Here is list of do’s and don'ts for effective third-party
intervention. The question of what creates and effective intervention is very
broad and very context dependent. The weight
to be given to these guidelines or rules will depend upon your read of the
context of the dispute.
Do:
1. Be
clear on your mandate.
As
mediation is a consensual process, your mandate essentially comes from the
parties. As I understand it, the federal government is funding the costs of
mediation and the attendant meetings and no doubt has indicated their
expectations of the process and given you some limitations on the resources at
your disposal. At an early appropriate time, you should explain to the parties
these expectations and limitations as candidly and transparently as possible,
along with your "take" of them. Use the discussion that follows to
clarify the mandate that each of the parties gives to the process. Negotiate
any and all limitations on the mandate until you understand the motivation of
the limitation, then let people know that circumstances may arise where that
limitation needs to be re-examined to meet their overall objectives. Pay
especial attention to any limitations on information disclosure and the
participation of particular people and parties. These attempts to control the
process naturally arise from the parties in the beginning of negotiation,
greatly increasing the complexity of the negotiation and decreasing the
potential for resolution.
2. Model effective negotiation.
The
mediation begins when the first party arrives or you have your first
discussions. You need to demonstrate these dos and don'ts, whatever the subject
matter of that initial discussion. Opportunities to demonstrate your concern
for understanding people's underlying motivations (interests), your respect for
the individuals and organizations involved, and the involvement they can have
in designing the process naturally arise in these first steps. How you negotiate
these early minor or perhaps irrelevant matters, sets the tone and enacts your
process template in the minds of the parties.
3. Be
aware of bipolar thinking.
Negotiation
is stressful and culturally modulated. In conflict circumstances, the parties
naturally frame the dispute in terms of right or wrong, good or bad and
villains or victims. The reality is always more complicated than these
polarities indicate. Using terminology which denotes good and bad, inevitably
leads to the judgment that the actor/person involved in the behaviour is good
or bad. The challenge and your task is to shift those judgments into curiosity.
Curiosity about how the behavior under consideration, made sense to the actor
at the time and what their current intentions are. This especially applies to
your own thinking.
4. Be
as transparent as possible.
Disclose
your motivations (interests), the limitations on your neutrality and role, and
without blame, the difficulties and challenges you are facing. This will serve
to model similar behavior in the parties, build trust with you concerning your
motivations, and empower the parties to shift from a victim point of view to
working to solve the current barriers. There will be occasions where such
disclosure can be utilized by one of the parties for purposes of manipulation.
You must do your best to anticipate those occasions and then limit your
attempts at transparency. However, when in doubt choose transparency and expect
the parties to rise to the higher motivations.
5. Treat
the participants with respect.
Treating
the parties with respect and understanding serves to separate the personal
issues from the subject matter of the problem. Start with and model the
principle that all behavior makes sense to the author of it and shift judgments
about persons to curiosity about how their actions made sense to them. If you
find that you are losing respect for a party, you are slipping into bipolar
thinking. Be sure to take time out to check in with how you feel about each of
the parties. This can help surface subtle changes that can get in your way of
treating the participants with respect.
6. Pay
attention to interests, not positions.
Parties
typically come to mediation table focused upon their positions. Paying
attention to their positions will foster bipolar thinking, increase the
likelihood of disrespectful communications and increase the number of positions
taken. Instead focus on the underlying motivations for their positions. This
will model respect for parties, encourage transparency and minimize bipolar
thinking.
7. Pay
attention to rituals, symbols and story.
Paying
attention to local and cultural rituals and symbols obviously models respect
for the people involved. Metaphors are rich and economical windows into our
worlds, that convey perspective, connection to our sensory nature and
ambiguities that reality presents. However, be cautious about metaphors to
sports or war as these will convey the perspective and sensation of winning and
losing, thereby encouraging bipolar thinking and minimizing creativity.
8. Communicate
with all the parties constantly.
When a
party is not in the focus of mediation, such as when they are in a side meeting
or waiting for the results of a side meeting, time passes very slowly and they
will tend to resile back to their positions. Checking in with the party in that
position demonstrates transparency and respect and also encourages their focus
upon ways of moving forward.
9. Allow
time for reporting back to constituencies/supporters.
An agreement
reached with the parties at the table will not be effective if the player
cannot induce their constituencies or supporters to follow. Allowing time for
reporting back and for bringing forward other perspectives, helps
constituencies and supporters to shift gradually. You can expect some hardening
of positions in this process. It is very difficult to explain new perspectives
to people outside the process, as their beginning bipolar perspectives have
been hardened by being on the sidelines of the mediation.
10. Recognize
how you are perceived on the drama triangle.
The drama
triangle of victim, villain and hero is the dominant perspective in the early
stages of conflict resolution. The parties all perceive themselves as victims
of the others villainous conduct and no one accepts the role of villain. In
this context, you enter the field as the perhaps unwanted, hero. Indeed, the
rejection of your intervention may be the only point of commonality between the
parties at certain points in the mediation. You have the choice of remaining on
the drama triangle or attempting to shift the parties off the corners of the
triangle into greater understanding. If you choose to remain in a role of hero,
you become a party to conflict. You will then need to choose who will be the
proverbial damsel in distress, by taking sides. This adopts a win-lose
perspective. Then, in order to be successful in resolving the conflict, you
must win so effectively that you monopolize the use of coercive force. Anything
less, will perpetuate the conflict. If you cannot do this, then you cannot be
the hero and your job becomes the shifting of the parties off the drama
triangle. Victims display helplessness and powerlessness in an attempt to
attract a hero. Encourage them to shift to more assertive approaches and have
the courage to listen to the others' stories. Villains are seen to be
aggressive and powerful. Encourage the accused villain to examine their own
unheard feelings of victimization and to build understanding of the commonality
of those feelings. Villains bring creativity and stamina, which can be
redirected to the benefit of all in the conflict. Heroes are perceived to be
powerful, courageous, and aggressive. In many ways, they are simply self-righteous
villains. Heroes who cannot deliver a monopoly on coercive force are better off
following this listing of dos and don'ts and thereby shift from the hero to the
enabler.
11. Bring
the perspective of the third side to the table.
Conflicts
do not appear in a vacuum, affecting only those directly involved. There are
always third sides, affected by the conflict, which do not have a voice at the
table. Giving voice to these third perspectives helps to emphasize the broader
impacts of the problem, depersonalizes the conflict, and helps to shift the
parties off the drama triangle.
Don't:
1. Don’t
claim neutrality or impartiality when you are not.
Absolute
neutrality is unattainable, places you in a passive role, and creates
suspicion. You at least have an interest in the effectiveness of the process
and you usually have many more interests. Claiming neutrality in such
circumstances affects the parties’ perception of your genuineness. It is best
to disclose these interests early on to convey transparency, a focus upon
interests, and as a way of decreasing suspicion.
2. Don't
use coercive means unless you have overwhelming force and the stamina to
implement the change you see as necessary.
Use of
coercion emphasizes position taking, perceptions of the drama triangle, and the
party's willingness to participate. Unless you have overwhelming force and the
stamina to implement the change, your use of coercion will have only a limited
run before position taking increases to untenable levels, your role as hero is
rejected (probably by both parties) and some of parties withdraw from the
mediation.
3. Don't
accept secrets easily.
Carefully set up any rules concerning confidentiality
between the mediation participants and the outside world as well as any
limitations on your ability to convey information between subgroups within the
mediation. Private information and secrets are a party's way of controlling the
process. The mediation process should be controlled by no one, including
yourself, although you have the lead in setting the example and guiding the
selection of the process alternatives.
4. Don't pursue compromise.
There are five styles that people bring to conflict:
denial, accommodation, competition, compromise, and collaboration. Denial and
accommodation are typically untenable strategies at this stage, although they
will still show up to certain extent. Competition between positions leading to
bipolar thinking and placement on the drama triangle are typically evident.
Pursuing compromise, reinforces positions, sets up a tit-for-tat expectation
that is difficult to sustain and places the focus on present movement rather
than the real history and the potential future of the conflict. Coming from a
positional standpoint, the parties will naturally look to compromise as the way
forward and be rightly discouraged by its potential for creating resolution.
Your challenge is to shift perceptions from the positions to the underlying
motivators of those positions, to set up a collaborative process for the
participants to find a way forward.
5. Don't leave them waiting too long.
Inevitably, discussions occur within subgroups and
take time. Time passes very slowly for those out of the focus of the mediator
and the parties tend to resile to their positions while waiting. Keep checking
in with each party and explain where you are in the process. This will serve to
minimize suspicion and assumptions of bad intent from creeping in and will slow
the resiling to positions.
6. Don't carry messages unless there is no other
choice.
A message conveyed by one of the parties is almost
always more effective in conveying their real intentions and difficulties. When
you carry messages, the sending party is able to be more extreme. To facilitate
these face to face exchanges, it can be helpful to arrange with the receiving
party for the postponement of their reaction until after a period of separate
consultation or reflection. This can allow the receiving party to reframe their
defensive reaction to a more productive presentation and conveys respect for
the work that went into constructing the message.
7. Don't oversimplify.
Reality is almost always more complex than simple
statements of the problem. Simplification usually leads back to perceptions on
the drama triangle. A summary of common, conflicting, and independent interests
is usually preferable as it conveys the importance of the motivations of the
parties and the potential of those interests to be attained.
8. Don't start with the end in mind.
Visualizing the way the negotiations will play out and
the form the resolution will take, will lead you to positional, bipolar
thinking and coercive means. In the midst of negotiations, it is important to
remember that responsibility for choosing the way forward is up to the parties.
They will probably have to be reminded of that. Having said that, it is also
important to offer them the hope of a positive future, with the conflict
already resolved. You may be the only one who can articulate that.
9. Don't let them get away without documenting the
resolution.
Once the resolution is achieved, most do not want to
settle the details of the agreement in the positive feelings of the moment. It
is at this stage that quick work is required of you to settle those awkward
details and to document them. If raised later, they become areas for suspicion
and can give rise to accusations of bad faith. It is here where compromise
functions well. Having settled the main set of issues, secondary objectives can
usually be efficiently settled in a tit-for-tat compromise fashion.
10. Don't be hard on the people, be hard on the
problem.
Often compromise driven processes put psychological
pressure on the negotiators to resolve things by starving, exhausting, or
isolating them. People usually have two or three compromise steps before they
lose hope of resolution. Similarly, you can get a short distance by putting
psychological pressure on the negotiators. However, Stockholm syndrome only
lasts for a short time. As a dominant method for the whole mediation, compromise and pressure tactics rarely lead
to resolution before aggravation and loss of hope sets in on the parties.
Instead, focus on interests and tend to the physical and psychological needs of
the parties. This demonstrates respect and builds commonality among the
negotiators, increasing their stamina and humanizing their perceptions of each
other.
11. Don't be afraid to break these rules.
Mediation is a creative people oriented process and
because of that, generalizations cannot be absolute. These rules will help you
avoid most of the problems. There will inevitably be situations where the
opposite will be appropriate and necessary. Deviate from these rules, whenever
you have a GOOD reason to do so.