What skills and knowledge a mediator should have, and how they can help the parties reach fair and equitable agreements.
Mediation is a very valuable and effective methodology to resolve conflicts and build consensus. In this writing we will explore some key competencies that the mediator must possess to effectively accompany the opposing parties in creating sustainable and satisfactory agreements.
What are the skills that a mediator must have?
The qualification of the mediation professional must be both formal and continuous afterwards. To access the specific courses that grant the title of mediator, it is essential to have completed a Bachelor's degree. University or FP degree. superior. Patience, flexibility, good spirit, simplicity, authenticity, or subtlety, are characteristics that we will frequently find in mediation professionals. Let's also look at some key skills and knowledge they should possess:
- Communicate clearly and listen actively. This allows establishing an environment of trust, constructive dialogue and mutual respect. Asking, listening and reformulating is essential in mediation.
- Empathize quickly to recognize the perspectives and emotions of each party, identifying their interests and needs, not only extrinsic, but also intrinsic.
- Maintain neutrality and impartiality firmly to efficiently facilitate the construction of consensus between the parties, showing, at all times, a balanced and serene attitude.
- Analyze and synthesize conflict situations. Identifying the roots of the conflict and asking good questions to help the parties generate solution options is one of the most transverse and complex skills that the mediation professional must possess.
- Manage emotions and help parties express their feelings in a constructive and balanced manner.
Leadership as a differential value for the mediator
As a transversal competence to the previous ones, and key to promoting creative exchange from impartiality, I want to highlight the skill to exercise a mediating leadership, in such a way that the opposing parties find negotiating towards an agreement more attractive than not doing so. In this sense, promoting micro-agreements and small alliances implies permanently stimulating the creativity of the opposing parties. To do this, a tool like that of the motivational attractors, makes it easier for the mediator to contextualize the conflict, provides clear guidelines and allows the generation of levels of dialogue and constructive exchanges, considering the thinking styles and motivations of the participants.
What are motivational attractors?
There are 6 motivational attractors and the mediator uses them to guide their questions and reformulations throughout the entire process. It does so starting from the predominant attractor that defines the position of each opposing party, orienting the future towards the attractor that is next in complexity. For example, from Security we would guide to Power, from Power, to Duty, from Duty to Personal Success, from Success to Belonging, and from Belonging, to Integration. Applying motivational attractors requires the professional to be able to contemplate the conflict from its complexity and with full objectivity.
Achieving this serves to help the parties identify their shared interests and work toward solutions that meet their mutual needs. Furthermore, it is a tool that gives importance to satisfying the intrinsic needs of the opposing parties, favoring the creation of truly sustainable and valuable agreements.
What are the skills that a mediator should have?
Finally, I would like to highlight the revolution that we have in the making due to technological, communicative and, above all, knowledge construction advances thanks to AI. What we now consider complex will soon not be so, giving way to countless new challenges that people will have to face with a single value that can be added on their part: their creativity. Logically, conflicts will also be transformed and the figure of the mediator will emerge, even more prominently, as that of a complexity manager, capable of facilitating the creation of solutions within the only area to which technology does not have access: that of intuition.
In this sense, the ability to empower clients while maintaining autonomous and informed criteria will become an essential contribution of the mediation professional, capable of facilitating the creative spark and the generation of something completely new.
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