Digging Deeper

Casting about for important questions to ask about, and answer, regarding mediation, these stand out:

What are the core principles of mediation?
What does a mediator actually do?
What roadmap does a mediation process follow?

Each of these questions could easily fill a unit of its own! I'll try to answer them, briefly, yet sufficiently.

There are many different approaches to mediation, and of course – each of them defines its own core principles, as well as its own particular process. For the purposes of keeping this unit relatively brief and introductory, let me suggest that one simple way to understand these core principles and particular mediator’s approach is to listen closely to how the mediator explains the process to parties as they first sit down together. In the following scene, I’m welcoming a divorcing couple to mediation, and introducing the process to them. I describe the process, my role and theirs, overtly; along the way, and between the lines, I point out some of the main underlying principles of mediation.

Length: 5:36 minutes

Going into deeper detail, what might be one roadmap for conducting a mediation? Here is an example of a roadmap I've developed together with Yael Efron for conducting mediation processes: