Wednesday, February 15

Try This, Why Don't You?

In the commercial stuff I do, I find myself playing around with concepts promoted by our transformative cousins - ideas like party empowerment, party orientation, party sense of their own agency etc.

I haven't yet found the line where it gets too flakey in my world but I know its out there.

In the meantime I'm road testing a bunch of things.


Today my mantra on the back of my pad was 'avoid making a decision that could be made by the parties'...hmmm interesting, how not to be a wet bus ticket yet be a MARVAL (mediator adding value at last)?

So, I got to say things like;


:where do you want to put your energies, into the transport question or the loading issue?
:what's up?...would you prefer to do this conversation another way?
:no, no, you all will need to decide on X, don't for-goodness-sake let me tell you how to do it...you ran the business, you got it so successful that you've now got a $5m current account to mediate over!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nothing is flakey,it's all been done before. Try this--Pope Pius, a century ago, spelled out the Subsidiarity doctrine in his encyclical Quadragessima Anno: "It is wrong for a superior body to hold to itself the right to make decisions for which an inferior is already well qualified enough to make for itself". Political wonks have grabed the theroy and subsidiarity is now all the rage. AS a mediator this is nothing more than let the parties make the decisions. Mediators also know it's the balance of this with the fact some people hate to make decisions that we have to supply. Is this a time to wait for the parties or is it time to move on. Do you move on concenscus or does the group or party need you to slowly move up the scale, over time, until you finally lay out what the decision needs to be, why that decision, and the consequences. Or maybe it's unsafe for the mediator to go there. People today have such a heavy filter of what they believe society will accept they have lost the ability to go with thier gut instinct. A good mediator has to sence when to leave a decision to a party or to give the answer, not make the decision. I once had a party say "I can't bring myself to say yes, I can only say O.K.". You've heard it before Mediators live in the moment and go with thier gut. It seemed to me you were sharpening your instincts, practising. That's a lot of blather just to say I agree.