International News

Philadelphia Freedom

Creo suggested that mediators “…. have a clear bias towards settlement - and should acknowledge this in the process…” Food for thought, perhaps?

Other themes from the conference include:

Over reliance on rational thought in the mediation process may be unhelpful, in that resolution is often achieved at a different level. The use of intuition deserves to be acknowledged more.

Decision or probability trees can be an effective tool in moving parties from an imprecise view of their case - “our case is reasonably good” - to a more analytical approach, as part of risk analysis exercises.

Incremental concessions by parties may not send the right signals about building trust. Parties and their advisers should allow the mediator, who will see a bigger picture, to coach them on making and receiving offers. Timing, who makes an offer and the words used will all be critical.

The use of “visualising” can be helpful in encouraging parties to contemplate what it would feel like to be in a particular situation (for example, with this dispute behind them) and to think through the consequences.

Mediators without Borders

John Sturrock attended the ABA conference on Dispute Resolution in Washington DC. Among many fascinating encounters, he attended the launch meeting of MWB, of which Core is a founder member, which is a non-profit, humanitarian organisation established to partner with communities worldwide to build their conflict resolution capacity for preventing, resolving and healing from conflict. This partnership involves the design and implementation of sustainable peace building initiatives responsive to the needs and culture of the communities, and to the history of each conflict. www.mediatorswithoutborders.org

John also met with Erica Ariel Fox whose work at the Harvard Negotation Insight Initiative looks set to inspire the next generation of negotiators and mediators, following in the path of leaders like Roger Fisher and William Ury. www.pon.harvard.edu/research/projects/hnii/index.php

Swiss Role

John Sturrock recently visited Zurich to lead an advanced training session for Swiss commercial mediators. There were many familiar themes and some new ones: for example, many mediators in Switzerland have been trained in the family mediation tradition of only having joint sessions. The potential in holding private meetings with parties created much interest and was explored in workshop role play. Swiss mediators have many of the opportunities and many of the challenges presented to mediation in other countries and its use is growing in a number of sectors.

International Coalition of Concerned Mediators (ICCM)

One of the challenges facing the emerging profession of mediators is that, while they are significantly engaged in helping business, organisations, local communities, families and professionals to resolve disputes, their role in the major issues of the day such as international conflict, terrorism and climate change seems limited. Of even more concern is that the techniques and processes which work so effectively in helping to resolve very difficult commercial and neighbourhood disputes seem to be deployed in only a limited way in larger scale conflicts.

So, it was interesting to learn that over 1,000 leading mediators have signed a statement urging that community, national and global leaders engage effective negotiation and mediation approaches. Click here to read the text of the Mediators' Statement developed at the recent Senior Mediators Conference in Keystone, Colorado.

Signatory mediators and the ICCM ask all who support the Mediators' Statement to express support at www.concernedmediators.org by adding your name to the list of supporters and by sharing this with friends and colleagues.

ABA Conference

Following mediations in Geneva and central Africa, John Sturrock led a workshop at the ABA conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in April last year, with Miryana Nesic and Heather Allen, both well known to participants in Core’s mediation training courses. On the theme of the mediator as coach, the session explored the role of the mediator working with people in a variety of settings, before, during and after the formal mediation meetings. Click here to read Heather Allen’s thoughtful paper.