Mediator as GPS

GPS devices are ubiquitous now a days. They are in most cars, cell phones, and boats. They are even implanted in many of our pets. It would be comical if it wasn't a bit frightening - our mobile phones know where we are even when we don't.

Which begs two questions...1) How do we use a GPS? 2) What does this have to do with Mediation?

Let us go back first and define what GPS means - Global Positioning System. It was designed to tell you where you are - or what you are looking for (perhaps the catch of the day)...right now. Yet our use of that technology evolved almost instantly to become a GGYWYWTGS - Global-Get-You-Where-Want-To-Go-System.

Mediation is a large container, and many of us have differing points of view on how to define Mediation. That is fodder for dozens of other articles. So for the sake of this one, a framework is valuable. The context of this article is Community Mediation. In Community Mediation, the focus is NOT outcome, but process. And fundamental to that process is that the mediator's role is not to inform, guide, judge or advise the parties. Our role is to provide a safe container so that the parties can explore these things and find their own solutions. Yet it seems that we have also expanded that application, even while we may not be aware of it.

Experience shows us that the two GPS applications (where we are and where we are going) are inexorably connected, even if that was not the original intent. We use GPS when we want to know where we are going - not where we are (with apologies to Jon Kabbat-Zinn - where ever you're going...your GPS can get you there.)

So when we look for directions (or guidance) on some internet based provider (from a computer or smart phone), we enter where we are going - and the provider either knows where we are or requires our input for that - and then provides the information (directions) towards the goal (outcome).

After all we don't need to be told where we are, because we are seeking how to get to where we are going. And the GPS knows the way. And look out, when we don't follow its guidance it rebukes us with a firm, if not annoying 'recalculating.'

Herein lies the potentially dangerous parallel to Mediation -

The Mediator's role, in the context of Community Mediation, is not to tell the parties what direction to take. Rather the Mediator is much like that of the original GPS - Mediators help the parties know where they are, not determine where they are going or how they will get there.

To understand this nuance is to understand a core concept of Community Mediation. Reflect for a moment on your last few mediation sessions. Do you find yourself thinking "these two will never work it out," or "this is really going to have go to court" or "if only these two could see the solution...it's obvious to me." Okay so maybe we've thought it, even in jest, but has it affected the outcome? And how would we know?

The likelihood is, yes, a mediator's opinion is likely to inform the questions asked and the direction of the mediation. Mediator becomes GPS – and tells parties where they are going...even if that recalculation is misinterpreted as inquiry. This is a caution to community mediators. Our role is to know where we are in the mediation, not to guide the parties to an outcome, despite what “Fairly Legal” might show us…After all - that’s television…this is real.

Welcome

Thanks for checking out 'Creative Tension.' This blog will focus on conflict, conflict resolution, mediation, and negotiation. I am the founder of The Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution and Training as well as the Director of Comunity Mediation at Family Services of Central Massachusetts. I have served as an advisor to The Harvard (now Global) Negotiation Insight Initiative (HNII) founded by Erica Fox and Bill Ury's Abraham Path Initiative. I am also on the board of the National Association for Community Mediation and a member of Massacusetts Council of Family Mediators and New England Association of Conflict Resolution, among other organizations.

My goal here is to offer ideas, insights, thoughts and ponderings about those tensions that we have, or perceive, in our lives. To me tension is an opportunity for creativity - and I mean that in a positive sense - sure we can choose to use our creativity for negative reasons - I choose the positive.

Read on!

Thanks - Mitch Gordon