Transformation usually refers to an act, process or instance of change from one configuration into another that is usually irreversible in nature. The process is evolutionary and maturational all at once. A sapling transforms into a mature tree never to be a sapling again. The change is more than a rearrangement of the parts and is greater than the sum of the old and new/additional or deleted parts. The mature tree cannot be described as a bigger sapling. The lost fragility of the sapling has been replaced by the tougher elements of a mature tree.
Transforming the Professional Objectives
Previously trained professionals who are becoming trained and who are providing professional services as a mediator are learning stills that may change the way they perform their previously learned professional roles. Many trained mediators were formerly trained as attorneys, psychotherapists, accountants, educators, physicians, nurses, personnel managers, labor negotiators or judges. As such, the professional role included siding or aligning with the client in order to help them solve their own problems or by remaining objective and uninvolved with the client, and solving the problem for them. In each instance the previously trained professional performed a service for the client could not have performed for themselves as well, if at all. In contrast, the trained mediator facilitates or assists the client with a task and a process of managing the parties' information and dispute which, under ordinary, non-conflicted circumstances, the parties can perform for themselves. What the trained mediator does that the clients cannot do for themselves in the instance in which they seek mediation, is to create an environment in which the parties can learn to listen to the needs of one another and then begin to rejoin with the people from whom they are separating or dissolving a previous partnership for the sake of generating new options/solutions that will resolve the conflict(s). Unlike psychotherapy, the problems to be solved in mediation are not inherent in the parties' themselves, but are the problems they share in the context of changing their contractual arrangement vis a vis one another. And unlike advocacy work, the task is not to distance the client from the problem or from the other parties involved with the problem(s). The trained mediator practices joining people, who are in conflict with one another, in such a way as to renegotiate their relationship with one another and to the problems with which they share an interface. This is a unique function for a professional to perform for clients who are in conflict and distancing from one another. Many people confuse needing to separate with needing to remain conflicted and in disagreement. Mediation transforms this pattern of distancing in order to separate into joining in order to effect "letting go."
Transforming Working With Emotions
As human beings we are conditioned to being emotionally pushed, pulled, swayed or influenced by others' emotions. Conflicts are usually highly emotionally charged situations in which the trained mediator must remain neutral, objective, dispassionate to the emotions while being interested in the problems to be solved. It requires compassion rather than reactivity or judgmental thinking. What is required of the trained mediator is to consciously identify with the emotionality of the conflict and at the same time keep the conflict from distancing the parties. To do this the mediator begins to welcome the conflict with a paradoxical affect (unexpected as compared to the usual defensive and distancing affect that is associated with conflict) and models for the clients a new standard of behavior to be used in mediation. Many mediators have at some time in their lives investigated the relationship between mediating and the martial arts, often borrowing from the moves in aikido to form metaphors for how to sidestep around the emotionally-laden charges and countercharges that occur during a conflict. A paradoxical response to make when negotiators raise their voices in heated debate is to softly say "yes" so as to affirm peoples' deep investment in the issue while at the same time redirecting the escalated emotion to a calmer caliber. By matching words for words and mismatching tone for tone the mediator maintains the desired control of the process. The trained mediator must "side", if you will, with preserving the mediation process and maintaining an environment that is safe for the negotiating parties to push themselves further into exposing their needs. Needs among human beings are basically universal. We need to express ourselves and to be heard/understood/affirmed. We need to feel safe and to know that there are boundaries or limits that will offer us protection (and protect others from us). Humans are problem-solvers and we need to have our problem-solving abilities recognized. We need to give and receive support from others. The mediator will be prepared to meet the task if he/she remains aware of this knowledge about all people at all times. Underneath the rhetoric there will always be one of these needs in process. Emotional displays are not a basic need, but rather a defensive signal that a need is vulnerable to exposure and the person may be fearful and off-balanced. The skillful mediator needs to proceed slowly giving the parties time to regain their balance and thereby reduce their need to distance and defend. As with all change and flux there are just as many opportunities to succeed as there are to fail during high emotional intensity. The psychotherapist/mediator may have had more practice at sidestepping the parties' emotions while continuing to direct the parties' attention to the needs for which they are looking for solutions in their situation. The trained mediator's axiom needs to be " identify needs; negotiate solutions - not emotions!"
Transforming the Professional's Intentions
The attorney/mediator may have more experience with negotiating in general and as such has a valuable asset to bring to the task of functioning as a mediator. In the role of mediator the attorney/mediator may be quicker to see when to empower the disputants in becoming better negotiators (or self-advocates). One way a mediator does this is by asking very strategic questions (timely, but diffuse in intent) that prompt the negotiators to think of options not being considered at the moment. Power is in being able to think on one's feet, in the face of strong emotions, and continue to problem-solve. Helping people stay focused on the problem to be solved can be achieved by prompting their thinking with timely questions. Good self-advocates can continue pursuing their needs even in the presence of threatening distractions. Helping clients to continue to pursue their objectives is a skill many attorney/mediators know well. Mediators need to be able to work with many styles of negotiation and like a symphony conductor weave the styles together into a harmonious, productive process. This may require the mediator to skillfully reframe the negotiators' argumentative messages into more palatable and thus more-likely-to-be-accepted messages. The art of reframing can never be learned well enough, but it basically involves seeing the possibilities, strengths, openings, generosity, goodwill, etc., that are veiled in the disputants' less productive utterances and suggesting to the party what they may have been crying to say or achieve. If done in a respectful manner the parties will not object to your assistance at helping them be more successful in their elocutions. Like a good editor, the mediator points to the best use of the language for all concerned. While remaining neutral (as far as the disputants' issues are concerned) and preserving the neutrality of the process, the mediator may also be modeling behavior that the disputants might find useful to utilize in their own internal negotiations which exist when people are ambivalent or conflicted. Many disputes are the result of people having projected to others their own unfinished or unresolved inner conflicts. Although it is not the purview of the mediator to deal with people's unresolved psychological issues which usually present as confusion, "mixed messages", blame and/or justification, the mediator who knows and uses this information might make wiser interventions to ask for time-out; schedule a caucus with each of the parties; know when to help clients "save face"; know when an apology is close to the surface; or know when it is appropriate to allow time for emotional displays that will be healing and productive for the parties and their negotiations.
Many previously trained professionals do not have a reason to help people avoid going back over the past. The legal professional is trained to look for evidence from the past that will support a defense against a charge of wrongdoing or fault and blame. The psychotherapist/ professional is often interested in people's past lives as a means of understanding better how people came to be the way they are in the present. Trained mediators are taught to steer people clear of rehashing the past a) because it is unproductive and usually leads people back to blame, shame, and justifying behavior; and b) the past cannot be mediated. However, most negotiations include each parties' need to summarize the events leading to the current conflict and thus the issues to be mediated are embedded in these stories. The mediator must listen for the issues to be reflected for the parties, but not become engaged in a discussion about how the issues came to be. Some solutions to present conflicts are to be found in past solutions that the parties have inadvertently included in their summaries (e.g., how couples resolved conflicts in the past; or how parents took turns with childcare in the past; or how purchasing decisions were made in the past), but many of the solutions for the future outcomes to people's present conflicts are found, not in judging the past, but in evaluating the present set of conditions, facts, and opportunities. The mediator's task is to keep the parties focused on the future outcomes which they desire to effect and then assist them in generating options and solutions that ,,,ill take them to their goals. Another often repeated mediator's axiom is; "we can't mediate the past; let's look to the future you can design today'".
Transforming Perceptual Processes
A technique for avoiding getting trapped in the splitting, a psychological term for the kind of dichotomized perceiving as exemplified in the all-or-none, black-white, either-or, win-lose thinking that many unsophisticated negotiators engage in (children are especially good at defining their arguments into 'my-point- of view-excludes-any-awareness-that-there-is-anything-else-to consider') is the 'both-and' thinking that is the stock-in-trade of most mediators. If, while reframing the choices people are advocating, the mediator skillfully includes both options (maybe they cannot be initiated at the same time) and the clients have the choice of choosing neither option then the clients can either accept the mediator's suggestion or think of something better than the mediator's suggestion. In this case, the mediator has recaptured the process by matching the clients' split with a more productive split choice. A number of techniques exist for increasing collaborative behavior to replace the separate-and-distance positioning that negotiators exhibit. The technique whereby person A divides the 'spoils' and person B selects first comes to us from clever parents who had to help children resolve squabbles over divided cookies. Devising a solution that is 'good enough for the goose' and then finding out if the plan is also 'good enough for the gander' works well to promote a sense of mutuality for parties who will have to continue to relate with each other after the mediation has ended. But for the more entrenched negotiators who need help looking at events from another person's point of view the mediator needs to have learned how to resist becoming inducted into a negotiator position while at the same time perceiving where that negotiator is coming from. 'Joining' or aligning oneself with the opponent is an aikido move that has found its way into the psychotherapists' toolbox. It differs from the 'good cop-bad cop' interrogation method in it's intentionality which is to be genuinely empathic or compassionate with the person being 'joined'. The mediator is an equal opportunity joiner and is strategic to demonstrate joining with each negotiator evenly. Needless to say, the skilled mediator becomes perceptually nimble and elastic for the sake of modeling moving disputants off their fixed positions. The mediator must also help surface the unspoken needs while executing these momentary alignments. Actually, the alignment must be with the legitimacy of the needs and not with the various personalities in the room. This process cannot be rushed and sometimes the effective use of humor aimed at the mediator in the role of speaking for one need or another can, by proxy, jolly someone out of their rigidity.
Transforming the Locus of Power
Probably the single most empowering realization for mediators who are transforming from other professional roles is to know that "the power is in the clients!" The clients will be the ones to resolve their conflicts; the clients will be the ones to select the options that will move them through their impasses; and it will be up to the clients to let go of old wounds. Their impasses are theirs - not the mediators' responsibility to handle. These can be significant moments in mediation and the mediator who possesses the perceptual skills to analyze and honor the presence of an impasse and it's meaning in people's negotiations will experience transformation. It is very difficult to resist the impulse to rush in and make something move in the face of an impasse. However, it will be time better spent if the mediator gains control of him or herself by, first, recognizing that an impasse is in progress and announcing it for the negotiators. The more the mediator respects and reflects the boundaries and limits the impasse places on the forward movement of the negotiations the more the clients are empowered to let go of their tenacious hold on their positions.
Again, the mediator is matching the negotiators movements by standing still with the impasse and exerting no pressure for it to be otherwise. By describing the parameters of the impasse while exhibiting absolutely no interest or attachment to changing the impasse the negotiators can experience the full force of their non-productivity and begin to get motivated again. In doing this the mediator does nothing more than to hold the space of the old positions (metaphorically, the mediator occupies the position of 'attachment' to the old positions thus allowing the negotiators the freedom to move away from the position in dignity!)
The experienced mediator knows when and how to stroke each client with the recognition and acknowledgement they so often crave for having exposed their vulnerabilities and inadequacies. None of us thinks we are very good at negotiating in the face of strong needs and feelings and most people who are allowing their negotiations to be mediated are doing so for the first time. As a newly emerging profession we trained mediators need to thank our clients liberally for having the courage to speak for their own needs and wants in the negotiation process and we need to thank our clients for allowing us to sit-in on this very private process and witnessing their courage. If we have been successful at practicing our skills the clients will thank each other first and secondarily the mediator(s} or the mediation process.
Is this a role change that is transformational for previously trained professionals or is this a transitional role; one from which professionals go back and forth neither taking nor leaving
anything from their previous professional role functions? I would like to suggest that once a previously trained professional begins the practice of mediation they will not be performing their former professional roles in exactly the same manner ever again. To their former skills and accomplishments they will add a quality of maturity, patience and wisdom that is only seen in the wisest of sages. The well-practiced mediator will be remembered more for what they did not do (jump-in, agitate and react, make judgements, give opinions or tell people what to do) and instead will be trusted for their self-control, neutrality, empowering confidence, and insightful perceptions.
Transformation of Conflict
Conflict resolution has evolved from warfare that killed, maimed, plundered, and took hostages, through the civility of litigation that has given rise to several new social classes (the righteous, the victim, and the disenfranchised) and now to the emergent forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Will ADR encourage a 'higher' form of human behavior in the face of conflict? Will conflict resolution subside as a gladiator sport and become a more humanitarian endeavor? Will the profession of mediation make a significant contribution to world peace? Are we entering a period of evolution, as a species, in which the human condition of suffering for our neediness (and greediness) will reconnect us as fellow human beings, more alike in our needs and quite diverse in our ways of meeting those needs? Certainly the practice of mediation allows the mediator to feel useful and honorable at the same time. Hopefully, the mediation profession will not produce more separation in its wake, but will help us as a society to correct our lives in such a way as to leave people respecting one another and themselves. Perhaps the practice of mediation will begin to change how people think about conflict and how people think and feel about other human beings who are different than themselves, but who have needs, fears and feelings just like themselves. Perhaps the practice of mediation will help people evolve to the point of being more comfortable with paradox so that perceptions of differences do not have to be distancing. Conflict has received a negative connotation in the past but through mediation may regain its place of honor in the history of civilization.
Source: Diane David Hamrick, Ph.D., is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, a Licensed Marital and Family Therapist and a Family Mediator Practitioner in Charleston, South Carolina.
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