Chapter 4 – Preparing to communicate in mediation

Being in mediation can feel like being on a boat in rough seas in unknown waters. Once you push off from shore you quickly realise how well prepared you are, or not !

This covers some of the emotional challenges and triggers.

Mediation is about co-operation and collaboration, not coercion, so, if your intent is to come into mediation to get what you want, at the expense of others, you are in the wrong place and mediation will fail.

If you are serious about using mediation as a positive opportunity to communicate and reach quality decisions and outcomes together you will need to ensure that your thoughts and behaviour are aligned with your core values (your conscience)

Once you are clear about what you need for yourself and how you might ask for this from the other person(s), in mediation, you are likely to feel better equipped to imagine and explore which unmet needs/values might be driving the other person’s behaviour and what they might need from you.

At this stage, we also offer some strategies for emotional self-regulation and managing self-restraint because, undoubtedly, there will be times when your calm, rational self, will be tested and it is that SELF which will be in most demand, in mediation.

Well, perhaps not perfect but hopefully progress, as you begin to see each other’s behaviour as connected to particular core unmet needs that, by working together, can be met.

In this section we run through a script/framework created for you.

Now is the time to sensitively explore and discover the unmet needs that might lie behind the feelings being expressed.

When someone perceives you to be making a demand of them they have two options, submit or rebel. Both serve to trigger a counter response of submit or rebel and, so it goes on.