Creativity in mediation: Mission impossible or strategy?

Today we are going to talk about the main tools for a real and successful mediation; To do this, we must establish what our main objective is in a conflict management process through mediation and we must anticipate that the main objective of every mediator is that the parties regain control over the conflict.

Control in mediation

On many occasions, the objective of a mediation process is that the parties reach an agreement and, however, in mediation the main objective of the mediator or the team of mediators should be that the parties regain control over the conflict through all the tasks that will be developed at the epicenter of each work meeting.

All the tools and all the instruments that the mediator is going to use must be focused on the parties taking the lead in managing the conflict.

1. First of all, you must provide the parties tools enough for them to consider that everything that happens in the mediation process is a consequence of their work
2. Secondly, you must apply techniques and tools that allow that problem that was unmanageable for the parties to become an occupation and not a concern.
3. With the mediation process we must ensure that the degree of protagonism of the mediator decreases as the mediation process progresses and achieve, in a final phase, that the mediator is a mere spectator of the effort and work of the parties. If we do not get the degree of prominence of our clients increases we will not have achieved one of the essential objectives in any conflict management process.

Principles in mediation

All this effort must be built based on two general professional principles of mediation work: the principle of functionality and the principle of active participation. These two principles aim to ensure that the parties filter all the decisions made within the mediation process, both in content and procedure. Thus, the principle of functionality will allow the mediator to evaluate all the tasks that are carried out within the framework of each meeting, that is, the mediator will set objectives for each of the tasks that are part of the work agenda and with it, will be able to evaluate each of the sessions that occur in the case of mediation after its completion.

It will also be very important for the mediator to show the parties the prevailing need for a continued progress in the caseThat is, in each meeting it will be necessary to propose new work points for the next session and close points that had been proposed in a previous meeting. With this we are achieving that the client in mediation has a feeling of continuous progress and above all, the mediator will be able to promote the degree of protagonism of the parties and this will have as a direct consequence, enabling the parties to regain control over the conflict.

Creativity in mediation

Therefore, we can conclude that there are two very important aspects to define good practices in mediation: promote the prominence of the parties and show progress in the mediation case, and generate dynamic and fresh work that keeps the parties motivated. This motivation will allow the parties to enter into a creative process that helps generate new solution scenarios for the problem that they brought to the mediation table and thus, create solutions that until now the parties had not contemplated and achieve one of our fundamental objectives in the conflict management work through mediation.