Sorry, but who are you again?

The notion that mediators are central to the mediation process but matter not at all has always fascinated me.

That we are invisible and forgettable; that people meet us when they are in the trenches of conflict and that we should not expect or need to be remembered by them after they have clambered their way out - is tough to take when we spend our life doing this work.

David Hoffman's wonderful article Paradoxes of Mediation explores this and other tensions in more detail... Similar in a way to Robert Benjamin's romantic concept... 'dwelling alone in the middle; a mediator must remain marginal...on the fringe, an outsider'

...but the really interesting question for us all is whether we see this in our lives outside the mediation room?

I think I might.

*invisible and forgettable; p71, How to Make Money as a Mediator