Toronto’s St. Stephen’s Conflict Resolution Service offers community mediation, workplace mediation, professional conflict resolution training, restorative justice mediation, and co-parenting mediation. I took their 40 hour certificate course in interpersonal mediation last week – probably one of the best courses I’ve taken for its balance of theory and practice and its range of applicability.

We spent our first day with the building blocks: exploring our own approaches to conflict (completing statements such as “When someone disagrees with me, I find it hardest to handle when the person approaches me this way…”), distinguishing mediation from other forms of alternative dispute resolution, and discussing the differences between rights-based, rules-based, and interests-based resolution.

In role plays, we practiced active listening to an extent I’ve never seen a training workshop go to before, doing exercise after exercise of encouraging the speaker, asking clarifying questions, restating key points, reflecting feelings, and validating.

With our grounding in interests-based approaches and active listening skills sharpened, we were ready to look at the mediation model itself:

Phase 1: Goal: Each disputant feels the mediator understands his/her concerns.

After initial interviews conducted separately with each disputant, disputants and mediators evaluate the appropriateness of mediation. If all parties agree that it is appropriate, that they are willing to listen to each other, and that they are participating voluntarily, the disputants are invited to Phase 1. Phase 1 consists of disputants sitting side by side across from the co-mediators, as the co-mediators alternate active listening with each disputant to gain a full understanding of the disputants concerns, feelings, and interests. In this phase, the disputants do not address each other, but speak only to the co-mediators. Co-mediators do not try to problem-solve, identify solutions, or pursue any agenda other than to actively listen to the disputants. Phase 1 concludes when each disputant says that he/she feels the mediators have a full understanding of his/her concerns.

Phase 2: Goal: Each disputant feels the other disputant understands what is important to him/her.

Mediators take a short break before Phase 2 to identify the top issues that each disputant needs the other disputant to understand. Then it’s an art form to plan the order in which disputants will speak, how to phrase the prompts to have them speak about their concerns, and how to encourage each disputant to truly listen to the concerns the other disputant expresses. In Phase 2, the disputants speak to each other rather than to the mediators. After each disputant speaks to one of their concerns, the other disputant is asked, “Can you repeat back to [disputant A] what you heard him/her say?”

Phase 2 Example:

Mediators: Disputant A, tell disputant B how you reacted when you came home and saw the new fence.

Disputant A: [responds]

Mediators: Disputant B, can you tell Disputant A what you heard him/her say.

Disputant B: [responds]

Mediators: Disputant A, do you feel that Disputant B understood you?

Active listening happens because each disputant has to express the concern of the other party, and Phase 2 promotes understanding and, eventually, some goodwill between participants as they express each other’s concerns. Phase 2 ends when each disputant feels that the other disputant understands his/her concerns.

Phase 3: Goal: A clearly expressed agreement that fully resolves the conflict for each disputant.

In phase 3, co-mediators list the interests of each disputant and ask disputants to brainstorm creative alternatives that address the interests of both. Specific, balanced, accountable agreements are reached and written down for both parties to keep. Throughout the process, the problem-solving, idea generation, and evaluation is in the hands of the disputants: the mediator is not there to suggest solutions or arbitrate, but to guide the disputants through the process. It might seem that disputants could have just started in Phase 3 – brainstorming solutions – but what we saw over and over throughout the week is that it was the process of going through Phase 1 – feeling understood and having your concerns validated – and Phase 2 – listening to and understanding each other’s concerns – that disputants came to a point where they could jointly problem-solve and consider each other’s interests.

Summary

The above description is a very thin outline of a comprehensive process – we explored each section of it in detail, in both theory and in role plays, experiencing the perspective of the disputants and the mediators alternately from day-to-day. The course included discussions and activities around the finer details of when mediation is appropriate, mediation adjustments for individuals from a variety of languages, cultures, and/or approaches to conflict, power dynamics between disputants, how to identify disputant interests, how to draft a workable agreement, and how to respond to all sorts of common issues: disputants insulting each other, accusing each other, blaming each other, not listening to or speaking to each other, and even disagreements between co-mediators.

I left with a greater understanding of my own tendencies in conflict situations, and a greater ability to set my tendencies aside to prioritize the needs of the disputants. I received excellent feedback from others in the course about how they responded and reacted to my active listening, realizing that some individuals liked to hear their concerns reflected in a language of “You think…”, “what’s important to you is…”, and others felt more understood when I said “You feel…”, “you value…” (Myers Briggs all over again). Finally, I left with a mind spinning with ideas about how the mediation model could be used in workplace conflict situations, and a feeling that despite all the time we spend together, very few of us spend much of that time truly listening, or truly feeling understood.