“Seek connection, not attention. It lasts longer” – Wesam Fawzi
“Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Rumi line
When you are clear about what you are needing for yourself and how to express these in mediation, you are likely to feel more confident, more ready and better equipped to listen to, imagine and explore with the other person which unmet needs/threatened values might be driving their behaviour and what they might need from you in mediation, to improve the quality of communicate and ability to make joint decisions (perhaps as parents) and reach agreements together.
To be clear, the kind of Needs and Values we are referring to in this section, video and chapter centre around those relating to communication and the decision making process, and within this context the need to be valued in a way the person wishes to be valued (often integral to their sense of self/identity) reflecting what they value such as autonomy, appreciation, affiliation (valued member of family and community) and so on.
Different people of course place different weight on what is important to them (what they value) and it is these values which drive (and motivate) their behaviour.
So, if you want to understand them and want them to understand you, you will both need to be able to have a value-centred, outcome focused conversation which gets to the heart of what it is you are both needing from each other in terms of communication, the relationship and ultimately the kind of outcome you are in mediation to reach.
The mediator (and your Coach, if you have one) will help and support you with this kind of conversation. You can help the mediator to help and support you by completing your pre-mediation questionnaires before your MIAMs as well as the questionnaires relating to this chapter. If you wish to use mediation to work on your co-parenting relationship and communication you will also find questionnaires in the chapter about building a Parenting plan.
The obvious point here is that unless you and your former partner put in the ‘communication’ work for yourselves and each other nothing much will change with your communication and the mediator will not have much to work with. So, please help them out but, more importantly, help yourselves.
In this section and chapter we will show you how.
So, let’s get focused, ready to observe (reframing in your mind) the other person’s behaviour (what they say and do) through a prism of Needs/Values which might be important to them, seeking to understand which of these might be driving/motivating their behaviour (positively or negatively) so that you can ask them about these, ensuring that they feel heard and understood by you (or at least see that you are making the effort to), in a way that connects with theirs and your values, helping each other to improve the way you communicate and make decisions together, in mediation and beyond.
We completely understand why if might feel difficult to listen to your former partner (especially if their language is full of blame and judgement) but the fact is that as you develop an awareness and understanding of your own unmet needs (and how these might be triggering you) you are more likely to become open (willing, able and motivated) to build an understanding of why the other person might be behaving in a certain (or indeed similar) way and more willing to acknowledge and explore this with them.
Once you get in touch with (understand/self aware) your own unmet needs (self-empathy) and values that are important to you , it begins to open up a positive space between you (an opportunity to learn, understand and connect) between you and the other(s) in mediation, increasing your capacity to begin to consider (and perhaps even respond positively to) the other person(s) needs, values and what might be driving their behaviour.
In their book, Building Agreement, Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro refer to these needs as ‘core concerns’ which, when met, open up the way to better communication and decision making.
Of course, many who start mediation have a story or two to tell about how the other person has been acting and behaving towards them which is often told from the perspective of judgement and blame, right and wrong (‘Value Narratives’).
This is the point at which one must tread very carefully because, as we have already written about, these internal narratives (and story we tell others) are often constructed by the person to protect them quite naturally from feeling the need to take responsibility for their situation (shifting responsibility) especially, when they are feeling very fragile, vulnerable and defensive. It can be designed to protect a fragile and vulnerable ‘ego state’.
Before coming into mediation it is imperative that each person asks themselves the following types of questions focusing on the other person’s perspective (2nd person’s perspective), how they might be experiencing the situation and what THEY might be feeling and needing as represented in the story they are telling you and the mediator.
- When you did what you did or said, how do you think the other person might have interpreted (what assumptions) this in the way they did?
- What do you believe they felt about you at this point, when they behaved this way towards you?
- If you believe that they might have interpreted your behaviour in this way (made these assumptions) and felt this way as a result, what needs do you think were not being met for them/values of their might have been challenged or threatened– (As in the previous section, we invite you to consider whether these are the need to feel listened to, appreciated, included, respected and, so on.)
Again, reacquaint yourself with the list of needs on the webpage to this chapter to see whether any of these resonate with you.
You will find a more detailed list and sequence of questions about the other person as part of the online series-creating a parenting plan.
You can easily adapt this for your own situation to help you focus on this preparation stage of mediation and how, by building your understanding and connecting with the other person’s values and unmet needs, you can begin develop greater insight and positively influence their behaviour and choices whilst also increasing your capacity to manage your own defensive behaviours (emotional self-regulation/self restraint).
Without the ability to positively influence each other (connect with and support each other with your communication needs/values) and manage your defensive behaviours (sufficient emotional self-regulation) in mediation you will find the task of reaching joint decisions and outcomes much harder, if not impossible.
Using this approach and based on your knowledge and insights about the other person and their behaviour, you will hopefully begin to recalibrate the assumptions you have been making about them and begin to see them in a different light.
Perhaps it is ‘vulnerability’ you are seeing act itself out in the other person and feeling the need to protect themselves which is driving their defensive behaviours. Just a thought…..If so, reacting defensively will only serve to escalate the conflict which can quickly become cyclical.
Although it is difficult to know exactly what needs are not being met for and in the other person( or values being threatened) without exploring these with them in mediation, you can begin to imagine and understand, more accurately, the kind of unmet needs which might be driving their behaviour, which you may be finding difficult to cope with in yourself. By thinking about and beginning to imagine this you begin to understand and connect with them at a core value and shared humanity level (seeing them as a human being with their own psychological and emotional needs and vulnerabilities driving their behaviour).
In a later section and video in this series, we cover the importance of rehearsing these things in your mind and with your coach, if you have one, before mediation in order to increase the likelihood of a successful mediation. Indeed, if you are finding this approach difficult and if it is going to be key to a successful mediation it makes complete sense to practice to succeed.
However, like everything else, it is a choice. We will leave this up to you.
As mediators, our experience of this approach is that it often results in a greater sense of empowerment, personal responsibility and feelings of openness and willingness to make changes to our own behaviour for the sake of better communication and a better relationship, as well as feeling able to request the same from others, especially if they are willing to do the same for us.
The power of reciprocity is a powerful influence indeed.
In the next section we write specifically about anger, how to manage it and express it in a way that is less likely to derail mediation.