Mediation Training and Clinic Part Three

Our Sunday training gave me my first experience co-mediating. It was an interesting contrast, sharing the reigns. I've experienced this with teaching before: while I am comfortable taking control of a situation where I am expected to be some sort of authority figure, I have a tendency to coalesce to my co-anything, since they are equally exercising the role of authority that gives me the general sense of confidence to take a more active role.

This was a particularly prominent because I remain silent for a few seconds after somebody speaks, both to formulate what I'm about to say and to give the speaker a chance to continue. Usually while I was gathering my thoughts, my co-mediator - who admitted to feeling incredibly anxious at the thought of silences - would start to talk even when she wasn't quite sure what to say. When she was finally stumped, she turned to me in a moderate panic, at which point I had a difficult time coming back into the conversation. Over time we reached an equilibrium, but it was difficult to figure out a good way to assess the dynamic in the middle of the mediation itself. I guess usually you have a better idea of your co-mediator's style beforehand. Because a coach was watching, the mediation wasn't as much about the (role-played) parties or the conflict but about me(!!!) and if I was simply quiet, what good was I? When I finally managed to get myself out of this mindset, I felt a lot better and ironically more confident in taking an active role.

A real difficulty lay in identifying just what to bring out from what I was percieving about the underlying motivations of the parties. In this case, one party was suing the other for a real injury, but at a 10k markup. I heard a lot in his story to suggest he didn't care about the money, but felt powerless in the control of his own neighborhood and thought money was the only way to get the other party to acknowledge him. My co-mediator and the other party didn't pick up on this and so I felt ambivalent about trying to draw this out more. If I questioned him about that at the table, there was a chance he'd deny it and become defensive, or he'd be admitting to the other party's position that there was no basis for his claim, thus likely ending with the other party not being willing to give at all, knowing the claim was baseless.

After discussing some smaller issues we called a caucus (an individual meeting with one party), but even then, it seemed difficult to simply talk one party down from his position and risk giving the other party everything (resulting in an untenable agreement and a dissatisfied client). Our coach identified that there was some ambiguity about liabilities for an entirely unrelated problem. In caucus, he demonstrated a series of questions that planted a substantial seed of doubt and then let the client ruminate while we caucused with the first client. Doing so enabled the parties to meet each other in the middle. Of course, these are handpicked scenarios I don't know if there will always be such great equalizers, but it was a really impressive solution.

My challenge might be the opposite of what many others identified in training: in many of these exercises I’m finding myself too tentative, too afraid to make a thumbprint on the conversation in the active listening role. I don't offer a lot of advice, figuring people will figure things out on their own if given enough space to do so, but sometimes people need a little nudge and I'm really working on identifying when to nudge and how to be more active as a listener.

Yesterday, we had an exercise in empathic listening. One person was the speaker, one was the listener and one the observer. The speaker was supposed to talk about an issue that had been on his or her mind a lot recently. The listener was supposed to sit facing the speaker and at various intervals repeat back the substance of what the speaker had said both in substance and feeling without over or under stating. The observer kept a written record of key words and phrases used by both parties and compared tone of voice, body language and so on.

When I played the listener, there were words that I initially held back for fear that they might be reading into the situation. I suggested two neutral feelings before I guaged they weren't quite right and got to the word I’d first thought of. Because the exercise required feedback from me at regular intervals and because I had an observer, I did find myself much more distracted than I ordinarily might be. I was suddenly very worried about finding “the right words” and remembering all the details. This is definitely going to be one of my challenges: quieting the voice that suddenly makes listening *about me* instead of about the other person. This is particularly true, considering that many times somebody getting the information a little bit wrong or missing the emotion just a little became a opening for franker dialogue.

There was a point in all our listening exercises yesterday where the conversation shifted and really became *all about the listener* - the atmosphere changed, the intervals between speaker and listener’s participation shortened and were more directly connected, and both parties were leaning forward and mirroring each other in an utterly unaffected manner. At first, my speaker spoke in very large chunks of interconnected information and absolutely without pauses. I sensed this was because she was still setting the ground for the actual feeling part of the conversation and ordinarily would have simply waited to get the heart of her thoughts. As the story went on, I grew increasingly anxious about my ability to remember everything that had been said before: I’m not particularly good with facts or names on instant recall, and usually simply hone in on the emotions and substance. I just wanted her to get to the point so I could offer my first summary. My body language indicated impatience, as my hand wavered in mid-air, ready to shoot up at the first possible break . I could hear my speaker increasing the speed of her story, in reaction to my anxiety. After the first interjection, I found it easier to simply wait until there was a pause, even if that meant I didn’t reflect all of the details. There was a moment when the conversation reached an apex: I got what was really getting to her and she got that I understood that and for five minutes it was really incredible. Shortly after we called time, but I imagine the conversation would have continued much further outside of the context of an exercise.

I experienced a similar feeling as the speaker. At first, I was so aware of my interlocutor that I was intentionally editing myself or trying to present my thoughts so that they would make sense to her (I am a counselor's nightmare: -"what would you like to talk about" ... "I don't know... what would you like to talk about??"). I could sense tension and nerves on her part and wanted to put her at ease. There was an obvious solution to the problem as I initially formulated it and I could feel the moment she realized THE OBVIOUS SOLUTION and trailed off to let her summarize, before making it clear that I’d tried what I suspected she was thinking I ought to have done – to some degree I shortened and altered my thoughts in order to answer this perceived criticism, but shortly after that, the dialogue began to gel. There was something very liberating about knowing that the other person was not allowed to put in “her two cents.” I don’t think I came to a newer understanding about the issue, but it was nice to be able to present my thoughts without feeling pressured to anticipate potential responses and tailor my facts to either elicit or avoid these reactions.

Anyways, as a result of these mediation trainings and a counseling and interviewing exercise where I was again an interviewee (but this time recorded for posterity's sake - oh yes Mr. DeMille, I AM ready for my close up), I have been many many people these last few days: a black teenager accused of plagiarism and vandalism, a wealthy farmer who feels like his neighbor doesn't like him, a clucking mother hen accountant for the government, and an environmentally active entrepreneur getting shafted by an evil developer. Oh and a mediator sometimes. It's getting to the point where I'm not sure who I am!

In the midst of this, I also took my RPC exam (thus pretending to be a candidate for the bar exam for an hour or so as well!), which was discouraging. First I didn't identify that I was answering according to the Model Rules instead of Washington (there really wasn't a place to do so, but he warned us that we ought to indicate which we were using or we might be graded against the wrong code). Second, it just seemed like all three questions centered on the same couple of issues, perhaps requiring a depth and nuance that I simply hadn't prepared for. I feel a little dissapointed for having learned ALL the rules. There were so many cool ethical dillemmas I felt completely competant about discussing and identifying, but instead it felt like it was "and there's a conflict" and "the fee is unreasonable" over and over again. Which worries me that I'm missing something.

Ah well, I'm one day away from my weekend.