Individual sessions can be useful in certain circumstances as they allow you an opportunity to discuss issues with one party confidentially and without the other party being able to overhear what or how things are being said. This often means that the parties will open up and share things that they would not want to say in front of the other. It also allows you to dig a bit deeper with challenging questions and engage in some reality testing.
If you do have individual sessions, you will engage in "shuttle diplomacy." You will be moving between the parties and going from room to room positively reframing and reflecting things that have been said by one party to the other, putting forward proposals, or providing information to the other. It is extremely important to ensure that you pay very careful attention to confidentiality. At the end of each individual session, I always ask the person concerned to clarify what I am and what I am not permitted to share with the other party. This is vital to build trust and encourage complete honesty.
The disadvantage of individual sessions is that the parties do not engage directly with each other and some aspects of the messages inevitably get lost. Also, if one party is not willing to share information or feelings, then this can make it very difficult to restore any trust or understanding in the relationship between the parties, which may well not bode well for the future. The advantage is that it may help things get unstuck as the parties may be more willing to open up and share things they have not brought up before and (assuming you have consent), you can manage how the communications are reflected back.
As with most things, there are no hard and fast rules. With experience, you will learn to judge when it is right to have individual sessions. That said, you may want to consider proposing individual sessions in the following situations:
- Where one (or both) parties are struggling with the process in some way. For example, you sense that one party is becoming tired and no longer listening to what is being said.
- If you feel that one party is not engaging well, for example, they are struggling to articulate themselves or having difficulty digesting what has been said.
- Where issues appear to be circling, by which I mean that the discussion is going around and around the same issues without any progress being made.
- Where one party is becoming overly emotional or is behaving in a way that is having a negative impact on the other. This is a difficult one as emotion is good and ideally you want to let it run as far as possible. However, if one party is becoming angry and this is impacting on the other, then you may need to take a break.
- Where you sense that one party (or possibly both) is holding something back and are not being entirely open and honest. It is difficult to describe this, but you simply get a feeling that there are unsaid and unresolved issues.
- Where what one person is saying is at odds with their body language and tone and you feel that there is something underneath this. This could be where one party is saying that they agree or want to move on, but you do not feel that they have understood or accepted the other person's perspective and you want to check the true extent of their agreement.
If you feel that individual sessions may be most beneficial in a particular situation, then you should be confident in using them. While the perception may be that joint sessions are more useful, if a situation is not "ready" to be dealt with, individual sessions can be extremely useful.
Managing an individual session is a little different to a joint session. When dealing with one party alone, the dynamic is immediately altered, for example, the party will often relax more, become a lot more vocal and firm in the views that they are expressing, or make concessions that they do not want to make in front of others. One example that I recall in particular is where one party disclosed to me how a conflict situation was impacting on her health and causing her real concern and worry. However, she was adamant that there was no way she was going to disclose this to the other person as she felt that this would be a "win" for them.
The following are some of the things you can do when engaged in separate meetings:
- You are able to challenge parties more directly than you might in a joint session where you have to ensure you are challenging in a balanced way. This means that you can reflect things back to the party, ask for reactions to what they have heard, or ask them to consider alternative explanations or options in a more direct way.
- You can check any observations or concerns you may have regarding any inconsistencies between what the person is saying and their body language, tone of voice, or facial expressions.
- You can discuss the alternatives to reach an agreement, what this means to the individual, and what other realistic options there are.
- You can challenge the judgments that one party or another have made about the other; often this may involve challenging assumptions that have been made.
- You can share observations regarding the impact of behavior on the other party. For example, you may ask a question such as "can you understand why x felt undermined by what you did?"
- You can explore the party's intention and motivation, their contribution to the situation, and what they are prepared to do to change things. An example of a question here could be "what could you do differently that might encourage x to act in a different way?"
Exploring these issues in separate meetings is designed to promote honesty and openness and encourage parties to acknowledge that they have a responsibility to change things for the future if they truly want to resolve matters.