BECOMING A MEDIATOR
Often when people experience mediation or undergo some related training, they are inspired by the approach and start to think about becoming a mediator themselves. I knew when I started my neighbourhood mediation course (when most people thought I was talking about meditation) that this was something I wanted to do full-time. And it turned out to be a long road to build a practice in the field of civil, commercial, employment and workplace mediation.
As mediation is a relatively young profession, there are a number of issues to consider. For some, being a mediator and conflict resolution specialist will become a full-time job. For others, undergoing mediation training and understanding fully how mediation works will support their professional practice. And for others it will simply be a management tool to pick up as and when required.
Training as a mediator
There are a number of options to train as a mediator based on the type of mediation you will carry out such as civil and commercial, employment, workplace and neighbourhood. There will be a distinction between training for the purposes of supporting parties who are in the process of an actual or potential court based dispute and one that involves the potential preservation or a working or living relationship.
Both practices and sets of skills cross over but the emphasis will be different. For example, the principal expertise of a civil and commercial mediator may not necessarily be in building dialogue between the parties and the expertise of a workplace mediator will not be in negotiating a financial settlement. Once you have trained in one area, you can always expand your practice into other areas. When starting off though, think about where you might be able to practise your skills and where your clients may come from.
Getting experience and ongoing support
Once you have been classroom-trained, you will need to get experience of how mediation works in practice before going out into the field on your own. It is useful to see a variety of mediators at work by assisting them on their cases and by seeing potential challenges that come up in practice. Most civil and commercial mediators are more than happy for you to shadow or assist them, subject to their clients being happy.
In the case of a workplace or neighbourhood mediation, a ‘co-mediation’ in which the mediators of two parties meet together can work very well and provide a great foundation and experience. In both cases, you will need to take your lead from the more experienced mediator.
Essential to ongoing continuing professional development as a mediator will be debriefing with other mediators and reviewing your practice. Key questions mediators will ask themselves after a mediation are:
- What were the key stages in the mediation?
- What techniques were particularly helpful?
- What were the turning points?
- What might you do differently?
- What skills would you like to work on?
- What can you do to improve those skills?
It is important to review your analysis of the mediation with another mediator to get their perspective of how you managed the process and your evaluation of it. For example, we could sometimes do things differently but that change may not alter the outcome or it may have created a new challenge or problem. Another person's perspective allows us to be clear about our practice, learn from it and move on. It also helps us to continually remind ourselves as mediators that the outcome is always the choice of the parties, and what we might think in retrospect could have been the right or better result may only be our perception and may be wrong.
In organisations where there are a number of mediators, practice review can be a good opportunity for learning and development as well as a regulator of good practice. It may also bring up themes of management practice within the organisation that can be fed back in a way that is anonymous and confidential.
Building your practice
Key to building a mediation practice will be building on interventions that help and work. This does not mean that you have to be mediating all the time to begin with but instead applying the principles and mediation techniques to situations you come across, to be practising a mediation mindset whenever you can and demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach which then builds trust in the mediation process.
Practice and experience are vital to building confidence and obtaining a broad experience of conflict situations and where they, and the mediation process, can potentially come undone.
As with building any business, the reality is that this will be as much about who you know as what you know. Many people choose mediators with experience in a certain field, so if you work in a certain area already it is helpful to focus on that and build your practice around it.
Perception can be very powerful. Many people perceive that you need to be a subject specialist to mediate in that area. The reality is that although you need to understand the concepts at play, you do not have to be the expert. Rather, you will need to manage the experts and expertise and keep your own opinions and therefore ego out of the equation. Having said that, if your clients feel more comforted that you have a background in a certain area, you will have their confidence to run the process and that confidence will be key to helping them achieve the result they need.
Building your practice will require you to educate other people to help them understand the benefits that the process will bring to them and, indeed, their careers. It will also be about building on your education and expertise as a mediator and constantly digging into your own personal and professional challenges through conflict.
If you are working in a certain field, it is useful to build on the expertise and contacts you have developing those relationships and communicating the benefits of mediation as it applies to the field. Identify the strategic alliances that you can make with people to help them do what they are already doing better. By working in this way, people can start to identify you as an industry expert in that field, a reputation you will then be able to build on.
There is no doubt that working in the area of conflict resolution and empowering others to get to the other side of otherwise difficult conversations and negotiations is extremely fulfilling. It is also a great responsibility which is lightened by ensuring that we are always lead by the following guiding principles:
- Be aware of your impulses to fix and know that they are unlikely to provide the most helpful answers;
- Always remember that the most comprehensive solution always lies with the parties and they are capable of achieving it if they want to;
- Mediators are never higher authorities but rather trusted servants;
- Not everyone wants to resolve their conflicts now, later or ever;
- Take every opportunity to learn and transform through your own conflicts;
- Ask for help and be prepared to give the help you received.