Among other roles, a mediator is clearly THE leader of the mediation group’s effort. The mediator is also, in terms of discussing and defining optimal results, a part of the “mediation team” (the mediator, all participants, and their advisors) trying to best figure things out.
In addition to my dad so capably modeling leadership and teamwork, the place where I was personally most able to impact teamwork (performance) and leadership was on the soccer pitch. My early soccer leadership roles taught me two remarkably valuable lessons:
Ask the right questions
and
Listen and demonstrate by your response that you have heard.
I didn’t expect to play soccer until a good friend asked me if I was going to “try out” the day before high school freshman soccer try outs started. He wanted to know if I was going to go out for football or soccer. Knowing how little my parents wanted me to play football, I avoided that conflict and went to the first day of soccer practice.
As it turns out, that decision changed my life. For starters, I was definitely attracted to the possibility that being 5’8” was plenty big enough for soccer, in stark contrast to football and basketball.
As it turns out, our high school soccer team (New Trier West) ended up winning the State of Illinois high school soccer championship in 1973. I was captain of the team the following year and also selected for the Illinois “All-State Team.” Remarkably, I am the “Fabio” look-alike in the center of the middle row below.
1973 Illinois Soccer Champions New Trier West
New Trier West Team at 50th Reunion
My All-State selection led to me to also play 4 years of varsity soccer at Stanford (1974-77), including serving as captain of the Stanford team my last 2 years. It was both a challenge and a marvel to seek to lead and coordinate such smart teammates! In retrospect, this too was great training to become a mediator.
What I learned early was to listen and hear from everyone prior to suggesting or making team decisions. I also learned to ask good questions. It was here that I identified my two favorite problem solving “question frames” that serve me grandly to this day:
I learned that such constructive framing of conversations was critical to achieving optimal results. These two rather simplistic “problem-solving frames” ask “the group” (“we” or “us”) a question, not about how to barely or marginally solve a challenge, but, rather, how to “best” solve the challenge. I learned playing soccer to always pursue “best solutions.” Why would we pursue anything less?
1975 Stanford Men’s Soccer
What soccer has taught me is that, for a team to be most successful, the key thing is that everyone on the team is dialed in to exactly what the team strategy is. The concept for the Stanford soccer team was to have all of our minds thinking alike, as one. Whether it was everyone pressuring the ball, or working the ball to the wings, or bringing our defenders up to the mid-line, the key was that we all knew exactly what we were doing and why. We were “one” and it felt great. If nothing else, even if we lost, we were doing “our best together.”
1975 Soccer Team – the author is bottom row second from left
While far from perfect, I now realize that, if only out of desperation, I would increasingly step up to positively coordinate not only the physical play of my teammates, but also their minds. If we were of one mind, it became clear to me that our chances of winning were dramatically elevated. This experience with teamwork and being of a “like mind” greatly helped me as a mediator.
Stanford teammates and wives in Cabo San Lucas (2023)
My experience with soccer was back in the day when people actually wrote letters to one another. I still have a batch of letters from the soccer coaches at Stanford and UC Berkeley. I remember taking my first trip west of the Rocky Mountains to check the two campuses out. It was on December 13, 1973, when the weather in Chicago was awful, that I first felt warm western ocean breezes flowing through my then existent hair. At that time, I did not understand that December is the one month you can count on the Bay Area being green and lush.
All things being relative, my parents were more than a bit concerned when I was first accepted to Berkeley. The days of Viet Nam War rock throwing riots in Sproul Plaza were still fresh in everyone’s mind. Compared to Berkeley, Stanford seemed tame and my parents were relieved when I was accepted, even if it was more than 2,000 miles from home.
My parents, like most parents of that day it seems, had a certain expectation that, when you turned 18, you were basically “out of the house.” That turned out to be true for me as I spent 3 of my next 4 summers in Palo Alto as lead instructor at the Stanford Soccer Camp. The one exception was after my junior year, when I went to the Stanford in Britain Comparative Legal Systems Program led by Eric Wright, a then visiting Santa Clare Law School professor. Coincidentally, Eric was also the brother of one of my cherished Stanford soccer teammates, Phil Wright. And also coincidentally, both Eric and Phil were the sons of my favorite Stanford professor, the preeminent historian Gordon Wright.
As a small “technology” tidbit, while my parents did attend most of my high school soccer games, they never made it out to Stanford to watch a soccer game. They did make it out for my graduation, but not before.
Back in more limber days
To have a sense of how much things have changed, let’s compare the difficulty watching Stanford soccer games 45 years ago with what is now available by “streaming.” For example, for the past few years I have been able to record and watch each and every Stanford men’s and women’s soccer game online. In case you have not noticed, the Internet (with high bandwidth and streaming) has now basically swallowed TV.
Now that Stanford has moved from the Pac-12 to the ACC, I simply re-configured my online subscriptions from the Pac-12 Network to ESPN+. Oh joy! Great for parents and alums! How things have changed!
Stanford soccer not only gave me the chance to play and be captain for 2 years, it also gave me the opportunity to lead the Stanford Soccer Camp. Talk about a great camp opportunity to sell in the Bay Area! The camp, actually located at Menlo College near the Stanford campus, went on for 8 weeks each summer. The first week, we would have perhaps 80-90 campers. That registration would steadily work its way up by word of mouth until, by the final 3 weeks, we would have over 300 campers and 30 coaching counselors to coordinate!
I had the honor of being “lead instructor.” Mornings were about skills development, then there would be swimming and lunch and films featuring Pele before “league play” in the afternoons (as many as 30 teams). Here is what coordinating over 300 campers and 30 counselors looks like:
The author is the 4th in from the right, 3-4 rows back
Susan Carpenter shares her experiences as a mediation trainer in other cultures and how she approaches different systems.
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