Country:
U.S.A.

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Discussions in mediation, when they are effectively solution-focussed, show a changing pattern, from an initial stating of positions, often overtly opposed, through a developing conversation towards a final consensus. The interaction between the participants is informed by their individual beliefs . Some of these beliefs may be openly held by some or all of the parties. Other mutual beliefs are arrived at in the course of the negotiation.
Mediators who have all been trained in ethics of impartiality and mutuality should not lose awareness of their own beliefs and personal backgrounds. The combination of personal identity factors, professional training- whether as lawyers, social workers, therapists or whatever- and the Mediator's own authority, gives the Mediator an influence which needs to be understood, acknowledged and used in right ways. The mediated negotiation is, at best, a conversation in which the Mediator is perceived as one of the parties, albeit with very different status from the family members.

Mediators who have been trained in ethics of impartiality and mutuality should not lose awareness of their own beliefs and personal backgrounds.

All of us, as individuals, absorb messages as we are growing up about gender, work, time boundaries, education, the role of children, race, social status, and the way that conflict should be handled. Our personalities, and behaviour patterns are moulded by our life experiences. Locked within ourselves, we carry our histories, like a succession of Russian dolls.

All the different people that we have ever been remain with us, at either a conscious or an unconscious level. The result is this. The baby who screams at her mother's absence, the terrified five year old, facing her first days at school, the teenager who fears academic failure above all else, can subtly manifest themselves in the workplace. The lessons we are taught about handling loss, and managing conflict are the more powerful because mostly we don not think about what we have learned; instead, we usually make the assumption that the way our family behaved was "normal" and "right". The education that we undergo as mediators, however thorough, cannot undo all the years of experience we have lived through.

A colleague whose early life was disrupted by his father's alcoholism admits that he learned his peace-making skills very early on, endlessly trying to negotiate a truce between his troubled, warring parents. The danger for him is that his peace-weaving is now so entrenched that he can find it difficult to challenge the unacceptable; his instinct as a mediator is always to smooth things over, even when this is inappropriate.

The lesson that we consider our families to be the norm, even when they are clearly dysfunctional, was starkly brought home to me recently, when I tried to mediate with a family with two teenage children. The mother had for years suffered from depression and as a consequence her behaviour was often cruel and bizarre. A decision needed to be negotiated about where the children should live. The father was happy to give his children a home and had concluded that this would be in their best interests. The boy went readily to live with his dad, but the daughter, who had described her mother's abusive behaviour in harrowing terms, could not bear to be parted from her. Her mother's house was the place that she felt safest. It was wretched, but it was familiar.

It is vital that we as mediators consider our belief systems, and then challenge them. We must ask ourselves what are the assumptions which we hold? Are they useful, or are some of them based on ill-thought out stereotypes? It is only by recognising our own prejudices and constructs that we can make an attempt to be truly client-centred during the process of mediation.

In her book "Family Mediation" Lisa Parkinson has written about theoretical frameworks, and how they an help us to understand what our clients are experiencing. She writes "The theory of attachment and loss provides a means of understanding the multiple losses of divorce and the importance of providing an anchor or buttress… Family mediators who work with couples and, indirectly their children, need to understand the importance of attachment and the effects of losing a person to whom one is deeply attached."

I agree with this wholeheartedly, but I would also add that mediators should be aware of the quality of their own parenting and the losses which they themselves have suffered. When I was helping two small children come to terms with being orphaned, I re-read Bowlby. One observation stuck in my mind; he said that humans are born so helpless that a child's survival is dependent on hundreds of thousands of acts of care even in the most "uncaring" of households. This is why attachment is so powerful.

Our own fears of abandonment can be re-awakened in the mediation room when we witness the grief of a father who is experiencing separation from his children, or when we see a wife's raw grief because she has been "dumped" by her husband. As mediators we cannot, and should not, be unmoved when we see clients in distress, but we need to be able to differentiate the clients' pain from our own.

Systems theory is another theoretical framework which can be usefully applied. Clients are viewed as interconnected and interconnecting with other individuals and groups who are outside the room. They are also viewed in a social and legal context. To quote Marian Roberts: "An understanding of the impact of the legal, economic, political, social, gender, cultural, ethnic, family, and psychological environment of any dispute between individuals, particularly one involving children, is fundamental to the discussions that occur in mediation".

Mediators are also part of systems; they have their own complex families, social groups, and their own professional networks. In my experience, the professional background of the mediator has an inevitable effect on the way that mediation is conducted. In England, we follow the code of practice of the UK College of Family Mediators. We follow the same set of rules whether we are therapists, social workers or lawyers, but there will be subtle differences in what we emphasise during the process, and in the way the Memorandum of Understanding is presented. Mediators are taught to ask open questions. However, "How do you feel about the separation" (a therapist's question) will elicit a very different response from "What sort of financial settlement are you looking for?" (a lawyers question). This is perhaps a crude oversimplification, but problems can occur when different models are not acknowledged. In my own service, our mediators had difficulties trying to fit in with the thinking of a particular Supervisor we had. Eventually I realised that although we were affiliated to the same umbrella organisation, we had a different idea of what we were trying to achieve. The Supervisor's model resulted from her background as a Court Welfare Officer with an emphasis on longer term work and counselling. Our model was brief and solution focussed. It had been established by someone who was not been a therapist, social worker, or lawyer; her background had been in landscape design.

The more self-awareness that we possess of our individual pasts, and the contexts on which we operate, the more helpful we can be. Once we have acknowledged our prejudices and biases, we can put them aside, and concentrate on our clients.

How we can, we, as mediators become more self-aware? Here are some ideas: feedback from colleagues, and clients, regular supervision, group case discussion, careful session recording - perhaps even tape recording. But supervision and case discussion must be handled sensitively. It is difficult for all of us to reveal our vulnerabilities.

In conclusion, the combination of personal identity factors, professional training - whether as lawyers, social workers, therapists or whatever - and the mediators' own authority, gives the mediator an influence which needs to be understood, acknowledged, and used in right ways. The mediated agreement is, at best, a conversation in which the mediator is perceived as one of the parties, albeit with very different status from family members. Self-knowledge on the part of the mediator is an important tool in the process.

References;
Family Mediation by Lisa Parkinson Published by Sweet and Maxwell 1997
Mediation in Family Disputes by Marian Roberts Published by Community Care Practice Handbooks 1988
Attachment and Loss J Bowlby Published by Penguin 1960's