias or prejudice, which is conceptually straightforward because it is clearly not acceptable, but a inquire of ethical conduct, because after the two sides of a disagreement are laid out, often it is plain that one side has the best of it; then should the mediator close her eyes to the obvious, or join the parties in denial, or plainly dissemble, presenting the mask of an impartiality she does not feel? And if not, then what is she to do? This is the concern of ethics.

"Every word is a bias or an inclination" Nietsche

During the policy of the mediation, a mediator may come to have a clear view of the respective merits of the parties' positions; should she express her own views to the parties? Sometimes, parties do want such an estimate from the mediator, which is why they may choose a retired judge, who is has spent years in the courtroom development such judgments, but what if the parties do not ask for an evaluation? What if one party is stubborn in insisting on a position that is wrong, unjust, and cannot Possibly win? Should the mediator take that man to one side, privately, and expound to him the realities of the situation?

Mediation convention standards stress three essentials (1) impartiality (2) confidentiality (3) voluntary participation. What if one party desires to speak privately with the mediator, and then confesses to a crime? What if the confession involves an offence with a child? What is the mediator's enforcement (a) if she in an attorney (b) if she is a reasoning health provider (c) neither?

Emotional Intelligence

"Le Coeur a ses raisons que le raison ne comprend pas." Blaise Pascal

The heart has its reasons that infer does not comprehend, Pascal's sublime aphorism, is the subject of the study of emotional intelligence.

The phrase "emotional intelligence" refers to an quality that is not much prized, and easily not taught, in our community and educational systems, though it easily should be. There are some exquisite books on the subject. The phrase itself is something of a deliberate oxymoron, because the emotions are ordinarily noteworthy from the performance of the intelligence, but it expresses the need to delineate empathetically to what is being communicated by an additional one person, along with the emotional drives basic such communication.

The topic of "body language," concerns itself with developing emotional intelligence, which is not an abstract or esoteric ability, but can easily be learned by taking the issue intimately to contemplate the behavior of other people. It helps the mediator to learn to delineate empathetically to the parties, if they are to feel that they have truly been heard in expressing their grievances and needs, which is an considerable step in the mediation process, because it leads to a willingness to negotiate a resolution.

In considering broad categories, any man is whether more or less open, or more or less concealed. Some citizen are deliberately concealing themselves, trying to deceive, while others just do not know how to be more open. The latter are not concealing so much as protecting themselves. Some citizen pretend to be open, while in fact concealing a great deal. everyone is on a continuum between being thoroughly complete and thoroughly open, and citizen may vary a great deal in the policy of an hour as to how much they are willing to reveal, and how much they wish to conceal.

The mediator is not a therapist, and is not trying, commonly speaking, to accomplish a breakthrough in openness, except for those mediators who regard themselves as transformational, and their mediations are commonly designed to take a good deal longer than a regular mediation. Where parties have come together to talk about their differences, and negotiate a solution, the mediator is only concerned in achieving enough honest transportation between them that they can accomplish the corollary that they came for.

With emotion, it needs only to be remembered that emotion is a Movement, and there are only four possible Movements (1) Movement forward; (2) Movement backward; (3) movement splattered in all directions; (4) no movement at all. The emotional state in which the mediator would like the parties, is the emotion of "interest," in which the parties are sharp forward, concerned in the situation they are in, and willing to work on resolving it.

Subject Matter Expertise

Subject matter expertise is something that can be learned by a mediator, by which is meant expertise in the subject matter of the particular dispute, for example, construction, house relationships, childcare, market relationships, contracts, labor relations, environmental, governmental, tort, contract, and so on. Some parties, in choosing a mediator, deliberately seek some subject matter experience, and therefore, as a matter of marketing, it may be helpful for a mediator to derive and therefore be able to advertise determined subject matter expertise.

However, it will be found that, once the mediator has mastered or become proficient in the craft of mediation, that the skills can be applied across a wide variety of subject matters. Some citizen always insist on choosing a retired judge, because judges have perceive in the show the way of trials, even though a judge may know less than the attorneys - this is because attorneys nearly always specialize, whereas judges, once they are on the bench, take a random variety of cases that come before them.

The particular expertise of an experienced judge is in predicting the likely of a case. But if a mediator wishes to mediate in the area of, say international relations or environmental controversies, then in order to derive business, it will probably be considerable to derive some expertise in the subject matter, in order to be able to gift credentials that will serve to inflict credibility.

Decisiveness

Decisiveness is considerable in a mediator, because she cannot allow a mediation to wallow for any great length of time, without the parties becoming impatient, except in those relatively uncommon instances where the mediation is designed to be "transformational" and partakes of many of the qualities of therapy. The mediator has to decide, generally, who to speak to, when to speak to them, what to say to them, how much to allow them to say, because she has an enforcement to create a momentum and keep it going. There is a purpose in view, and there is commonly a time limit, and unless the parties feel they are development some progress, they are likely to be discouraged and the mediation may fail to accomplish its purpose, which is to sway resolution.

In summary, these five qualities are skills that can be learned and developed. They are basic yet profound. attentiveness is the foundation of transportation skills, but must be combined with decisiveness because it is up to the mediator to make things happen. performance must happen but it must be right action, which is the subject of ethics. The mediator must produce sensitivities that are not accessible to pure reason, and this is the subject of emotional intelligence. The mediator must be able to talk the same language as the disputants, which means some subject matter expertise.

The scarcity of these qualities is why the mediation is happening at all. The mediator supplies what is missing to enable the disputants to decide their dispute and move on with their lives.

It has been said that citizen get attached to their problems and conflicts, but the reality of disagreement was never best expressed than by general William Tecumseh Sherman: "War is hell," and it is a aid to citizen to help them find resolution.

The Qualities of a Mediator

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