Presentation Center

James C. Melamed


Advanced Family Mediation Skills

Introduction
  • Manage process: toward what ends?
  • Always challenging contexts
  • Interests & positive intentions - "Imagine"
 Negotiation Power
  • 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?"


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