Escaping the training trap in mediation and conflict management

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

EDITORIAL

This contribution is an editorial reflection by the founder of the World Mediation Organization on the design of training in mediation and conflict management. It sets out a position rather than reporting research, and it is published as such. Suggestions for further reading have been added at the end for readers who wish to pursue the questions it raises.

ABSTRACT

This editorial addresses the difficulty of designing training in mediation and conflict management that participants can actually apply. The author distinguishes short intensive formats from extended programmes without judging between them, and identifies the recurring obstacle reported by practitioners as the gap between theoretical models and practice. From this he develops the position that trainees do not require an extensive set of tools but rather the identification and development of social core competencies they already possess and exercise daily outside professional settings. Training on this understanding works with the life stories, expertise and capacities participants bring rather than with content volume, which requires the trainer to set aside their own ego. The author argues against releasing practitioners who are full of information and afraid of error, and summarises the approach he calls mindful mediation in three competencies: deep listening, critical thinking and wise speaking.

KEYWORDS

Mindful mediation, training design, social core competencies, deep listening, critical thinking, wise speaking, practitioner development, trainer role, authenticity, theory and practice, self confidence, peacebuilding education

INTRODUCTION

This article deals with the challenges of creating a training session in mediation and conflict management that is effective and easy for participants to grasp. In my view, trainers should value the individual contexts each student or trainee brings to the table and tailor the training along those truths, using what I refer to as “mindful mediation” as a guideline.

When we talk about training in mediation and conflict management, we generally find two different types of educational programs: short-term sessions with a very limited time capacity, and long-term studies that cover a wide range of topics and demonstrate greater analytical depth. Trainees or students may ask themselves what these two concepts have in common, and which offers them the educational impact they are looking for. As this is a personal reflection, I am not going to judge or to put a value on either concept but will simply explain what has worked for me in the hopes that it makes sense to you.

MAIN CORPUS

Through reviewing outside training contents, discussing with trainees their expectations, and witnessing countless attempts to practice our art, it was easy for me to identify one very dominant and resistant issue that most practitioners face: the overwhelming challenge of implementing theoretical concepts, models, and structures to the actual practice of mediation. When I personally faced this challenge for the first time, I immediately started to work on the foundation of what I have come to call “mindful mediation.”

One valuable takeaway is that trainees and practitioners may not need an extensively broad set of tools, but should identify and concentrate on the development of social core competencies—ones that we all practice on a daily basis, but more often outside of the professional scope. Focusing on such competencies, trainees and practitioners learn that we naturally possess and unconsciously use effective skills that simply need to be identified and further developed for work in peacebuilding.

What was needed in the past and continues to be highly relevant in the present is to keep and communicate an open-minded and practice-oriented understanding of mediation, without putting this term (mediation) into an immutable frame or promising any particular outcome. Putting such a concept into practice requires mastering several challenges. The trainee needs to re-discover and re-develop self-confidence and the understanding that the key to change is to make use of one’s own life experiences in order to create an authentic practitioner’s personality and to have the desired positive impact on the environment.

We must support the development of fresh-minded and clear-thinking peacemakers who are longing to initiate positive changes in society. We should avoid releasing people from trainings whose minds we have jam-packed with information but who are afraid of making mistakes and unsure of how to practice what they have learned.

When it comes to the training sessions, the trainer should understand that it is not about content quantity, but rather about learning to work with the life stories, expertise, visions, and capacities of the trainees. While it is quite difficult to plan such a training, the true expertise of a trainer is indicated by her/his ability to couch her/his ego and to align themselves with the specific trainees’ competencies and work towards their needs.

I believe it is a great gift to understand what the trainees have to offer, to explain to them a few easy-to-grasp topics that fit their personalities and life stories and help mold them into authentic and unique practitioners who are able to put their own personal discoveries from such a training or development process into practice.

SUMMARY

The argument turns on a reversal of the usual assumption about what training does. Conventionally a programme adds: models, techniques, procedural steps, a vocabulary. The position taken here is that the capacities mediation requires are already present in anyone who has lived among other people, exercised daily and unrecognised, and that the task of training is to make them visible, deliberate and transferable to professional settings. From this the consequences follow: fewer topics rather than more, a curriculum shaped around who is in the room rather than settled in advance, and a trainer whose skill is measured by attentiveness rather than by the volume of what they transmit.

CONCLUSION

We should focus on keeping the training simple and transparent, as the conflict to work on will be complicated enough. “Mindful mediation” is based on the social core competencies of deep listening, critical thinking, and wise speaking.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION

The position taken here is defensible, and it becomes stronger when the objections against it are answered rather than left standing.

The most serious concerns the trainer. Where content is reduced and the programme is shaped around what participants bring, its quality rests almost entirely on the judgment of the person leading it. That is a genuine vulnerability, and it means an approach of this kind requires more institutional support than a standardised one, not less: trainer development, co teaching, peer observation, structured feedback from participants. The instruction that a trainer should set aside their own ego is sound as an aspiration and unenforceable as a rule, and what makes it real is the arrangement of the programme rather than the character of the individual.

Related to this is the question of a floor. If few topics are taught and those are chosen for the room, something must nonetheless guarantee that a graduate knows when mediation is inappropriate, how to recognise coercion, what confidentiality does and does not cover, and where legal obligations begin. These are not matters of personality and cannot be drawn out of life experience. The distinction worth drawing is therefore between a defined and non negotiable core covering safety, ethics and the limits of the method, and everything beyond it, which can be as flexible as this essay proposes. Simplicity belongs to the second, not the first.

Assessment follows the same logic. A programme that develops capacities rather than transmitting content still has to establish that the capacities are present, and self report will not establish it. Observed practice, whether in simulation or in supervised co mediation, is the only reliable measure, and it suits this philosophy better than examination does, since what is being tested is whether a person can listen, think and speak under pressure rather than whether they can reproduce a model.

Two observations strengthen the argument rather than qualifying it. The claim that adults learn by connecting new material to what they already know is not merely a preference but the consistent finding of research on adult education. And the essay’s warning about practitioners paralysed by fear of error describes something documented across every profession that has examined it; the literature on reflective practice names precisely the gap between what is taught and what is done, and the remedy it proposes, structured reflection on real cases after training ends, is the natural continuation of the approach argued for here.

Finally, the essay’s logic points toward something larger than it claims. If these capacities are already present in everyone, then training of this kind is not only professional formation but civic education, and its natural audience extends well beyond those who intend to practise. Teachers, nurses, managers, community leaders and parents all encounter conflict, and a programme built on drawing out what people already have is by design available to all of them.

FURTHER READING

1. Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
2. Lang, M. D., & Taylor, A. (2000). The Making of a Mediator: Developing Artistry in Practice. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
3. 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.
4. Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
5. Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2015). The Adult Learner (8th edition). Routledge, London.
6. Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. Free Press, New York.
7. Macfarlane, J. (2002). Mediating Ethically: The Limits of Codes of Conduct and the Potential of a Reflective Practice Model. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 40(1), 49 to 87.
8. Moore, C. W. (2014). The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict (4th edition). Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
9. Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators (2005), provisions on competence and self determination.
10. European Code of Conduct for Mediators (2004), European Commission, Brussels.