Dealing with Resistance in Initial Intake and Inquiry Calls to Mediation: The Power of “Willing”

• Date: 01 March 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21157
• Published date: 01 March 2016

C R Q, vol. 33, no. 3, Spring 2016 235

© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21157

ARTICLES

Dealing with Resistance in Initial Intake and Inquiry

Calls to Mediation: The Power of “Willing”

Rein Sikveland

Elizabeth Stokoe

 is article explores how to best deal with resistance during and beyond

initial encounters with prospective mediation clients.  e study is based

on a large data set of intake calls to community and family media-

tion services in the United Kingdom. Using conversation analytic tech-

niques, we studied instances where call takers invited prospective clients

to make a fi rst appointment. We found that questions or proposals

addressing whether the caller would be willing to mediate generated

stronger agreement from the caller than when other formats were used.

We discuss how to best establish eff ective practice in order to develop

better training for mediators.

Mediation services specialize in helping people in confl ict come to a

resolution. But mediators often meet resistance to engage their ser-

vices from their prospective clients. Clients may, for example, doubt the

usefulness of mediation compared to other services, such as going to the

police, a lawyer, or court—institutions that are more explicitly on the cli-

ent’s side in a confl ict. Many clients encounter mediation services only

once.  erefore, although their perception of mediation may change dur-

ing the process, it is all the more important to understand clients’ pref-

erences and motivations before the process starts (Shestowsky and Brett

2008). Relevant insights can then inform eff ective methods of commu-

nicating mediation to secure clients in the fi rst place and then during the

mediation process. Securing clients is necessary to ensure that mediation

services are available; without suffi cient clients, mediation services will nei-

ther generate (as a commercial endeavor) nor attract (as a third sector or

charitable organization) enough funding to survive.

236 sikveland, stokoe

C R Q • DOI: 10.1002/crq

 is article focuses on one way of dealing eff ectively with resistance in

initial inquiry and intake telephone calls to mediation. One aim in these

calls is to convert callers into clients; the intake call in fact may be the only

chance a mediation service has to secure a particular client. To achieve this,

it is essential that call takers are prepared to deal with resistance from pro-

spective clients and anticipate how they might reject mediation initially.

In uencing Client Motivation to Mediate

For people in dispute, the court route can be time-consuming and expen-

sive, and they may stand a better chance of resolving the root of the con-

fl ict by meeting their challenges through mediation (Hodak 2003; Wall,

Dunne, and Chan-Serafi n 2011). Although mediation as a route to con-

fl ict resolution is favored by the courts in many cases (Lande 2002), this is

not in itself a selling point to prospective clients. In order to gain a better

understanding of what works (and not) in mediation, it is necessary to

study mediators’ strategies and their outcomes, which also involves identi-

fying what disputants want and how they interact with the other party and

the mediator (Wall and Chan-Serafi n 2014).

 e mechanisms by which practitioners manage to persuade clients

has attracted the attention of both psychologists and businesspeople,

resulting in widely known publications on how to increase eff ectiveness

in the negotiation (Cialdini 1993; Fisher, Ury, and Patton 2011). Notions

of negotiation techniques seem to vary with context. For clinicians, shared

decision making has become an important concept, for example, when

they engage in diffi cult conversations with patients about prenatal diagno-

ses and pregnancy risks (Elwyn, Gray, and Clarke 2000). And within dis-

pute resolution, the literature recommends that entry to mediation should

be noncoercive, or free of explicit coercion (Hedeen 2005). Although these

diff erent concepts are based within diff erent types of services, what they

have in common is the focus on client autonomy, engagement, and control

in the negotiation process; we might also associate these concepts with cli-

ent commitment in the literature on business negotiation (Cialdini 1993).

Within behavioral science, “nudge” research provides an interesting

conceptual starting point for studying persuasion, where interventions

improve decision making while maintaining freedom of choice ( aler

and Sunstein 2008). Subtle changes in wording can infl uence people’s

subsequent behaviors without explicitly telling them what to do (Bryan,