Capitalizing on Your People Skills

• Author: Victoria Pynchon/Joe Kraynak (With)
• Profession: Mediator, author, speaker, negotiation trainer, consultant, and attorney with 25 years of experience in commercial litigation practice/Professional writer who has contributed to numerous For Dummies books
• Pages: 187-200

Chapter 11

Capitalizing on Your People Skills

In This Chapter

▶ Applying different types of trust

▶ Using mirroring to model behavior

▶ Practicing different kinds of persuasion

▶ Dealing with manipulative parties

▶ Overcoming cross-cultural miscommunications

E

very dispute has two sides, and not necessarily the two sides most people

think about — one party’s side and the other’s. The two sides I’m talking

about are the people side and the problem side. Solve the problem and the dis-

pute between the people often subsides. However, the people side often pre-

vents the parties from addressing the problem in the first place, so one of your

jobs is to capitalize on your people skills to help the parties get past the people

side of the dispute. This chapter presents various ways to do just that.

Drawing On the Sources of Trust

Collaborative mediation requires that a certain level of trust be rebuilt

between parties who stopped trusting each other long ago. The parties also

need to develop trust in you and in the mediation process. Trust enables

the parties to reveal the information necessary to create value where none

appears to exist, to brainstorm outside-the-box resolutions, and to persist in

negotiations in good faith when agreement seems hopeless.

The following sections describe three different sources of trust and explain how

to tap these sources to foster an atmosphere of trust and overcome distrust.

You can’t make one party trust another, but you can put certain protections

in place to help the parties feel more secure. For example, setting ground

rules helps the parties feel more comfortable knowing that certain bargaining

tactics won’t be tolerated during the mediation. Likewise, contingency agree-

ments, as discussed in the following sections, can help alleviate a party’s fear

of signing on to an agreement.