Everyone can be a mediator.
Janet M. Powers
Recently, during a virtual meeting of community mediators across the nation, I was startled to hear a woman say, “Everyone can be a mediator.” Because Mediation Services offers 22 hours of specialized conflict resolution training, and many of us have had much more, we think of it as a skill developed by learning.
Although some people are better mediators than others, the key points are patience and neutrality. Patience is required to listen fully to both sides, no matter how long it takes to get the stories out. More patience is needed as disputants begin to negotiate, each giving a little, until a satisfying solution is reached. Neutrality, of course, is paramount: there can be no siding with one party or the other, no matter what the mediator really thinks.
Mothers and fathers often make good mediators because they have had much experience sorting out squabbles of their offspring. Figuring out who really bit whom or who left a mess in the bathroom is not easy. But parents do their best to get to the bottom of divisive issues, and if possible, to do it without losing their tempers. Treating the culprits justly is uppermost.
Children as young as 9 can be peer mediators on the playground. They are surprisingly good at it, listening to both sides, posing key questions and then asking each party, “What would make you feel better about this?” Sometimes it’s an apology or telling a teacher or agreeing to stop whatever started the melee. Although these kids are trained, they learn a simple 1-2-3 process that enables them to be effective playground conflict solvers.
We’re all involved in organizations, churches or families where problems crop up. If it’s a small problem, dealing with it before it escalates is best. But what to do in the case of a bigger problem that hasn ‘t reached the stage of needing an outside mediator. Should you offer to listen to the disputants to get to the bottom of the situation? If you don’t want to do it yourself, could you work with another person and do it together?
The main avenue to healing conflict is that question a child mediator learns to ask, “What would make you feel better about this?” In a formal mediation, that’s the point where disputants begin to offer their own solutions. The mediator never fixes the problem for them. Usually, something strikes a chord with the other side, and bingo, the parties are on the road to resolution..
Currently, many of us are hurting from huge deep-seated conflicts: between two political parties, between whites and persons of color, between police using brutal tactics and black citizens. How did things become so difficult so quickly? The answer lies in small problems that weren’t addressed until we reached a tipping point. Now we must ask both sides, “What would make you feel better about this?”
The answer might lie in better jobs, decent wages, better housing, mental health police units, more positive contact between ethnic communities, sensible gun legislation, reparations and much more. We need to be able to sit still long enough to listen to those answers, and then we need to act on them. Maybe then we will be able to heal our nation.