Exploring Different Mediation Styles

• 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: 97-114

Chapter 6

Exploring Different

Mediation Styles

In This Chapter

▶ Using concessions and reciprocity in facilitative mediation

▶ Fixing damaged relationships with transformative mediation

▶ Choosing between joint sessions and separate caucuses

▶ Avoiding competitive negotiation strategies

P

rior to and during a mediation, you want to consider your mediation

style options. They include whether to take a facilitative, transforma-

tive, or evaluative approach; whether to conduct the mediation in separate

caucuses or joint sessions; and whether to rely on numbers to make your

point. You don’t have to pick one style and stick with it; you can mix and

match to create your own style or change styles during the mediation to use

whatever is likely to work best given the circumstances.

This chapter describes your options, helps you choose the most effective media-

tion style for whatever you’re dealing with during a session, and offers guidance

on how to prevent competitive bargaining tactics from derailing the process.

Practicing Facilitative Mediation: The

Concessions and Reciprocity Route

Facilitative mediation consists of helping the parties reach a mutually accept-

able resolution using both distributive and integrative or interest-based nego-

tiation strategies and tactics, which involve concessions and reciprocity.

(As I explain in Chapter 5, the goal of interest-based negotiation is to meet

both parties’ needs instead of attempting to reach an unhappy compromise.

Distributive negotiation, which I discuss in Chapter 7, consists of dividing a

fixed pie of benefits among the parties to the dispute.) To resolve a dispute

using facilitative mediation, you

98 Part II: Becoming a Master Mediator

✓ Help the parties build trust with and empathy for one another

✓ Identify issues and interests by asking diagnostic questions

✓ Validate each party’s point of view

✓ Soften hard offers and demands

✓ Help the parties brainstorm and analyze solutions

✓ Use concessions and reciprocity to achieve consensus

The following sections explain how to harness the power of the concessions

and reciprocity approach.

Understanding and maximizing

concessions

Your clients’ satisfaction with the settlement you help negotiate depends

more on the number and tenor of the concessions their adversaries make

than on the final dollar value. Experiments in social psychology show that

people tend to be more satisfied with the outcome of negotiations when the

following occur:

✓ The other side makes numerous concessions, even if they’re small or

inconsequential.

✓ The outcome is as good or better than similar outcomes that colleagues

or competitors have achieved.

✓ The person does better than he hoped to, regardless of how good or bad

the outcome is based on objective factors.

✓ The person feels that the negotiation process was “fair and reasonable,”

as I explain in Chapter 5.

✓ The person doesn’t feel that his will was overridden by a stronger nego-

tiator on the other side.

Whatever a client’s reservations about the outcome, by the end of the day

he’s made dozens of small decisions among dozens of attractive and unat-

tractive choices. Because people tend to positively frame their most difficult

decisions, in hindsight most people whose concessions have been recipro-

cated are more likely to be satisfied by the end result than those who cut to

the chase.

The following sections explain how to maximize concessions, encourage reci-

procity, and deal with cultural differences that may influence the way a party

negotiates.