peer review

Abstract

If you have a business or a law firm, there is the possibility that you have taken part in mediation. If you hold the position of litigator or insurance adjuster, there is a stronger possibility that you have taken part in several mediations. The world is filled with issues that deal with conflicts, disputes, disagreements, people arguing and fighting, and without enough knowledge that there are solutions to those issues. Issues could be resolved one-on-one with a conflict coach or could be resolved if there are two or more people with a mediator. It truly depends on the circumstance as to what is chosen to resolve the issues. Mediation and Conflict Coaching is just a couple of ways to resolve issues that might arise. A conflict coach deals with one participant that has an issue while mediation deals with both participants. This existing theory of mediation provides knowledge to the mediation procedure and what the outcome of its use could be.

Continuing Mediation Among the Conflict Coaching Arena

The purpose of this essay is to argue that mediation, as an existing theory of conflict coaching should be applied to a specific context because it is different from conflict coaching and can stand alone. Mediation might be practical to a wide variety of settings and disputes. It has been utilized successfully in such diverse fields as: “business disputes, domestic disputes, educational settings, community/neighborhood disputes, the criminal justice system, labor-management conflicts, and international conflicts” (Hocker & Wilmot, 2014, pp. 289-290).

Mediation is a form of conflict coaching and sometimes parties can get mediation confused with other alternatives. Conflict coaching is a procedure wherein a coach and client converse one-on-one for the sole reason of advancing the clients’ understanding of the conflict, communication plans and abilities (Jones & Brinkert, 2008).

Mediation is a procedure through which a third party helps two or more participants accomplish their own solution on one or more subjects. Mediation can be utilized when no dispute is present, as when a consultant helps an official committee discuss agreement on a tactical plan. Additionally, mediation can be utilized as an alternative to litigation or carnage to help participants solve disputes. Mediators do not make rulings for participants (as arbitrators and judges may); in its place, they aid the participants by organizing a procedure for interaction and discussion that permits them to examine problems, produce resolutions, and ultimately decide how the problem will be resolved. Mediators are a special type of problem solvers. Whereas there is no trustworthy method for choosing good mediators, the literature and reaction from disputing participants point to sure factors that will produce trust and rapport with the participants, and plus lead to equally acceptable solutions (Slaikeu, 1996).

Literature Review

Mediation has been here for centuries in one way or another and seems to have been utilized by various societies and cultures, including the Romans. Ethnic communities around the world and American Indians also put into practice a type of open group or elder-led group mediation with the intention of solving ethnic or community issues. Some cultures considered the mediator as a holy figure, a healer, a medicine man/woman who stepped in and mediated between individuals and the spirit world. As we know mediation in this day and time, it has gone through several variations and transformations, and in its contemporary form, has been especially developed in the New World, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, mediation in the United States appears to have taken two different paths; the legal system that branded it ‘alternative dispute resolution’ or ADR, and the adoption of mediation by ordinary community development groups, plus the women’s movement during the 1960s. The appearance of ADR as a concept came into play from the increasing acknowledgement of the cost of conflict to business and industriousness. In business, a complete examination was done on both the ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ costs of conflict to company profit. The direct costs take in lost time and production, missed targets and opportunities, illness/absenteeism, healthcare, safety, payment and legal bills. The indirect costs take in quality and output failure, injury to motivation and morale, effects on cooperation, consumer complaints, accidents, deferments and long corrective actions or inquiries. Plainly, when company auditors began to explore the bottom line of conflict and the relative costs of litigation and ADR, then the assessments came down strongly with approval for early resolution, the moderately low-cost and high success rate of mediation in the workplace. Another trend in the development of mediation in the 1960s and 1970s was all around the community-based use of mediation. The pious Society of Friends (Quakers) created one of the lengthiest running mediation training programs. It was named the “Friends Conflict Resolution Program of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting” (Doherty & Guyler, 2008, p.18). At present, mediation is still a normal and significant portion of the Quaker Peace Movement all over the world. Currently, mediation can be located in an ever growing number of subdivisions – neighborhoods and communities, family unit, divorce, medical, in the schools, ecological, in restorative justice and in global policies and certainly in the workplace (Doherty & Guyler, 2008).

The increase in mediation services over the past decades normally happened in the context of tendering disputing participants an alternative to conventional use of attorneys and the courts. The advocates of mediation have argued that the results should be of top quality because its basis is on a model of collaborative conflict instead of the win-lose position of the confrontational legal system and because it engages the participants directly in looking for resolutions to their disagreements instead of inflicting a resolution on them. From an optimistic view, the accumulative record of evaluations of thousands of disputes that span across a number of domains of conflict use an extensive arrangement of methods. This large methodical manner of diverse literature is amazingly reliable in its overall picture of mediation as a flawed but highly valuable and gratifying addition or alternative to more conventional means of conflict management. In spite of inadequacies, mediation research also relates approvingly in its potency and breadth the far more restricted experiential record on the conflict management outcomes created by attorneys, judges, arbitrators, and government administrators. The most positive outcomes are in terms of clientele gratification, settlement rate, and obedience. Therefore, on the order of 70 to 90 percent of disputing participants who have actually asserted they were gratified with the procedure, and for those who do not attain agreement in mediation, the gratification rate is usually above 75 percent. These outcomes relate approvingly with public gratification with family services, such as the use of lawyers (66 percent) and the job of the courts (40 to 50 percent). Mediation also copes fairly well in terms of its capability to fabricate agreements, about 80 percent on average. This is a splendid number keeping in mind that this number includes several stubborn cases where lawyers have tried and not succeeded to make settlement (Kressel, 2014).

A blender that does any job in ten seconds or less (getmagicbullet.com). “Mediation is not a magic bullet” (Kressel, 2014, p.820).The accruing of proof implies that it will probably be successful in conflicts that hold a mid-range of adversity – those with:

· Medium instead of intense levels of conflict

· Participants who are inspired to solve their disagreements and utilize mediation as a method for doing so

· Obtainable resources, whether physical, societal, or emotional

· Participants of relatively equal power

· The lack of issues that involve important religious, political, or moral principles

It is significant to note down that mediation quite often succeeds because the proficient mediator is able to adjust some of the originally unwelcoming factors of the dispute in an approving direction. Also true is that when the mediator can’t conquer hurdles to cooperation, the participants might get remarkable benefit from mediation even if agreement is not reached: issues might be made clear, the adversary might be more humane, or part of the agreement might be reached (Kressel, 2014).

Discussion of Findings

Mediation is not confrontational. It is a problem solving procedure that is known as adjudication in court. It allows each side to argue to the judge concerning why their side is correct and the other incorrect. The participants work with each other rather than against each other to create solutions to their problems that actually brought them to mediation that are agreeable to all involved. This is not the only approach to mediation. Mediation has a few models that are useful depending on the circumstances. The traditional model involves the mediator as the neutral third party. They inspire the participants to find their own solutions and do not inform them of what a judge might do in their particular case or who has the more convincing case. They steer the participants through the mediation procedure, help craft and impose the rules that relate to respect, and help with preparing the outcome arrangement. The traditional model doesn’t stress the participants to reconcile if they have no desire to do so, nor do they give their recommendations for resolution. The participants have total control over the results of their dispute. Next is evaluative or directive mediation. This model involves the mediator telling the participants what a judge or jury could determine in their case. They assess the strengths and weaknesses of their disagreements or proof and give a resolution that is not binding. This information is utilized by the participants to notify settlement negotiations both internal and external of mediation. In addition, mediators work to influence participants to move from pressures that are impractical and will use modest pressure on them to find the middle ground and reach a solution. This style of mediation has the tendency to leave participants not as satisfied as with facilitative mediation, but in other cases participants could be very satisfied with this style if the cases are not open-ended relationships. Finally, in the transformative model of mediation, mediators strive for enriching the parties’ capabilities to sustain and make relationships better. Mediators work to give power to the participants to think up their own solutions to the disagreement and at the same time, this will enrich their dispute resolution abilities through the shaping of those abilities. Mediators strive to craft and emphasize opportunities for the participants to realize the value in seeing the others’ interests and standpoints, which permits the participants to make each other human again in the conflict instead of pulling down each other. By realizing the humanity and essential value of the other individual in the conflict, participants can have a sincerely open and constructive discussion, with settlement as one of the outcomes. Because of the stress on relationship building and enriched communication abilities essential in this model, “the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the United States Transportation Safety Administration (USTSA) have adopted the transformative style of mediation for their workplace mediation programs” (Raines, 2013, p. 101). Gratification with mediation programs has the tendency to be considerably higher than with other types of dispute resolution such as arbitration and adjudication. A study was done of court-connected general civil case mediation in nine Ohio courts, Wissler (2002) found that “litigants had highly favorable assessments of the mediation session and the mediator” (p. 5). The majority believed that the mediation procedure was extremely fair (72 percent) and would endorse mediation (79 percent). In the USPS mediation program, 90 percent of the plaintiffs were either highly or to some extent gratified with the mediation procedure, with defendants having a 93 percent satisfaction rate (Bingham, Kim, & Raines, 2002). Likewise, 91 percent of EEOC plaintiffs claim they would partake in mediation again if confronted with another complaint and 96 percent of defendants agreed (Mcdermott, Obar, Jose, & Bowers, 2000). On an interesting note, the plaintiffs at USPS mediations brought their own attorney’s but was considerably less gratified than the ones who brought no attorney (Bingham, Kim, & Raines, 2002). Although a variety of explanations exist for this, the most solid explanation is that participants are permitted to speak on their own behalf and tell their stories without a spokesperson. Moreover to mediation using an exterior contracted unbiased expert, several managers perform informal managerial mediation as a portion of their everyday responsibilities. Informal managerial mediation happens when a manager takes on the duty of informal mediator between two or more workers, bosses, or managers who are in dispute. Through this informal procedure, managers listen to each participant and inspire both to listen to one another. They engross the participants in a problem-solving dialogue with the objective of obtaining an agreement that will meet the needs of all participants and is superior to carrying on the dispute through more formal ways (Raines, 2013).

Summary

Pros of Mediation

Mediation brings definite pros to the management of conflict because it counts on the active negotiation and participation of participants and encourages a shared interest in resolution, thus participants are more apt to execute. The agreement belongs to them and is not inflicted so as an outcome there will be no loser with feelings to retaliate. The participants understand better than any stranger what works for them. Mediation helps the participants to meet their primary interests instead of fighting over stances. Mediation is generally inexpensive compared to adjudication or arbitration, and participants are more gratified than participants that used adjudication or arbitration (Hocker & Wilmot, 2014).

Cons of Mediation

Just as there are pros to mediation, there are cons that are also present. There are some participants that cannot agree to work the conflict out with their adversary. It could be that they might not be willing to talk candidly about the dispute or might not want to physically see each other. Several conflicts rise to the point of combined positive work is not at all possible. The conflict could very lengthy and the only resolution is a win/lose configuration in which an external person makes the decision. Furthermore, if a person believes they can win if they go to court, then the possibility of mediation could be unlikely. Mediation might not be suitable for specific kinds of relationships (Cloke, 2001). Mediation includes substantial dedication to working on the conflict. However, several participants are not ready to invest in a relationship that has been difficult and challenging. Instead, they are looking to other options for settlement or will maintain the conflict. Several minor disputes might be managed by other means such as small claims court or justice of the peace, instead of participants trying to work with one another because mediation is sometimes not worth the endeavor or the energy to work through (Hocker & Wilmot, 2014).

Mediation works on several levels in that it ceases people from violence, reduces their hostile conducts, starts deep listening and discussion, recognizes and asserts destructive emotions, simplifies informal problem-solving and cooperative mediation, resolves issues in dispute, resolves fundamental issues that gave rise to the dispute, encourages forgiveness, conciliation, and helps design preventive conflict resolution systems. As mediators work throughout sequential levels of conflict, the ability and experience needed to surmount barriers and move forward to the next higher level enlarges rapidly. Every new level also needs even greater readiness and dedication on behalf of the participants, and even greater delicacy and creativity on behalf of the mediator (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2011).

Recommendations

If we tally the actual costs of conflict and compute the amount of time, energy, and funds that is regularly spent on unsettled disputes, it is virtually always so much more than the amount it would have taken to meet with a third party and workout resolutions. Briefly, it takes us a small amount of time to solve disputes, if measured against the amount of time it takes to not solve them (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2011). As mediators, we need to be eager to bring a deep dangerous level of trustworthiness and compassion to the dispute resolution procedure. If not, we become personalities in their screenplays, justifying their agonies, fears, and avoidance. As mediators, we need to avoid making agreements that do not resolve conflicts, but simply conceal, make quiet, or settle them, that result not in growth, but in unwilling consent and continuing conflict. To solve any conflict, we need to entrust what would occur if we converse it is better than what would occur if we do not. This unavoidably means the opening of Pandora’s Box and not actually knowing what will dash out. It is the deepness and clearness of our own trustworthiness and compassion and our eagerness to explore conflicts that are always just faintly out of control that permits us to mediate dangerously (Cloke, 2002).

My Thoughts

There are strengths and weaknesses in any and everything that we do. There are so many choices that we can choose from. Having information on a subject is extremely helpful before making decisions on matters that affect our lives. Conflict coaching is a one-on-one procedure that involves the coach and a client. Mediation is a procedure that involves the mediator and the participants. Both procedures can be utilized depending on the circumstance, and both can stand alone. I am for mediation because it permits all participants to be involved as opposed to just one. With conflict coaching, only one participant is involved while the other might not even know that there is an issue. This is why knowledge is vital to decision-making, and to gain this knowledge means researching what the best choice might be in the circumstance that you might face.

References

Bingham, L. B., Kim, K., & Raines, S. S. (2002). Exploring the Role of Representation in Employment Mediation at the U.S.P.S. Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 17 341-378.

Cloke, K. (2001). Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cloke, K. (2002). Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cloke, K. & Goldsmith, J. (2011). Resolving Conflicts At Work: Ten Strategies For Everyone On The Job (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Doherty, N. & Guyler, M. (2008). the essential Guide to Workplace Mediation & Conflict Resolution: Rebuilding Working Relationships. Philadelphia: Kogan Page Limited.

Hocker, J. L. & Wilmot, W. W. (2014). Interpersonal Conflict (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Jones, T. S. & Brinkert, R. (2008). Conflict Coaching: Conflict Management Strategies and Skills for the Individual. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.

Kressel, K. (2014). Chapter 34: The Mediation of Conflict. In Coleman, P. T., Deutsch, M., & Marcus, E. C. (co-eds.). The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.