Learning through Mediation
Learning is central to the mediation process, for both disputants and the mediator. Learning to think about the conflict differently can be a key to transforming it, "Conflict is best solved when parties become free to learn; facilitating learning is an insight and a mediator's primary role." [1]
This inquisitive emphasis directs us to some important questions about learning in mediation. How do parties learn? What is a mediator doing while attempting to facilitate learning? By asking questions and exploring different threads of a conflict, a mediator stimulates a learning process among disputants - but to continue in that role he or she also becomes a student of the process who must learn along the way. As such, a mediator is navigating both her or his own personal experience of learning, as well as that of the disputants. This can generate a complex emotional experience.
Emotions in the Learning Process
While mediators are often trained to be acutely tuned in to the emotions of disputants, they are not always expressly encouraged to be reflective of the fact that mediation might be emotional for them. For their study Picard and Siltanen prompted experienced mediators to consider their own experience of learning during mediation.
Mediators involved in the study realized that there was more going on for them emotionally in their learning process than they were initially aware of. [2] They observed that while learning is frequently thought of (even by them) as a positive process associated with emotions like joy, pleasure, pride, or satisfaction, in reality the experience of learning was also full of less pleasant emotions. They found themselves noticing frustration, nervousness, anger, or embarrassment, too. [3] Finally, some of the participants were surprised to notice how dynamic their emotional experience could often be during learning and mediation. Emotions can go up, down or sideways, they can ramp up in intensity or quickly fade, all in a relatively brief period of time. In the words of one participant:
When I looked over the notes right at the end of the exercise, I was surprised to see that my emotions were so dominant and fluctuating over this learning exercise...I realized I hadn't been tuning in really carefully to my own physical and emotional self very much when engaged in an activity, and noticing how it was affecting my ability to learn and respond, take chances, ask questions. I was seeing myself as in a 'thinking' activity, when in fact it was also very much a 'physical/emotional' experience, and these physical states and emotional states were affecting my ability to attend and learn. [4]
What does this mean for Mediation?
This work provides us with compelling evidence that mediators need to tune into their emotions. "What this means is that conflict practitioners need to look beyond dichotomous motions of reason and emotion...[this] calls us to adopt a more holistic approach to mediation practice - one that invites emotion into the mediation room rather than one that tries to suppress it."[5]
We can all take away from this research that "parties are not the only ones who bring emotions into the mediation room or experience emotions throughout the mediation process."[6] Just as I have suggested in the past that disputants might turn inward to self-reflection to transform a conflict, mediators need to become reflective practitioners and develop awareness of their own emotional experiences of mediating and learning in mediation. In addressing conflict, we all share the experience of being human, no matter which role we are playing.
