Mediation Emotions
By Brian McDonald
Every mediation contains its own level of emotional highs and lows. Often a mediator anticipates that a particular session will be filled with anger and it turns out to proceed very smoothly. Other times it is anticipated that the problem to be mediated is an unemotional "business" decision, but from the start the parties are at each other's throats.
As mediators, we should have in mind our philosophy for the particular mediation. If our philosophy, for example, is that the parties should determine their destiny, when the opportunity for intervention arises we must determine if we should intervene or let the parties go.
If the reason for your intervention is a high degree of negative emotion, a checklist of alternative techniques may be most helpful to the mediator submerged in the situation. The following is not intended to be an exhaustive, rather it is a checklist to carry in your file or our binder of "tricks of the trade" to consider or reject as the circumstances dictate.
