Unbundling the Mediation Process: The Communication Skills that Help Mediators Manage Conflict
In this follow-up mediation-based workshop, we will focus on the skills that a mediator uses early in the process to shift the disputants’ focus from fighting to problem-solving. Through strategic conflict choreography, mediators endeavor to help disputants feel heard, recognize the common humanity they share with “the other side” and move from emotion-driven reactions to creative and analytically-based negotiation. We will spend most of our time in role-play, practicing the skills of active listening, reframing, summarizing and “looping.” At the end of the workshop, you will have insight into a mediator’s “secret sauce” and be able to practice the skills mediators use day in and day out.
The workshop will be facilitated by Ellen Waldman, the Vice President of Advocacy and Educational Outreach at the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR). Prior to her current role, Ellen was a law professor who directed a court-connected mediation program and first year doctrinal courses. In the area of dispute prevention and resolution, she writes, trains and consults in a broad range of cases. Former chair of the International Mediation Institute’s ethics committee, and task-force member for the California judicial council’s working-group on training requirements for court-connected mediators, Waldman has been deeply involved in policy questions relating to the qualification and ethics training of mediators. She has published more than 25 articles on numerous dispute resolution topics and crafted the first book-length treatment of ethical dilemmas in mediation, entitled Mediation Ethics: Cases and Commentaries.