The Creative Solution Table of Contents
Summary
In this chapter, Chip Rose discusses his approach to family mediation, emphasizing the importance of a structured process. He argues that addressing clients’ emotions proactively, rather than reactively, is crucial for successful mediation. Rose advocates for creating a “map” of the mediation process, outlining steps and addressing potential issues from the outset. This structured approach, he claims, helps clients stay focused on their goals and achieve better outcomes. His method involves two frameworks: one focusing on participant behavior and the other on substantive issues, aiming to prevent emotional derailment and ensure efficient resolution. Rose’s experience and expertise are highlighted through his extensive background and publications in the field.
Listen to the AI Podcast of this chapter:
There is a regional group of mediators to which I belong that meet several times a year and share our experiences, often focusing on some particular aspect of family mediation. At the most recent meeting, the topic was the issue of alimony or spousal support. A panel of participants who led the discussion presented on various aspects of the role of financial support from one spouse to the other as part of the divorce process, including both temporary support and post-judgment support. At the outset, one of the panel members asked each of us (30 or so participants) to write down what we considered to be the most difficult aspect of mediating the topic of support. The majority identified “emotions” as the most challenging element of the mediation process when the subject of one party supporting the other is being discussed. The facilitator then directed to the group the question: What are some ways of dealing with the emotional aspect of support negotiations? In a previous meeting, the topic was child support and the same approach was followed.
Whenever this type of problem is posed—How do you deal with emotions in discussing support?—I see the focus being directed to the wrong end of the telescope. The more informative question is: How are the clients’ emotions addressed as a major process issue? A mediator who waits until an emotionally charged issue emerges in the discussion in order to address the role of emotions in the process is not giving the clients the best opportunity for success. I am reminded of what was supposed to be an advanced workshop to a group of experienced practitioners who asked me to present a program on expanding the possibilities in settlement negotiations. I asked them to send me a hypothetical set of circumstances from which to work. What I received was a train wreck for a fact pattern. Everything that could go wrong in putting the clients at odds with one another had been built into the facts. To the great consternation of the group, I told them that the solution to the impasse that they had created was what had not been done at the very beginning of the case. To frame the discussion in terms of what kinds of Band-Aids to apply to this divorce triage is to condemn one to repeating desperate and marginally effective interventions over and over again.
So this goes to some questions on which Jim Melamed and I conspired at the beginning of an advanced mediation workshop at Pepperdine’s Straus Institute a number of years ago. The questions are both simple and complex at the same time: What is the map of your mediation process? How does the beginning of the process inform as to the end? How do the outcome goals of the parties determine what has to happen at the beginning? If you mapped out your process structure, what would it look like and how would it inform as to every contingency that might arise during the mediation process?
The beginning of my practice some 35 years ago was undertaken without the benefit of any structured training. I relied solely on intuition and my background in the legal system to offer clients willing to work together what I thought of as “friendly law”. I had no map, no compass, and certainly no GPS in terms of knowing what I was doing. I operated under the principle that a bad day in mediation was better than a good day in court. As I gained experience, I began focusing on answers to the enumerable problems that clients brought to the table. In a very real sense, I backed into the creation of the structural pieces that became the fundamental frameworks for my approach to mediation.
What evolved were two different and distinct process frameworks, each one of which addressed a basic prerequisite for a successful collaborative negotiation. One framework addresses how the participants (mediator included) behave during the process and the other addresses handling the substantive issues the clients have to resolve. Without any question, the former controls the latter and is for me the sine qua non of a successful mediation. The second framework describes the process for identifying and developing all the substantive issues the clients need to resolve (parenting, support, financial issues, etc.). There is not adequate space in this column to fully describe or develop these frameworks but having presented workshops for the last several decades based on these structures, I can affirm their universality and applicability by the responses of workshop participants everywhere.
These structural pieces represent two things. First, they recognize and acknowledge the emotional circumstances that the clients bring to the table while at the same time, confirming the reality that none of us has the capacity to make someone else think, feel, or want something just because we are desperate to have them do so. This awareness is critical to helping the clients to focus on strategic behaviors and abandon the ineffective ones. Drawing lines that connect desirable outcomes to strategic actions creates the longitudes and latitudes of the process map. Unchecked emotions are a kind of process fast food. They feel good in the moment but result in undesirable consequences. Clients know this in their rational moments and hopefully, that is when these process structures are being put in place.
The second purpose of these frameworks is to help the clients identify where we are in the process and see the connection between what is happening at any given time and the attainment of the goals the clients have for the process. Years ago a colleague and I were giving a workshop in Houston and ventured from the hotel to an enormous indoor mall to find a place to eat. The internal structure of the mall was enormous with an ice rink several floors down. No sooner had I surveyed the interior than I momentarily lost my bearings and could not identify how we had come in. That is why places like this have directories with visual maps with big red stars to let you know where you are.
Clients especially need those kinds of reference points while they are in the process to help them measure the progress they are making and to be reminded that strategic behavior is critical to the attainment of their most important goals. I ask clients to give me permission to tell them when they are deviating from the course to which they committed at the beginning. They always say yes. When it becomes necessary to do so, I am reminded of that voice on our GPS devices that says “recalculating” when we are going off course.
The Creative Solution Table of Contents
Ruminations on the Next Frontier for Mediators, Consensus Builders, And Others Interested in Advancing the American Democratic Experiment “The shortest distance between two points is under construction.” - Noelie Altito...
By Peter AdlerWe seem to be in "five rule land." Today's five "One Minute Negotiation Tips" (courtesy of the Los Angeles County Bar Association) come from attorney-mediator (and good friend) Linda Bulmash. Her five...
By Victoria PynchonRecent research in neurobiology, as summarized in Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are by Joseph LeDoux, has some very important implications for mediation. As LeDoux points out,...
By Cris Currie
