The key skills that a mediator needs will be outlined in this chapter together with some tips on how to put these into practice and how they relate to the mediation process. As with any skills, they will improve over time and with practice and experience. The following are the key skills required, which we will explore in more detail throughout this chapter. Used together, these skills will enable you to manage the process confidently and effectively while maintaining control and establishing authority.
- Deep listening skills: This is probably the single most important (and possibly most difficult) skill to master. This also involves being empathetic but not being drawn in
- Establish trust and rapport: As a mediator, you need to be able to quickly gain the trust of the parties and establish and build rapport
- An ability to retain a sense of calmness: If you remain cool, calm, and collected, and manage your own emotions, then those around you will be influenced by this
- Neutrality and independence: It is vital that both parties feel that they are being treated equally
- Creativity: The ability to offer innovative solutions and to identify needs and interests and common threads is paramount in mediation
- Questioning skills: Good questioning techniques and reframing statements encourage parties to look at things differently and seek solutions
- Confidentiality: You must honor the confidentiality of the process; otherwise, trust and confidence will be lost and your credibility will be completely undermined
Let's look at these in some more detail—if you can master these, you will be well on your way to becoming an effective mediator.
To listen fully means to pay attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the "music", but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what a person knows, but for what he or she is. | ||
| --–Peter Senge | ||
Listening skills are the single most important skill that a mediator needs to master. Most of us are not good at listening; we are taught to speak, to write, and to read, but we are not taught to listen. With practice, however, you can improve your listening skills.
As a mediator, you need to learn to listen at a deep emphatic level, which requires real and sustained concentration. Empathetic listening means that you listen to more than the words that are spoken. You need to listen to the emotions and feelings underneath the words and to the non-verbal communication. It is also important that you demonstrate to the other person that you have listened and understood. However hard you might try, it is impossible to multitask while listening (I have tried and failed many times!).
The following are some useful tips to achieve real deep emphatic listening.
You have to be in the right frame of mind yourself. Relax your posture and suspend your concerns and thoughts. If you go into a mediation thinking about all the other things on your "to-do list", what you are having for dinner, or who is picking up your kids, you will not give the other person (or people) your full attention. People have different techniques to achieve this but the breathing and posture exercises referred to in Chapter 1, Conflict in the Workplace, to relieve stress also work well here. A good way to leave your personal issues behind is to write them on a piece of paper and then file it away, usually in a bin.
Try to identify the speaker's feelings and emotions by listening to what is beneath the words. Pay attention to tone of voice and body language as well as what is not said. Silence can speak volumes! Where the words that are spoken are at variance with the body language and tone, the vast majority of the message communicated comes from non-verbal signals, so pay particular attention if this is the case.
Empathy means that you step into the thoughts and feelings of the speaker and understand them. This is distinguished from sympathy, which is where you feel the same emotions as the other person. Sympathy should be avoided as you need to adopt a more detached approach. The problem or issue is not yours and it is not wise to take it on your own shoulders. Not only is this not healthy for you, it will almost certainly impact on your ability to remain neutral. Similarly you need to avoid antipathy, that is, having a deep dislike of a particular view point. A good example would be where you come across something that is deeply offensive to your own personal values, such as discrimination or bullying. I find that a good way to remain sufficiently detached is to think of yourself looking down on the parties from a balcony. Also when listening to one party, always bear in mind that what you will hear from the other will be an entirely different story, so suspend any judgment.
Check to make sure you have understood the speaker and heard the details correctly. This is equally important for the purposes of ensuring that the parties feel really listened to and understood. This can be achieved in a number of ways, including the following:
- Summarizing what you have heard back to the speaker(s)
- Asking questions
- Displaying appropriate non-verbal signs such as good eye contact, verbal gestures, and nodding
If you are practicing deep listening, you cannot take detailed notes. If you are trying to capture everything that is said in notes, then you immediately lose all the visual clues as eye contact is not maintained. Also, you will be concentrating on writing notes rather than on listening.
I have had to work hard to train myself to take the most minimal of notes. As a former solicitor, I had become used to taking copious notes for evidential purposes. This is not required for mediation in any event, and I always indicate to the parties that I will destroy my notes after the mediation and that they are simply for my own purposes during the process.
With some practice and experimentation, you will find what works for you, but I find it useful to divide the page of a notebook into two columns, one for each party, and jot down key words, phrases, or issues. This works for me as it enables me to spot common themes or identify points of difference very quickly.