Chapter 7 Reading Between the Lines

• Jurisdiction: United States

Chapter 7 Reading Between the Lines

Whoa the games people play now Every night and every day now Never meanin' what they say now And never sayin' what they mean.

—Joe South

By now in your mediation you are in blue waters, searching for clear sailing and a favorable current to lead you to your planned destination. But it's almost never that easy. Your waters are uncharted, and storms and sea monsters lurk on the horizon. You will find yourself exchanging less and less information. By now, most of the essential facts and positions have been exposed and explained. It becomes more a matter of using your mediator to probe directly or indirectly into insights gleaned from your opposition, of separating flexible wants from inflexible needs. Again, the Basque creed to "pay attention" comes to the forefront. At some level as an advocate, you must accept and also persuade your client to accept that the other side also has a story to tell. Your opponent also has needs that you just might be able to fulfill without compromising your own core needs and jeopardizing your own BATNA range.

This is accomplished, as the title of this book suggests, by "looking around." In every successive caucus, you survey the landscape for possible paths to a workable solution. One of my favorite films is The Big Lebowski, of "the Dude abides" fame. In a recent interview, its star, the inimitable Jeff Bridges, confessed his own strategy for divining guidance in an anxious situation: "I will do a form of prayer, I guess. I'll remind myself, 'Be open and look for the direction.' Everything is directing us all the time. It's what we pay attention to. It may be . . . a guy talking about his mother, or it could even be a fly. You go up to a fly, and you say, 'You got any tips?' 'Yeah.' 'Like what?'...