Advanced Family Mediation Skills
Introduction
- Manage process: toward what ends?
- Always challenging contexts
- Interests & positive intentions - "Imagine"
- Overall: "The ability to influence another"
- Essential Questions:
How organize one's thinking and actions relative to
participant power (amount) and power differential? - Qualities of "Negotiation Power:"
- Relative
- Changes
- Limited
- Real and Apparent
- Exercise Has Benefits and Costs
- Punish or Benefit
- Enhanced by Skill and Resources
- Enhanced by Ability to Endure Uncertainty
- Enhanced by Good Negotiating Relationship
- Depends on Other's Perception of BATNAs
- Only Exists if Perceived and Accepted
- No Single Thing!
- Can Negotiation Power Be Measured?
- As A Matter of Competence (When?)
- How Respond to Perceived Power Differential
Consistent with Overall Mediator Obligations
Negotiation Power Questions
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Do We Balance Negotiation Power?
(if so, how reconcile with duty to be impartial?) -
Basic Options:
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Ignore Power Differential
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Balance Power
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Comparable Treatment
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Empowerment - Maximization
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Responsive Thoughts
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Maximizing Mediation
Suggested Dimensions:
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Assist each individual to be at their personal best
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Assist participants to most capably problem solve to the extent they can do that
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Assist each participant to achieve the greatest possible substantive satisfaction
Maximization as Aspirational Goal, Never Fully Achieved
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An Imperfect Model
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"Sweet Spots"
- Mediator As Activist
- Maximization as Distinguishing Quality for Mediation in the MarketPlace
- Your Agreement House?
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What Do You Do To Empower & Maximize?
Mediator Strategies
Three Basic Ways Mediators Work:
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Interest-Based, Option Development (joint problem solving)
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Hypothesis Generation & Testing (mediator guessing)
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Doubt & Dissonance (heat)
Facilitative Problem Solving Road Map
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Process
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Perspectives
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Common Ground
(interdependence, common interests, easy points of agreement) -
Problem Solving Agenda
how can we best . . ?
what is the best way for us to . . ? -
Information & Documentation
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Goals, Interests & Positive Intention
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Options
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Selections
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Integration
Interest-Based Joint Problem Solving
Working with Positions, Interests & Ultimate Positive Intention
Development of Options
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how are you doing it now - what is working, what not?
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what might make it better?
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what other options might there be?
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would you want to hear of a few other possibilities?
Negotiation - Selection from Among Options
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item by item
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the exchange environment and package deals
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priorities
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the shelf of differences
Integration
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revisit shelf of differences for cross category packages and exchanges
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the "Integrative Question" (repeat as necessary)
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review the string of pearls - individually / jointly
Hypothesis Generation and Testing
Perfect Compliment to Participant Centered Problem-Solving
Best Balance May Depend on Assumptions Regarding Time and Resources
Mediation as a Process of Successive Approximation
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Strategic Summarization
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Hypothesis Development
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Hypothesis Testing
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Revise Hypothesis
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Test Revised Hypothesis
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Confirmation and Integration
Doubt and Dissonance
Why Turn Up the Heat?
Options?
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De-position
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Speak to Parts
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New Perspectives
Why Does Heat Work? People Want to Make the Best Choice They Perceive Available
(a healthy tension of the mind)
Two Ways to Change People's Thinking:
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Increase Number of Choices
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Re-examine Perception of Best Choice(s)
Two Types of Heat: Individual and Mutual
Preferrability of Mutualized Process?
Two Types of Technique (actual and imagined)
Samples of Mutualized Doubt & Dissonance:
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Two Sets of Arrangements
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The Exchange Environment
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The Hypothetical Question
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A Fact-Finding Analogue
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A Mini-Trial Analogue
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"It Always Amazes Me . . "
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"If You Were To Reverse Representational Rules . ."
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The Parade of Horribles
Emotional - Relational Management
Manage toward what end(s)?
Options:
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Teflon Mediator
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Relevancy Check
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Use of Ground Rules
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Backtracking
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Normalization
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Mutualization
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Acknowledgement Process (e.g., Getting Current)
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Referral
Divorce Mediation and the Internet
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Changing the Way Work and the Clients We Are Working With -
Examples: Parenting Plan Center; Our Family Wizard; Child Support; Filing for Divorce -
Not a Matter of Face to Face or Online - Rather, How Best Configure Face to Face, Online and Additional Communications
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What Are All of the Ways We Use the Internet?
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The Joys of Asynchrony
- Issues of Distance & Cost, e.g., Post-Decree Modification
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Part of Overall Empowerment and Maximizing Scheme?
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Creation of Internet Capacity for Each Participant
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Confidentiality and Security
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Email, Instant Messaging, Cell Phones, etc., Use Between Parents and Between Parents and Children?
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The "New (partially virtual) Family" and "Moving On"
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The Future: "OnStar Mediation?"
