With that basic overview of the phases of a mediation in front of us, let's focus a bit more on the role of the mediator. For this, I'm drawing on a really helpful manual called "Peace Skills: Manual for Community Mediation," and this is put together by Ron Kraybill, Robert Evans, and Alice Frazer Evans. In this manual, they provide a helpful list of what mediators do and do not do. In their words, "Mediators do not make decisions for other people or tell them what to do. They don't seek power over the lives of others. They don't have answers to other people's problems. They do not bear the responsibility if the mediation fails, assuming they've done a reasonably good job of mediating. Mediators do not take credit if the mediation is successful, even if they have done a brilliant job of mediating." By contrast, Kraybill, Evans, and Evans assert that, "Mediators must be truly committed to serving other people. Mediators must be willing to work very hard, and yet to see that the disputing parties get credit for their hard work. They have to see the parties themselves as the people primarily responsible for resolving the conflict. Mediators consult with the parties at every step of the way. And they see their task as working themselves out of a job." Now I share this list, from the manual, because it's incredibly helpful to all of us inclined to step in and help people with their problems. What's key to good mediation, what makes mediation successful, is the empowerment of the parties to solve their own problems. And this is a lesson we can take with us everywhere we go. Engaging conflict constructively requires us to design and implement process that empower people to work through their own problems and identify their own paths forward. So let's talk a little bit about deep listening, which is the kind of listening that mediators and also circle facilitators do, and we're going to talk about circle facilitators in the next few lessons. The point here is that mediators are listening on multiple levels. They're listening for positions, for interests, and needs, right? They're listening for many different things, some said and some unsaid. They're also listening in a way that affirms the parties who are speaking. One of the ways that they do this is to paraphrase. Now, a paraphrasing can be incredibly irritating, right? One of the most irritating things in the world is to have someone say to you, "So what I hear you saying is." There are these catchphrases that we use when we're paraphrasing and they become irritating, especially when you're already frustrated and anxious. So, that's not the kind of paraphrasing I'm talking about. I want you to think more deeply about the mechanics of paraphrasing. What's happening in paraphrasing is that you are giving the other person your fullest attention. You're trying to capture not just their words so you can say the words back to them, but you're really listening for the meaning of their words so that you can communicate that the meaning has been captured, right? It's not just the words you're saying back, it's the meaning. Also, when you're paraphrasing, you're listening without judgment or evaluation. Now pause for a minute and think how rare that is. Most of the time when we're listening to people, we're listening with a judgmental ear, or an ear of evaluation or criticism. Paraphrasing, as a habit or a discipline, is this capacity to listen without that constant judgmental tone, right? You're listening with a posture of openness, and then communicating back not just the words, but the meaning in a non-judgmental way. The other thing that's happening in paraphrasing is that you are acknowledging the emotion or the feeling level of the statements. And again that's incredibly important. It's not just that I'm saying I heard you say that you are mad, but I'm communicating to you that I understand that you are mad, right? I see the anger that this experience has raised in you. Another kind of active listening habit that mediators cultivate, and something that I think we can all learn from, is the practice of posing open questions. Now these are questions that a mediator poses in the course of the storytelling phase or the problem solving phase, and there are questions that might be intended for clarification or to generate ideas. But what I want to do is to read a number of these questions to you so that you can hear them. Again they're open ended, they're elicitive questions, right? You're trying to elicit information from people, and they're not judgmental questions. So listen to what they sound like. These are open questions: Can you describe what happened at that leadership meeting from your perspective? How have you been feeling and what have you been thinking about since then? Right? These are questions that are trying to tease out a person's story. What more would you like us to know? Sometimes you can pose a question in the form of a statement. I would really like to hear more about that. Or, can you help me understand? Right? How did you feel about that? Is it a classic open question? Can you say more about why you felt that way. So these are questions, again, not to routinize in your speech so that you parrot them back, but it's the form of the question that I'm trying to emphasize. It's a way of listening to people, and to elicit their perspective in an open and non-judgmental pattern of communication. There are also questions that are used to dig a little deeper. So let me tell you what those questions sound like. What has been especially hard for you? Right? What's important to you? What are you concerned about? What do you love about this place? Now let me pause on that one. I'm going to talk a little bit later about the importance of encouraging people to not only focus on the problem, the concern, the anxiety, but also to shift, to articulate what their love is or their hope. Right? And so this is a question that's beginning to make that turn. 'What do you love about this place', rather than 'what's wrong in this situation'. So tuck that away, that's something we'll come back to. That you might think about some contrasting questions, right? What worries do you have about this place, community, or school, paired with, what hopes do you have for this place, community, or school? 'What would you like to see happen? '- is a classic elicitive question. It's inviting people to envision their future individually or ideally in a collaborative way, right? And it's again giving them some power to articulate their hopes for the future, not to keep focusing on the problems. You can see how questions like this help the mediator to get an increased and deeper understanding, but also continue to empower their participants to articulate their own concerns and hopes, so that they stay in control of the process and feel empowered to identify desired outcomes. One of the most important things that I have learned is that when we are in conflict, we get completely focused on all that is wrong in a place or in a relationship. All of those perceived problems certainly need to be articulated and examined. But one of the most constructive things that we do for one another in the midst of conflict is to ask two other kinds of crucial questions. What do you really care about here? What's most important to you? And what do you hope for, what do you want to see? In conflict transformation, mediation constitutes one of many tools employed. So we might think of mediation as a practice that is shared among these different schools of thought. But there are also some differences between management, resolution, and transformation, and the way that they approach mediation. If we place these approaches on a spectrum, management is most concerned about the outcome, and transformation is most concerned about the relationship. Resolution tends to float around a bit on this spectrum, depending on the mediator, and on the way they understand the concept of resolution and what it requires. If you want to understand this area of transformative mediation more fully, I recommend "The Promise of Mediation: The Transformative Approach to Conflict" by Robert Baruch Bush and Joseph Folger.
