The Creative Solution Table of Contents
Summary:
Chip Rose’s chapter, “Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune,” discusses the challenges mediators face when dealing with angry, blaming clients in divorce proceedings. Rose uses the Shakespearean quote as a metaphor for the negative energy directed at mediators. He advocates for a strategic, “Aikido-like” response, emphasizing emotional equilibrium, active listening, and curiosity over reactive defensiveness. The author’s extensive experience and credentials in mediation are highlighted, establishing his expertise on the subject. Ultimately, the piece provides practical advice and techniques for mediators to effectively manage conflict and guide clients toward resolution.
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This past year I was reading Hamlet and mentoring my daughter through her senior year of high school. I know that I had not read Shakespeare since I was in high school and found it just as dense in reading as I remembered it. At the same time, I was struck by the incredible beauty and brilliance of Shakespeare’s use of both written and spoken language. It was in that context that I found myself at the end of a particularly taxing day that had ended with a very negative and challenging client interaction. Clients can wear their unhappiness a variety of different ways and can focus the pointed end of their discontent in a three hundred and sixty degree circle from the center of their being. I am referring to one of those occasions when that laser beam of negativity targets a red dot on the forehead of the mediator and we are being blamed for what ails the client. I was reflecting back on that day’s experience when the Bard’s words came to mind.
The sources of client complaints are many. For some, it is the fact that their life expectations are being dashed by choices being made by someone else. (We will ignore, for the moment, the broader philosophical perspective regarding the choices that the first client made which put him or her in the position of being subject to the choices being made by the second party, since the complaining clients about whom I am talking don’t want to hear about this anyway.) For others, it may be their general condition of unhappiness at the state of their personal affairs. Regardless of the source of their discontent, what the mediator is challenged to deal with is the manifesting behavior of an angry and blaming client. This is the client who goes on the attack challenging everything, agreeing with nothing and blaming the one person who has absolutely no responsibility for the circumstances that the clients bring into the process—namely, the mediator.
The complaint can take the form of unhappiness with the facts, for example, the existence of a significant separate property interest that one party has (a common occurrence under California law) which will result in an unequal division of property, or perhaps it is the discovery by the levee of a significant legal obligation to provide support to the leavor. Not only is the first party being “abandoned” but is also being asked to pay for it. In no fault states, the fact that the instigator of the divorce is the one who committed trust shattering infidelities which the state considers irrelevant, can be a palpable generator of a client’s anger. Whatever the source, the circumstance I am reflecting on here is when the reaction that the client is having is aimed at the process in general and the mediator in particular. Swept into the arc of the client’s discontent can be anything at hand: the accruing cost of the process, the amount of time that has been spent, the lack of any progress as the client perceives it, the unreasonableness of the law, and the fact that the mediator doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it. I would not be surprised to have one throw in the inability of Congress to resolve the debt ceiling. Like the kid with a can of spray paint attacking a brick wall, this client is hell bent on externalizing blame. The question is what we as mediators do about it.
As we are so fond of reminding clients, we have options. When I find myself in this situation, I make a point of remembering some of my earliest experiences in mediation with clients who challenged me directly on some aspect of the process or another. One such vivid recollection involved an over-bearing husband who was challenging me for control of the process. As I felt waves of emotion sweep over me, the internal dialogue that was going on in my head went something like this: “Hey jackass, I am the mediator, you are in my office and this is my process! “ I recall finding this to be a very compelling argument that I really wanted to have carry the day. As I gained in experience and increased my capacity for reassessment of every action in my role as mediator, I realized that I fell into a trap when I allowed myself to become defensive. It is probably the most human of reactions in that type of circumstance and something we all experience at some time in conflicted situations. From a professional perspective it totally subverts any capacity for managing conflict. To react is to be emotional; to respond, on the other hand, is to be strategic.
I will always be indebted to our fearless editor, Don Saposnek, for the Aikido metaphor as it applies to our role of mediator. The key element in this concept is the need to engage or dance with the negative energy of the person with whom you are facilitating rather than trying to confront or overpower that energy. The metaphor coalesced perfectly with my own experiences reinforcing the validity of the concept. The more that one responds to negative energy and the less reacting one does, the greater the likelihood that the issue will move in a constructive direction. To “dance” with a client’s negative energy—especially when that energy is aimed at you—requires an ability to be in a place that is outside one’s own emotional self. The ability to hear the complaint or accusation from an intellectual place rather than from an emotional one allows the professional to seek the “truth” that the client holds and bring to bear the most appropriate response. That response may take many forms: acknowledgment, making sure the client feels heard; validation, assuring the client that you understand that the emotions expressed are real; empathy, providing compassionate understanding for the circumstance; and curiosity, the willingness to embrace the complaint and dance with it.
Curiosity is the most challenging and effective strategic intervention in the face of the expressed negative emotional assault. The ability to demonstrate curiosity contains two critical ingredients. The complete subordination of one’s emotional self means that the professional is free from any defensiveness and therefore standing with both psychological feet on the ground, balanced, centered and ready for whatever comes. This is the Aikido professional. In this state, the capacity to demonstrate curiosity is genuine, compassionate and authentic. The second element of curiosity is the strategic ability to become the leader in the dance rather than the follower. Curiosity that comes from this stable place can then shape the dance with questions like: What would you like to see happen? How would you suggest going about that? What would you be willing to do to make that happen? Asking open questions has the added advantage of reinforcing curiosity and eliminating any need to control the direction of the dynamic by attempts to elicit answers the professional wants to hear. It took years of practice to rid myself of legal culture’s addiction to F. Lee Bailey’s imperative: Never ask a question that you don’t know the answer to! Questions to which I don’t know the answer, are my favorite and most important interactions with a client.
There is obviously much more to say about these concepts and techniques but the place to start is for one to become mindful of one’s emotional equilibrium while facilitating and to treat each session as a classroom from which we can learn so much about ourselves. As our good friend Will said:
“…to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
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