9 - Autonomy, Empowerment, and Neutrality in Divorce and Small Claims Mediation

Summary

As previous research and mediation textbooks have revealed, mediators use many techniques to facilitate the session and help the disputants achieve their goals, such as summarizing and paraphrasing disputants’ positions, soliciting ideas for resolution, and asking questions.¹ However, whether these techniques are effective in a given mediation session depends not just on the specific technique used, but on the interactional skill of the mediators to effectively formulate and place their interventions in the ongoing flow of interaction. Mediation is an interactional process that involves the coordinated action of all participants. The interactional competence of both mediators and disputants is critical for its successful completion, regardless of whether an agreement is reached.