I was inspired to become a mediator after experiencing the power of mediation in my own divorce. I’d been living through a contentious process due to the refusal of my ex-husband’s attorney to even consider mediation. When he eventually replaced that attorney, we were finally able to get into mediation very quickly. I was amazed that we were able to settle more in an afternoon than had been accomplished in almost a year of ugly wrangling. And then I enrolled in mediation training.
Fast forward: I’d been mediating for a while and I felt pretty good about my effectiveness as a mediator. Then some mediation colleagues started telling me about the training they had recently done to become professional coaches, urging me to consider it myself. Their enthusiasm and the bit of information they shared piqued my curiosity, and in 2002 I enrolled in the coach training program.
After a short time, I noticed that I had become a better mediator.
Of course, that typically happens with time and experience, regardless. But my gut told me that there was something else at work - that coaching was creating a bigger shift in my mediation work, even though I was not intentionally co-mingling the two. The changes were largely unconscious, but once I recognized them I wanted to understand the change. I started paying more attention to watching myself at work.
I realized that the shift was primarily in two domains:
My Process – I was easily, and almost unconsciously, subtly doing some new things that I had discovered worked well in coaching, within the mediation context. Those techniques supported the parties in more consistently bringing their best selves to the mediation process, and in examining their own thinking more objectively, and leaning into curiosity rather than judgment.
My Presence – My own state of BEing had shifted through an inside-out transformation during my development as a coach, and as a result I was showing up differently, and I was holding the space for clients in a new way. My presence impacted their presence, through the magic of mirror neurons.
Both elements shifted clients in ways that created a profound difference in the work I was doing. As a wonderful side benefit, some of the changes I made in my process also resulted in lasting positive transformative shifts for some of my mediation clients.
Some key elements of coach training that led to those changes included the following:
Developing new awareness and heightened rigor in core skills like listening, powerful questions, direct communication, and encouragement.
Important guiding principles and behaviors that support relationships characterized by trust, intimacy, safety, openness, mutual respect, possibility-thinking, resourcefulness, and self-responsibility.
Accessing mindsets that empower and transform.
Neuroscience findings that provide insight into human behavior, and opportunities to manage it.
Impactful tools for inviting self-awareness, shifts in perspective, and positive change.
In the Adler Learning USA coaching certification program that I teach, we have a catch phrase:
People first, problem second.
After receiving coach training, I began paying more attention to the people in mediation – the parties, and myself as mediator.
That may be a bit different than where a mediator’s focus typically may be, on process and information.
My intention is to paint a picture of some of the ways my coach training helped all the parties in a mediation to connect more with their best selves, so they could be optimally effective in mediation.
“Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration – of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program; it is a human activity that comes from the heart, and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine.” - Lance Secretan
As this quote from Lance Secretan expresses so well, what if we were to think of ourselves as leaders of human experience, not just a leader of the mediation process? What if, when you engage the full heart and will of the parties, much of the process takes care of itself, and it gets easier for everyone?
I began thinking in terms of inviting the clients’ best selves to the table, and began more consciously designing the process to support that shift.
In coaching, a core premise is to hold clients as “creative, resourceful and whole.” In order to do that, we need to let go of the parts of ourselves that want to control, or engage in caretaking, or be the hero or expert, or solve the problem for them. Those are things we’ve been trained for and rewarded for all our lives. So it’s one of the most difficult changes in becoming a coach, but it’s one of the most impactful for ourselves and others around us. When we dial down those parts of ourselves, there’s much more space for the clients to show up as their fullest selves. It also allows us to relax more.
Coaches regard clients as self-responsible – fully capable of managing themselves, not needing to be managed, and we set a high bar of expectation for that. That’s fairly natural for some, but not for others. Hurray for those resourceful clients who manage themselves well!
And I’m guessing that any mediators reading this have seen parties in mediation who don’t quite rise to that level of self-management – those who shout and show anger; who roll over and accept anything; who are shut down, like deer in headlights; who go along with whatever the last idea was; and those who walk in the room and you can almost hear the theme song from Jaws playing in the background.
Let’s take a minute to look at the ideal client, those “best selves” whom we want at the mediation table. I share with clients a model I’ve developed that I call the Self-Continuum, illustrated below.
We all live on a continuum from our small, under-resourced self, to our biggest, best self (and points in between), shifting moment-to-moment in the context of the situation we’re in. Our small self lives in the amygdala-driven space of threat and fear, fight or flight. Our small self is focused on protecting what we have, looking to win against others, and is distrustful and judgmental. I called it our Competitive Self.
As we move away from those threat triggers and get a better handle on ourselves, we’re our Collaborative Self, where we’re able to see beyond our fears and recognize opportunities to work with others and cooperate. We’re able to assess the situation and respond mindfully, rather than just being reactive.
Further along that continuum is our Generative Self, our biggest, best self. This is the wise, visionary self, who is able to trust ourselves and trust others generously. This self goes beyond collaborating to co-creating, with imagination and a possibility mindset.
For mediation, that small, Competitive Self doesn’t fare well. They’re easily triggered into fight (yelling, anger, etc.) or flight (shut-down, fear, etc.). So, as mediators we want to be working with those Collaborative Selves and Generative Selves.
We won’t necessarily meet the Generative Self in all our clients, but don’t you want to make sure that all your clients are at least coming from that Collaborative zone?
Think about all those disputants who’ve made you want to tear your hair out. When we, as mediators, move away from judging them, and frustratedly accepting “that’s just the way they are,” then we can step back and see that their small self is just one part of them, and it opens up the possibility of inviting a better version of them to the table. When we hold the space for them to be “creative, resourceful, whole, and self-responsible” they’re much more likely to show up that way.
In coaching we invest substantial thought and process in establishing a strong relationship of trust with clients. As I developed my own best practices in that process for coaching, and witnessed the powerful impact it had on how clients showed up – stepping into that “bigger self” space – I naturally began bringing some of those best practices into mediation.
I introduced some frameworks I’d learned about in coaching – such as the learner vs. judger mindset; the Ladder of Inference; the courage to be imperfect; and the subjective nature of our “reality” – to open the door to recognizing opportunities to shift. I was going beyond the standard ground rules to develop an intentionally created microculture for the mediation, with shared understanding and vision to be our best selves in the process. Intentionally created microcultures can provide a new context that frees people from their personal constrictions that might otherwise limit their willingness, comfort or ability to engage optimally in interventions like mediation.
What if you were to intentionally create a microculture in mediation that optimizes the clients’ ability to manage their triggers, and to show up more open-minded and collaborative?
My experience in coaching and mediation highlighted that as mediators we’re not there to help solve the clients’ problems – that’s their work to do. We’re there to support them in ways that provide effective structure, focus and process for their work. AND we can support them in showing up most effectively at the BEing, Thinking, and Acting levels, so they can better resolve the issues themselves.
This quote from Karen Kimsey-House illustrates what I’ve seen is possible when the parties embody their best selves:
“When we can represent our own point of view firmly while at the same time listening with curiosity to points of view very different from ours, our disagreement becomes productive and creative. We are often able to find what we call the third way — not your way or my way but a path that is unique, crafted out of respect for our shared humanity and creative beyond what either one of us could have realized on our own.” - Karen Kimsey-House
I came to think of mediation as not just a process for conflict resolution, but also as an inherently creative process and a learning opportunity.
After all, our clients are in the process of creating their future life through mediation. They can do that more effectively, and make better choices if we create a space for them to be their best selves and to think creatively. That doesn’t happen at the behavioral level – it comes from the inside out. In establishing a microculture, and contracting at a deeper level for the relationship with my clients, I found myself working with more robust, effective parties in the mediation.
And I’ve seen many parties recognize that the most important choice they have in mediation is about how they bring themselves to the process.
“…it is up to us to choose freely which impulses, motivations, fears, and desires we want to act in accordance with. In other words, it is up to you, your ‘self’. You make the ultimate choice regarding who you want to become and the direction of your life. When you look in the mirror, the person you see is the person you have created.” - John Chaffee
This quote from John Chaffee beautifully expresses what I’ve come to call “the parallel agenda” in mediation. Within that microculture I was establishing for mediation, I began to ask the parties “What if, in addition to all the many benefits of mediation, you might also come away from mediation feeling so proud and satisfied about who you were BEing in the process, that it may become a life-changing anchoring experience for moving with confidence and grace through any difficult experience?”
As I see it, that can be the real “WOW!” possibility in mediation.
NB: If you are interested in becoming a coach, contact Laura R. Atwood. Mention this article or IMA for special pricing.
