A mediator’s mindfulness for dealing with conflict

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT *

This article explores the contribution of mindfulness to mediation and conflict management. Starting from the understanding of interpersonal conflict as an expressed struggle between interdependent parties pursuing incompatible goals, the author presents mediation as a skill based profession whose effectiveness can be undermined by deficiencies in awareness: self centered perspectives, strong negative emotions, automatic habitual reactions, insensitivity to emotions and inadequate concentration. Mindfulness, understood as deliberate, non judgmental attention to the present moment and rooted in Buddhist contemplative practice, is presented as a systematic method for overcoming these deficiencies. The author describes how mindfulness meditation deepens self awareness, weakens the grip of negative emotions, fosters compassion and other centered focus, and improves decision making in negotiation, and how mediators encourage reflective awareness in the parties through reframing, summarizing, narrative transformation and rhetorical questions. The paper concludes that the mindful mediator, working with openness and curiosity toward discomfort, anger and worry, is better equipped to guide parties toward cooperative, self determined and lasting solutions.

KEYWORDS *

Mindfulness, mediation, conflict management, interpersonal conflict, self awareness, non judgmental attention, emotions, reframing, mediator skills, meditation, compassion

INTRODUCTION

Our world is filled with many problems including a conflict that demand our attention and collaboration. Conflict, or more specifically, interpersonal conflict, is a fact of life, and particularly of organizational life. One of the most common difficulties is a conflict with friends and co-workers, with children or parents, with a spouse, with people who hold opinions different from each other. However, conflict can also arise in relationships and situations outside work. Interpersonal conflict has been defined as: “An expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals”.

The most widely accepted definition of conflict refers to conflict as the ‘pursuit of incompatible goals by individuals or groups. In other words, conflict situations arise when individuals or groups pursue positions, interests, needs, or values that may lead to actions that come up against the interests, needs, and values of others when they also want to satisfy their goals.

MAIN CORPUS

Third-party mediation is one of the alternates to resolve the conflict. The Mediation of Conflict brings two conflicting parties to the table, along with a professional mediator. Effective regulation of conflict requires a skill to resolve the conflict. The mediators having empathy and understanding can start to take on a more compassionate approach to conflict and get less involved with the emotions that surround it, working through the essential questions instead. The job of mediation requires knowledge, skills, and dedication to resolve the dispute. Accordingly, mediation is founded upon a dynamic set of professional skills. It can teach, develop and maintain the habits of practice to be a successful mediator or conflict resolvers.

The mediator might often face difficult settings and might be unable to appropriately use the knowledge and skills because of certain deficiencies in awareness, such as an excessively self-centered perspective; strong negative emotions; automatic, habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving; insensitivity to emotions; insufficient social skills; and inadequate focus or concentration. Mindfulness can help people overcome such deficiencies in awareness. However, mindfulness is difficult to establish and maintain, in the face of those very obstacles, especially in proximity to the heated conflict.

Mediators “…seek to enhance their ability to be dispute resolvers by moving beyond knowledge and skills to deeper levels of engagement in their work” (Bowling and Hoffman, 2003). The primary step to being a mediator is to give due mindful attention to the problem. Mindfulness can be considered a valuable contributor to this process (Roeser et al., 2012).

The application of mindfulness to reconciliation and conflict management requires identifying and handle strong emotions, develop effective communication tools that help navigate conflict and integrate mindfulness into your interpersonal relationships, etc. Mindfulness is a conscious awareness of the present moment. Being mindful is to live in the present moment with regard to our sensations, feelings, thoughts, and actions. It brings about self-responsibility.

Mindfulness derives from ancient Buddhist philosophy, psychology, ethics, and is related to meditative practices. The word “mindfulness” carries many meanings. In common parlance, to be mindful means to be “conscious or aware of something”. Practicing mindfulness can help a person achieve these insights, that is, to see things as they actually are. Mindfulness, is a systematic method of paying attention, deliberately, at the moment, without judgment, can help us gain awareness of our mental and emotional processes, our habitual reactions, and their manifestations in our mind, body, and breath. Such self-awareness opens the door to developing ourselves in ways that will enable us to be more skillful and to get greater satisfaction from our work and our lives.

The principal method for cultivating mindfulness is practicing silent mindfulness meditation processes such as meditation etc and then deliberately bringing mindfulness into daily life. The basics of mindfulness meditation, a systematic method of moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness, which develops both calmnesses of mind and body and deep insight into the workings of our minds and hearts, deepen self-awareness and be kinder to practitioners and others.

Mindfulness decreases the prominence of self-centered focus and fosters the strength of other-centered focus. It reduces the power of strong negative emotions. It promotes freedom from automatic, habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It fosters sensitivity to the emotions of self and others. It improves social skills and strengthens both forms of attention and non-judgmental awareness. Mindfulness can foster understanding of and compassion for others. It can help to understand compassion for others. It recognizes interconnectedness, supports us to enter inside to know about how our minds work. It enhances the ability to notice and let go of self-cantered, perceptions, and intentions about self and others. Mindfulness is a certain way of paying attention – can help overcome these obstacles and improve decision-making in negotiations and other conflict-related situations.

But mindfulness is difficult to establish and maintain, especially in proximity to the conflict. Mediators adopt various means to encourage mindfulness in the conflicting parties. These are- reframing, summarising, transforming of narrative, rhetorical questions are all intended to encourage reflection, offer a different perspective, and foster insight and self-awareness. The practice of mindful conflict management allows paying attention to the present moment in conflict, recognizing own conflict pattern, behavior, and conflict response with an attitude of openness and non-judgment. It helps the mediator for automatic response with an attitude of curiosity towards his / her perceptions and then working more skilfully with discomfort, frustration, anger, and worry, emotions that automatically occur when the mediator doesn’t feel comfortable in conflict.

SUMMARY

Mediation is a viable way to solve disputes by allowing the parties to make the decisions about their issues rather than the court making the decisions. An unresolved conflict or interpersonal disagreement festers just under the surface in your work environment. It bubbles to the surface whenever enabled, and always at the worst possible moment.

CONCLUSION

Mediating a conflict is challenging. Resolving conflict can be viewed as a form of collaborative, creative problem-solving. The objective is a good quality solution with disputants’ commitment to implementing the solution. It creates disputants’ perceptions that the solution and the process are fair. It uses disputants’ sense of empowerment to resolve the current and future conflicts with efficient use of time. Mindfulness of mediator in resolving the dispute displayed in mental, behavioral, and physical exercise is a powerful tool that can help us respond to conflict in a cooperative and non-reactive manner in a win-win situation.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The conflict this article addresses is not between two named parties but inside the mediator and inside every person who meets conflict: the struggle between automatic reactivity and aware response. The practical question is therefore how mindfulness can move from an admired idea to a reliable working instrument of the mediation profession. Four steps make that transition concrete.

First, anchor mindfulness in mediator formation rather than in occasional seminars. A deficiency in awareness cannot be corrected by information about awareness. Training programs should therefore include a sustained practice component, daily short sitting practice over the length of the course, supervised reflection on one’s own conflict patterns, and exercises in observing body signals under simulated pressure. The goal is modest and measurable: that the mediator notices the arising of irritation, partiality or fear a moment before acting on it. That single moment of noticing is the entire professional yield of the practice.

Second, build micro practices into the mediation process itself. A brief silent pause before the session, a conscious breath before responding to an attack, a short break explicitly framed as time to reflect rather than as escalation control, give both mediator and parties structured access to the present moment. These interventions require no philosophical framing and impose no worldview on the parties; they are simply process hygiene, and they remain fully compatible with any religious or secular background the participants bring.

Third, use the mediator’s own reactions as information. When discomfort, frustration or worry arises in the mediator, mindfulness converts these from disturbances into data: something in the room is unspoken, unsafe or unripe. The trained response is curiosity, naming the atmosphere, slowing the pace, returning to the parties’ underlying needs, rather than suppression or forced progress. In this way the mediator’s inner state becomes an instrument of diagnosis in service of the parties.

Fourth, protect the boundary between awareness and instruction. Mindfulness in mediation is an inner discipline of the mediator and an optional offer to the parties, never a doctrine to be taught at the table and never a substitute for procedural fairness. A party who declines every reflective exercise retains full standing in the process. Held within that boundary, mindful mediation delivers exactly what this article promises: a mediator who is present, non reactive and genuinely available, and parties who are met with the clarity and calm in which their own solutions can appear.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES *

1. Bowling, D., & Hoffman, D. (Eds.) (2003). Bringing Peace into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
2. Roeser, R. W., Skinner, E., Beers, J., & Jennings, P. A. (2012). Mindfulness Training and Teachers’ Professional Development: An Emerging Area of Research and Practice. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 167 to 173.
3. Kabat Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. Hyperion, New York.
4. Riskin, L. L. (2002). The Contemplative Lawyer: On the Potential Contributions of Mindfulness Meditation to Law Students, Lawyers, and their Clients. Harvard Negotiation Law Review, 7, 1 to 66.
5. Riskin, L. L. (2004). Mindfulness: Foundational Training for Dispute Resolution. Journal of Legal Education, 54(1), 79 to 90.
6. Wilmot, W. W., & Hocker, J. L. (2011). Interpersonal Conflict (8th edition). McGraw Hill, New York (source of the definition of interpersonal conflict quoted in the article).
7. Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (3rd edition). Penguin Books, New York.
8. Goleman, D. (2006). Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. Bantam Books, New York.