Trained, Locked and Ready to Go... to class

Well we don't really get any kind of acknowledgement for the completion of our mediation training - I guess were I an attorney I'd be the happy owner of 36 CLE credits right about now - but nonetheless I have completed my weekend mediation blitzkriegs for the time being, and aren't I proud? I am, I really am. Beyond my dearth of educational funnosity and the fact that staying in an overheated room with flourscent lights for nine hours at a time gives me a headache, I learned a lot. It's definitely a skill and it definitely will take hours in the chair, but by Sunday I was having these sparkling moments of proficiency with my pretend clients and feeling much less stressed out about every little thing. Once this becomes routine, I can relax enough to hone my style, but the routine part is so important so time for some head-downing/power-throughing (although not literally, as being charged head first by a mediator-rhino might cause some alarm to clients with sensitive dispositions).

My last mediation run through returned to co-mediation and some of my particular challenges with that model. My (attorney) co-mediator really wanted to get in there, cross-examine and come up with solutions on her own. This wasn't a terrible thing, but it detoured us from some pretty early possible agreements that would have laid a great foundation for future discussions. Again, I deferred more than I ought to have and only lightly tried to change the course of the conversation. For a little bit it felt like we were playing good-mediator, bad-mediator (no qualitative connotations meant); maybe more like mamma and pappa mediators - I handled most of the touchy feely stuff and she jumped in there and pushed them hard. I think in an actual mediation setting, I might have called a mediator conference and suggested a game plan, but I'm not nearly confident enough to do so. To her credit, she did notice that I'd withdrawn from the process and gave me more space further on. I shouldn't have to rely on other people noticing this, but when you're trying to project a unified and cooperative relationship with your comediator, it can be difficult to know exactly how to handle different approaches to a conversation in the thick kof it.

I did finally suggest a caucus and it was really transformative. I'm told new mediators overuse caucus, but I can definitely understand why: it always changes the dynamic, and powerfully at that. Mediators can be slightly freer with one party when they aren't being observed by the other party. By which I mean they can completely empathize without concern about alienating the other party. They can also challenge this party and find a more receptive response. And of course, people just speak more openly in private, because they're less afraid of compromising their negotiating position in the absence of the other party.

I am feeling a much better sense of how to drive these babies. And yes, I think of everything in terms of car metaphors: leading is like driving a follow and follows are like varying kinds of cars. Maybe because I do so much driving or because it becomes such an automatic exercise of very complicated processes that it serves as an apt and accessible metaphor for all sorts of other things that do the same. In mediation, the parties are the ones actively moving the conversation, just as a car is what's actually causing me to hurtle through space; but I'm driving. Applying a little pressure here, turning the wheel there, braking and gassing both here AND there. I'm nudging the vehicle down avenues of more constructive conversation and them letting them do all the work to convey us there. And people, like cars, all handle a little differently, so I guess part of the process is very getting a feel for how somebody handles, whether they have power steering, what kind of clutch they have, and just how fast they might go from 0-60. And yes, I'm tired so I fully accept I'm probably rambling.

And as "done" as I am with these weekends (and trust me I am so over having weekend long commitments betwixt full weeks of school), it's really just the beginning, since we have more training within the clinic and of course eventually start doing actual cases!