Presentation Center

• 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

• Do We Balance Negotiation Power? 
  (if so, how reconcile with duty to be impartial?)
• Basic Options:
  • Ignore Power Differential
  • Balance Power
  • Comparable Treatment
  • Empowerment - Maximization

Responsive Thoughts many ways of looking at and dealing with the same thing - what you do needs to feel right for you - what is right is what works rapport theory - matching, pacing, leading rapport rapport rapport resistance - agree with what is true for them - "grok" - grab gut mediation paradox - better for one, less well for other - plates in the air caucus - strategic not automatic - price you will pay people can operate on more than one channel at a time normative stories as effective delivery system ethics: asset parties to consider best interests of children - quite unique in world of mediation - also a-z responsibilty in divorce mediation assumption in first moments of parents as experts, and that this their best opportunity to reach agreement and serve their kids key is to reduce /elim conflict about kids (if only for your kids)  framing - past/future - "getting current" minimizing to icon participants will snap back to past, also to presenting positions . . . til they find a better answer

Maximizing Mediation

Suggested Dimensions:

• Assist each individual to be at their personal best
• Assist participants to most capably problem solve to the extent they can do that
• Assist each participant to achieve the greatest possible substantive satisfaction

Maximization as Aspirational Goal, Never Fully Achieved

• An Imperfect Model
• "Sweet Spots"
• Mediator As Activist
• Maximization as Distinguishing Quality for Mediation in the MarketPlace
• Your Agreement House? 
• What Do You Do To Empower & Maximize?

Mediator Strategies

Three Basic Ways Mediators Work:

• Interest-Based, Option Development (joint problem solving)
• Hypothesis Generation & Testing (mediator guessing)
• Doubt & Dissonance (heat)

Facilitative Problem Solving Road Map

• Process
• Perspectives
• 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
• Goals, Interests & Positive Intention
• Options
• Selections
• Integration

Interest-Based Joint Problem Solving

Working with Positions, Interests & Ultimate Positive Intention

Development of Options

• how are you doing it now - what is working, what not?
• what might make it better?
• what other options might there be?
• would you want to hear of a few other possibilities?

Negotiation - Selection from Among Options

• item by item
• the exchange environment and package deals
• priorities
• the shelf of differences

Integration

• revisit shelf of differences for cross category packages and exchanges
• the "Integrative Question" (repeat as necessary)
• 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

• Strategic Summarization
• Hypothesis Development
• Hypothesis Testing
• Revise Hypothesis
• Test Revised Hypothesis
• Confirmation and Integration

Doubt and Dissonance

Why Turn Up the Heat?

Options?

• De-position
• Speak to Parts
• 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:

• Increase Number of Choices
• 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:

• Two Sets of Arrangements
• The Exchange Environment
• The Hypothetical Question
• A Fact-Finding Analogue
• A Mini-Trial Analogue
• "It Always Amazes Me . . "
• "If You Were To Reverse Representational Rules . ."
• The Parade of Horribles

Emotional - Relational Management

Manage toward what end(s)?

Options:

• Teflon Mediator
• Relevancy Check
• Use of Ground Rules
• Backtracking
• Normalization
• Mutualization
• Acknowledgement Process (e.g., Getting Current)
• Referral

Divorce Mediation and the Internet

• 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
• What Are All of the Ways We Use the Internet?
• The Joys of Asynchrony
• Issues of Distance & Cost, e.g., Post-Decree Modification
• Part of Overall Empowerment and Maximizing Scheme?
• Creation of Internet Capacity for Each Participant
• Confidentiality and Security
• Email, Instant Messaging, Cell Phones, etc., Use Between Parents and Between Parents and Children?
• The "New (partially virtual) Family" and "Moving On"
• The Future: "OnStar Mediation?"