Even the PR guys in downtown Wellington get it now.
Key Concept : reframing is interactive and iterative and is a process of gradual reorientation of attitude and perception = create a new story that has elements of each story line (Bernie Mayer)
It's also a peel the onion concept,
1. first you detox wordstrings
2. then you attempt definitional reframes
3. last, the brave and sensitive few find a new metaphor to enable the parties to change their lens ......huh??
At 9am he said he didn't want to go and no way, no how would he.
By 6pm, with real money on the table, he said he would.
In private session it turned out he'd been in to work late the night before and cleared his desk ready for a speedy exit...
Where's the line on this stuff?
Read the last two posts first: The Third Space (1) and (2)
So from tone in the last post to the content of the humble, yet highly effective, corridor encounter. Try these:
1. My instinct is;
......that you need to move away from that last issue for now - its taking us backwards, go to X and come back to it.
......that you need to come off the insult offer range and go to the maybe they'll buy it numbers, but you know how it goes - expect at least two more dances.
2.Yeah, I know - its a real pain to have Bob go on like that, but let him get through it- its for him, not you. I'm on to it and will shut it down if it becomes a problem.
3. If I ask you this in front of your client/in joint session what's the answer going to be? .....No,no you need to be braver than that, why can't you frame it like this...
4. Don't be concerned about that aspect - its not worrying the other side, despite what you might be hearing. I am addressing it with them in private - concentrate on having your chap get to the third issue on the whiteboard. Try to direct his energies into options around it. You know I'm not saying this in a vacuum, trust me there's a way through this.
5. Please, please let's not talk numbers yet - there's more water to go under the bridge before lunch. And do us all a favour, quit using cut to the chase language - you're getting a reaction from them in private and its working against you.
Seems we've discovered a new grain of sand on the mediation beach if the responses I got to my last blog, The Third Space : the humble corridor encounter are anything to go by.
My take on corridor encounters is the obvious - that they are very different in tone and content from joint session or private caucus conversations.
So first to tone;
Corridor encounters seem to usually involve a variation on the line up of participants and are often with one or other of the attorneys (or both) who typically adopt a different posture with each other out of earshot of clients.
In my experience it's most effective for the attorneys NOT to have instructions on any of the matters under discussion in the corridor.
Corridor encounters often appear to be accidental in the sense they are not usually planned by the participants (although I may often contrive them...really??) and, unlike a more formal 'short line-out' of attorneys and the mediator, they don't seem to require consultation with clients.
They typically occur en route to the loo/kitchen/for a smoke/to make a phone call...
They are usually very brief affairs and have a hushed 'in passing' tone about them and are often best held towards the end of the mediation process.
Cut through/bottom line mediation language is expected.
Such encounters often determine what happens next in the process and, to that extent, have a coaching element to them aimed at choreographing a forthcoming exchange.
For that reason, I find myself volunteering views about the best way forward and in turn am often pressed for the sorts of opinions I would not dream of making on line - in joint or private - as a facilitative mediator.
This is where I did my best work last week – in the twilight zone between the joint session room to the right of the water cooler and the private caucus room off to the left by the green bins.
Corridors can be furtive and risky spaces on mediation days – ‘don’t ask me to cross the centre line, but I’m quite close to it’ kinds of places, ideal for short line ups of lawyers or parties.
My technique has evolved quite differently in each of these three spaces – so differently I wish someone would legitimise the humble corridor encounter by giving it a fancy name and teaching a course on it.
We are in deep summer down here in New Zealand with long days on the coast and sand in the bed at night.
And its around this time we get to meet some real interesting folks blown off course from the well trod migratory path to Europe, coming DownUnder to swim with dolphins, watch pods of giant sperm whales or drink our cheeky young wines.
On their way from doing all three, but primarily the latter I suspect, mediators Eric Galton and Kim Kovach of Austin, Texas stopped by for a chat on a hot afternoon before boarding their magic bus for home.
Both are fellow travelers and are the same, same but different to those mediators around the globe who love their work and go about it with a quite confidence.
Eric's recent book Ripples from Peace Lake is a gentle miscellany of beautiful short pieces for the jobbing mediator... hard working chapters like 'On Assumptions' and 'On Patience' compete with dreamy summer afternoon reads like 'On Faith and Hope', 'On Change and Reinvention' and 'On Words Mediators Hear'.
'On Loneliness' Eric comforts us thus;
"...So the next time your mediation ends, everyone leaves at 1.00 am and that lonely feeling creeps under your skin, remember this essay and know you are not alone.
Thousands of your colleagues understand what you are feeling. And, if you listen carefully and listen very, very hard, we are cheering about that play you made in the extra innings that made resolution possible..."
Read a review by Tracy Allen "...in an Applebee's in Sturgis, Michigan, the journey began. The final game of the Astros-Braves World Series Divisional Championship played in the background. With a seemingly bottomless marguerita, I plunged into what would become a mediator's oasis....to speak of things mediators intuitively understand but often do not vocalize; and to remind us that in this world of endless troubled times, we as peacemakers have an obligation and opportunity to make a difference" ...read more
Well, that was a stretch and the only sign of how close we got are the tail feathers in the palm of our collective hand.
Nevertheless, as an outcome between two elderly brothers, it would have taken care of the past acceptably and provided for the future elegantly.
Sure...it wasn't win/win but what is nowadays?... it did however sit way up in the North-East just below the Pareto Frontier...so that's gotta be good doesn't it?
I'd say it was tensioned between them just right...'yeah, I can live with that - just/yeah, I can too - just'
That was until the ghost of getting even walked into the room inciting the younger to settle unspoken scores from the bunkroom.
* Confuscius
Today we took down our Christmas tree...it was one of the best we ever had and we were a happy family under it's branches.
I confess to a touch of melancholy as I threw it over the back fence...
Shortly after, I ran into a lady on our local street.
I stuck out my hand to shake hers, she hugged me. She called me by my name, I faked it with hers.
She was a party in one of my mediations last year, but I couldn't place her. It was a busy year.
You know, I recall it only now as I write this.
It was that sort of mediation where they moved mountains in the space of a day and surprised themselves with an outcome that was as much about the journey as where they ended up.
I remember now...walking slowly home at 10pm, up the steep steps from the city in the rain, knowing why I did this stuff, knowing that for all the knock'em down, drag 'em out mediations I do as a high priced bell hop - taking offers from one room to the next - ones like this made up for all that.
But today I didn't know who she was.
The tree, the lady....am I throwing things out too soon?
