Spirit in Action

Practical Peacemaking Through Mediation - The Mediator's Handbook

Mediation is an art of practical peacemaking. Jennifer Beer, is co-author of the 4th edition of the The Mediator's Handbook, a skilled mediator and teacher of mediation, including teaching negotiation at Wharton. She has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 30 Nov 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along One area of potential improvement of the world about which I am passionate is peace Not just the reduction of war, which is so very important But the steps that we can take for manifesting peace all around us At home, in our communities, in our work everywhere And today, for Spirit in Action, I'm welcoming into my living room Someone who is engaging in doing and teaching mediation A practical art of searching for peace My guest is Jennifer Beer and she is co-editor of the recently released fourth edition of the Mediator's Handbook Jenny has roughly 30 years of experience with mediation But came to this work with her PhD in cultural anthropology I've invited Jennifer Beer to sit down in my living room and talk about mediation and her work for practical peace Jenny, I'm delighted to have you here today for Spirit in Action Thank you Mark, it's wonderful to be in Wisconsin As opposed to being over in Pennsylvania, are you a longtime resident of Pennsylvania? Where have you lived before? I grew up in the Philadelphia area and then went to school at Erlum in Indiana From there to Japan, from there to Vermont, then back to Philadelphia And that's when I first did my mediation internships in the early 80s And then I went off to Berkeley for my PhD in Anthropology And eventually I came back to Philadelphia, which is really home for me and I've been there now 20 years It's kind of interesting, you talk about having a degree in anthropology Whereas your expertise, as far as books are out there, as far as I know, is about mediation Why anthropology and mediation? Isn't anthropology mainly about people or dead and gone? They don't get to remake their decision Anthropologists study living human being groups and I've always been very interested in cross-cultural interactions What happens when one group of people has to interact with another group? So when I had the opportunity to take an internship with the Quakers in Philadelphia They were doing a mediation program in a very cross-cultural interracial area of Delaware County Right outside of Philadelphia, and I thought it would be very interesting to learn how to engage with conflicts that were happening between cultural groups The irony, of course, is that once I got into mediation I discovered that we didn't do very many intercultural disputes Because when people belong to different groups, they don't have as much incentive to resolve the difficulties between them And so we often couldn't get those people to the table, whereas if they had a meaningful connection with somebody as a family member or a neighbor Or a co-worker who was similar to them, they had a little bit more incentive to sit down and work something through So give me an overview of how you view mediation versus conflict resolution versus negotiation There's a lot of different terms that one could use for making decisions Yes, indeed. I teach negotiation at Wharton, which is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania So I spent a lot of time recently looking more at how people negotiate well or not And that has informed the way I think about mediation And now I would say there are lots of different kinds of meetings and decision-making processes that need outside facilitation Or can benefit from outside facilitation Sometimes those don't have any conflict So I might facilitate a strategic planning retreat where people might have some disagreements but not real heavy-duty personal conflict Mediation I see is a subset of that. It's when you facilitate a meeting where people need to make some decisions And where the interpersonal anger is high enough that they have difficulty thinking and working collaboratively to solve whatever problems Or make whatever decisions are in front of them Negotiation is the process of trying to get what you want or need You personally, or you, your group And if you do that well, you don't end up in a mediation, right? You don't need a third party helping you I see mediation as assisted negotiation So for some reason these folks have not been able to negotiate an answer for themselves or a way forward And having a third person there helps change the way they have a conversation or reframe the way they're looking at a problem So that they can move forward and negotiate So it's been interesting actually to read the negotiation literature which is mostly written for people in business environments Whereas the conflict resolution literature comes out more from the education side or from peacemaking groups Who are interested in dampening down or working through conflict particularly So I would say mediation is one skill that is useful in conflict resolution And I would say mediation is also the facilitation of good negotiation So was the organization that you did your internship with? Was that the friends conflict resolution programs? And say what that was because so much of your experience I think was nurtured through that experience That's true, I had my first internship way back in the early 80s The group was named something different at that time but it was the Philadelphia Quakers organization And they did an experiment in community mediation and that was what I was part of at that time They had various different projects that they tried and then when they would finish a project they would spin it off to become independent So this mediation program was spun off in 1982 to be an independent social service group in Delaware County I've maintained my connection with that organization mostly as a volunteer mediator At the same time the Quakers downtown started moving towards other kinds of conflict resolution and mediation training So for a long period there I was doing training or mediating with both of those connected organizations Friends conflict resolution programs was closed I think two years ago So we don't have a formal conflict resolution initiative in Philadelphia anymore Of course you and I are both Quakers we understand some things about Quaker way of thinking or the kind of ethos that is embodied in Quakers For our listeners why were Quakers involved in this community conflict resolution mediation project I mean I think some people may think of Quakers as trying to help serve as some kind of a go between to help things in the Middle East or otherwise But why in the community of Philadelphia? Good question and I do somewhat snarkily refer to Quakers as the Church of Peace and Process And mediation is both of those it is a technique for practical peace making on the ground And it also is very process oriented and it uses process to help people get through difficulties I wasn't around at this point but the friends group that developed this mediation program had been working with runaways Had been working with police brutality and local suburban communities And also this was still the era right after the Vietnam upheaval and civil rights And a lot of Quakers were in local courtrooms for the first time during that period And they saw what happened to local families that were having problems or neighbors that were having problems And they were appalled and they thought there's got to be a better system and at this point in the mid 70s Mediation was just appearing on the horizon as a possibility And so they decided to experiment with having an alternative for people to going in front of a local judge Who was going to make a decision and usually find both parties and not solve the problem So that's how I believe they started off this project and I came in about three years after they had gotten it off the ground So who is this book for? Is this just for anybody on the street? Is it for people who have been through training programs? Is it for people in Philadelphia? Does it work for people internationally? The mediators handbook started in 1982 when I was an intern and we had all of these training materials lying around And I thought we should collate them into something coherent And it turned out that no one else had written any book on mediation at that point I think we were the first in the United States to publish a mediators handbook that anybody could buy and use And it's been going ever since then in various editions and the current edition looks nothing like the first edition But we have found our work copied or translated in all languages and all corners of the planet My brother founded in the jungles of Burma I went to Kyrgyzstan once on a project to teach conflict resolution and I came into the director's office Which was a tiny little social service agency in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan I brought her a copy of the handbook as a gift, this was the previous edition And she looked at it and she started to look very strange and she said, "Oh, I've actually translated this book Because it's the best book on mediation out there, but I didn't think Jennifer was female So it never occurred to me that you would be Jennifer Bier And that my, that author would be sitting in my office And so she pulled out a Russian translation that she had made off of her shelf That she was using with all of her people So yes, it has gone many, many different places We've written it as a handbook deliberately structured So that if you know nothing about mediation, but you have a tense meeting that you're going to be facilitating tomorrow morning Maybe because you're the manager or you're the head of a committee of some sort There is a process, a structure that you can follow That's laid out simply enough that you can page through that book the night before And get yourself some good ideas of how to manage that meeting It's also laid out in a way that very experienced mediators can go into a particular section To look for ideas or guidance on things that they are having difficulty with The book is divided into two parts The whole first half basically is How do you get from A to Z? Where do you start? How do you move people through a process when they're feeling very angry or afraid or adversarial And how do you create a process that encourages them to relax just enough that they can be more cooperative or collaborative in their thinking And as you know, we all freeze up when we're highly emotional, it's hard to think So this process is designed for over a period of 45 minutes to an hour to several days or weeks To gradually ease the tension enough that people can come back to their own ability to think and make decisions The second half of the book is divided into three parts basically Three skill sets supporting the people facilitating the process or guiding the process And helping people resolve the problem, so people process and problem And those skill sets are fairly distinct and so we've added micro-advice to things you can do in each of those segments I find that most people, including myself, have one of those aspects that they tend to specialize in or go to Especially when they're dealing with a difficult situation This is one reason we also teach co-mediation, where you're mediating with a partner So that one person might focus very much on being warm and a people person and getting connection with the parties Another person might be much more problem-centered and figuring out what's the information that's needed What are the options that are on the table? And so I find the skill sets useful to expand my own ability I think we need to get a little bit practical here, Jenny I think we need some examples of how this actually plays out on the ground Maybe from your personal experience or maybe theoretical How does it actually work and what kind of difference does this bring the skill set, as you mentioned, to resolving conflict? Well, for starters, let me just name a few different types of scenarios that I've done without going into detail So you can have some idea of how this is used I very recently did a four or five session mediation with a couple who was in a large house And they were downsizing to have a more simple life in a small house Shall we say it brought up a lot of issues? And they decided that in the interests of their marriage and their interests of doing this lovingly that they wanted a mediator So I met with them once every week or two to help them think through the places where they were feeling stuck And they have now successfully moved and are, I think, happily in their new house I've done another one recently with immigrant women all living in an apartment complex Who were having lots of fights with each other Their lives were difficult enough that I think they were sort of taking it out on each other My goal in that mediation was to help them think of themselves as allies in a difficult situation And I'm not sure how successful that mediation was, I think two of the three women understood that one woman I'm not sure she's going to be able to make that transition into a different way of framing the situation But we spent a long time talking not just about what made them angry But what their situation was and how they could assist each other in child care and in car transportation And some other things that would make their lives a little easier That was an interesting mediation because they would break out in their own African language Every once in a while and they'd have a little argument and I'd sort of wait till they finished And then someone would translate for me I've done a mediation with an artist who did a choreography that was then made into a video She and the other dancers in her film argued about who had the copyright and who should get the proceeds from this benefit film that they had done That was a very emotional mediation Partly because one of the women involved was in terminal cancer and dying and that made everything much more fraught Another recent one I've done is in an elementary school Where one kid was threatening another and then the parents got involved And then the whole school got involved and some parents wanted some children expelled from elementary school And the school wanted to handle it in the way that they handle conflicts and the parents were not willing for that to happen So we ended up having I think three or four school administrators and four sets of parents around a table And we spent two hours talking over the situation and that one was a very successful mediation I think the school was really able to explain what it wanted to do and why and how that would work And to give the parents information and assurances that what the parents' concerns were would be listened to So that's another one I've done recently I also do custody mediations So I have situations where people have been divorced for quite some time But they have to make decisions about say schooling or health or other kinds of decisions for the child One of them I did recently The wife wanted to send the children to a private school that was religious based And the ex wanted to send the children to public school and was not willing to pay for a private school So they went round and round on that for quite some time To a successful conclusion? Not in that case actually But there you have an interesting question about what's successful That mediation is a long story that I think I won't tell here But I will say that sometimes having people in the same room talking frankly to each other May not result in an outcome that either one of them wanted But it gives them clarity In this case these people hadn't seen each other in five years When people are angry they don't talk to each other, they don't see each other And then they substitute actual interaction for imagined scenarios and motivations And so you develop these large images of who that other person is or what they want Or what's the problem that aren't really true because they're not based on interaction in reality And so in this case it became clear to the custodial parent What they were going to get from the other side and what they weren't and what decisions they were going to have to make on their own But at least they weren't imagining things anymore, they knew what the situation was And so I felt that it wasn't a happy ending but it was a real ending That provided a foundation for moving forward and making decisions So you've given us a lot of examples Jenny of mediation that you've been involved with You also mentioned that you teach at Wharton and I'm assuming that most of those things are not applicable to what you're teaching at Wharton What kind of subject matter you're teaching at Wharton? Is it the personal dynamics or is it more business oriented Or just can the methods that are being taught in the mediators handbook Can they be scaled to all these different situations or are they specifically for personal difficulties? Yeah, I guess the examples I've given you so far have been more interpersonal I also do mediations in organizational contexts such as there may be a whole bunch of people in an office who aren't working well together And I will have meetings with those administrative assistants or other employees and help them figure out how they can work together better For example, I do that also in non-profit sector where you might have a co-op or an organization or a committee That has significant tension and I'll come in and facilitate some meetings for them So yes, in some degrees it's scalable These are generic processes and skills that apply in lots of different places When you have more people however, I'd say when you have eight or more people or when you have three or more parties Things get more complicated and there are things that you need to know beyond what's in the mediators handbook In answer to your question about Wharton, I teach an undergraduate course that's called Negotiation and Dispute Resolution And yes, it's somewhat business centered and the role plays that we do or the examples we do are often business negotiations In business as in life, human relationships are the core of what makes business work Both within your own team and your own organization, but also if you want to have excellent relationships with your suppliers, your customers Your competitors, you need to have a way of handling conflicts that gets you through those and on to the more important things that you want or need And so I love teaching Negotiation at Wharton actually, I have students who come in and they think that Negotiation is about winning and about getting what you want Almost like a game and there's still an element to that in some negotiations But the core learning of that four months for them is a self-development process where they realize that the more they understand what the other party wants and needs And the more they can satisfy that, the more they are also likely to get what they want and need personally So ideally, they shift from a very self-centered focus to a problem solving or thinking about finding mutual opportunities kind of focus And in that way, it's very similar to what happens in mediation where people come in in an adversarial mode, as I mentioned before And you want to figure out how they can open out into a larger understanding of the problem, which includes the issues that side A has and the issues that side B has Into one whole problem or one whole situation that they're trying to work with So in that sense, they're very similar In my course, about two-thirds of the way through, we take three class periods and do mediation training Some of the students are resistant to that, but I find at the end of that three class section their negotiation gets better Because they've seen when we do mediation training, it's fun It's the most fun training in the world because you get to act bad If you're playing the part of a disputing party, you get to act out and negotiate poorly and say all those things that you would never in real life say to people Or at least I hope you don't And so the students find that fun, but they also realize what it means when someone negotiates poorly And how difficult it is to get them back into negotiating effectively Well, let's go one level up in terms of the scale. Is mediation an appropriate part of, say, trying to resolve things in Ireland or in the Middle East? Is that mediation or is that something else? Well, let's not get into definitions, but yes, I think there are lots of different ways to mediate There are lots of contexts for mediation, and when we started this, mediation was basically done for diplomatic situations Like Ireland, where the United States or another country might come in and help resolve a dispute Somewhat through their own force or their own resources, so the US might have military intervention or it might offer financial resources So they're not a neutral party, really, they're an interested party and they're interested in getting a local war or a regional tension resolved That continues obviously to this day The basic skills in this book apply everywhere, but the structure that you will use in mediating in a very large-scale, complicated, messy situation Requiral, a whole different set of tools, so mediation might be one piece of what you're doing Interestingly, Adam Curl, who was sort of the father of that movement from Quaker perspective, peace studies in England once told me Over quite a few glasses of wine that we'd had one evening that when he mediated with world leaders who were engaged in warfare He found that it was very interpersonal and it came down often to what that person was thinking and feeling And how they approached conflict and that he used many of the same skills that he would use in any other small-scale mediation Even at this very large level, when he actually was in the room quietly talking to leader X and leader Y The mediation field has grown enormously since we started And now there are people who specialize in various different kinds of mediation, construction mediation, environmental mediation, labor mediation Divorce mediation is a large one, and each of those sectors has different ways that they approach it Commercial mediation is often legislated by the courts so that some kinds of disputes are required to go to mediation before a judge will hear them And those have a different kind of process as well I had a very interesting experience in Aceh, Indonesia There's a group there that does peace and conflict resolution training for teachers who are dealing with high school students There were Madrasa, there were private Muslim schools that were interested in some of these curriculum that were being used in the public school And so we had a training for people who were teachers and administrators in very religiously conservative schools It was fascinating to me When we started, they said, "Well, what do you as a white western Christian woman have to say that's relevant to us?" We have the Quran, and if it's written in the Quran, that's what we do And we have our own methods of doing things, and we don't see how this is Islamic And I made no claims that it was Islamic, what did I know? I'm relatively ignorant, actually, about the kind of Islam they practice in Aceh So I said, "Well, I'm going to show you the things that we do, and we'll talk along the way about whether that fits or not, and how that works for you What we really want to do is figure out what I know that's useful to you, and then you will take it and do it in a way that is, as you see, to be Islamic" It turned out that their notions of Islam and the Quran were very much focused on community and right living in community Many of them acted as counselors and advisors to couples that were fighting or kids that were having trouble in school And they would use the Quran and they would ask, they would read passages about how you should get along with your wife or your brother or your fellow co-worker And they would ask Quranic Islamic questions to get people to think about their obligation to cooperate with each other Two things happened out of that, one was I said, "Well, that's nice, so you tell the husband and wife that the Quran really wants them to work together and work together lovingly and create a loving community What mediation does is the practical, how do you do that? Who takes out the trash? Who watches the dishes? Who's putting the kids to bed? What is the one thing you say or do that always irritates me? How do you help people put that into practice?" That was an aha moment for them. They went, "Yes, okay." So that gave them a new context And then the last day, I asked them to share with me the kind of questions that they ask And they ask wonderful questions. I was very moved by a lot of how they word things and what they do And so we spent the last day looking at the kinds of questions they ask and how those could be reworked somewhat To facilitate some practical decision making as well So that was my fascinating intersection with a very different worldview And how to make it palatable or usable for those people without imposing my particular religious perspectives or values behind what I do You talk a bit in the mediators handbook about situations where you might want to use mediation or might not want to use mediation Where it's kind of contraindicated. Could you talk a little bit about what those proper set of circumstances are? So I'm not someone who believes that mediation is the panacea and the only way to resolve conflicts There are times when it's useful, there are times when I would do something else For example, when people are in the middle of a hot conflict, they've just finished screaming at each other and they've been separated Or they are still fuming from an interaction they had yesterday They're not ready to talk yet often So there's a time element there where people need to have settled down enough that they're willing to talk with each other Well, I shouldn't say willing. They agree to talk to each other. They may not be very happy about it But they're ready to listen and hear a little more than they are during a hot moment We avoid any situations where we know there is abuse going on Because it puts people in a very dangerous position To be sitting across the table from someone who may abuse them after they leave the mediation venue There are people who do that who are very knowledgeable and careful in how they do it But for the most part, that's one of the big flags you want to look for If you just tuned in, you're listening to Spirit in Action and I'm your host Mark Helpsmeet For this northern spirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org And on that site you'll find eight and a half years of programs for free listening and download You can order copies of CDs if you want to have those You also find links to our guests like to connect with the mediators handbook You want to go to mediatorshandbook.com Also on our site there's a place to post comments and we love two-way communications So please do post a comment when you visit. There's also a place to make donations We live by your donations. Please help us to continue this work But especially I want to encourage you to support your local community radio station Who carry these kinds of programs? Bringing you a slice of news and of music that you get nowhere else So please, before you do anything else, make a donation of time and energy and money To your local community radio station If I can add to that Mark, I'm passionate about community radio And I'd like your listeners to know that even out in Philadelphia I often stream your programs So it's not just local community that's benefiting from the work you do And I really appreciate it And as I mentioned, we're speaking with Jenny Beer today She's co-author of the mediators handbook Her co-author is Caroline Packard And together they've produced the fourth edition of the mediators handbook Something started way back in the early 80s It brings invaluable tools and perspectives That can make a tremendous difference in how we solve problems How we come to answers to situations that otherwise might appear very difficult And that's one thing I wanted to ask I mentioned Jenny, a number of the situations where you've used mediation I'm wondering if you have a fairly clear perception of when mediation was used And the tremendous difference, the difference in the outcomes that you got That appeared to be insoluble, intractable, that you couldn't get it So that we can say does mediation really make a difference? This is the reason mediators keep mediating Because every second or third time you get these situations that break open in front of you And melt your heart, they're very exciting I think of one between a brother and sister who were in their 40s And hadn't really spoken to each other in 10 or more years And they had some family issue, I can't remember what it was now That they had to make a decision on and so they came to mediation And it was a pretty frosty mediation The sister wanted the brother to get counseling And didn't want to deal with the brother unless he got counseling Sort of counseling under threat And I don't remember all of the other details now But we came to an agreement and it was sort of a strained but practical agreement And then I said to my co-mediator, why don't we just step out for a minute? I think I invented a break or some excuse I said I needed to talk to her So we left the room and I deliberately just stayed out for a little while And when we came back in they were weeping in each other's arms And so we wrote a new agreement And I think they probably still had trouble after that, it didn't solve everything But that's why we do it The ones that are in business contexts You know people don't allow themselves to get that emotional usually But it's always, there's a moment that I call the turning point And I don't know how to make it happen But after I would say 45 minutes to an hour Somebody says something or there's a moment of silence and things change The first half of a mediation is focused towards the past What's been happening? What are your concerns? Can you talk about what your experience is? What the impact has been on you? And people are accusatory, they're angry And then if you do it well The second half of the mediation is focused on the future Okay, tomorrow morning, what do you want it to look like? And how do we get there? It's more practical and it's also more helpful because it's looking at the future And that turning point moment is often when they suddenly start problem solving They may start problem solving sooner Like if you would just leave town, there would be no problem But it's a premature problem solving So your job as a mediator is to make sure that they don't try to get solutions too fast Out of their own discomfort But really wade through that discomfort to a place where they're willing to And able to think about the needs of everyone at the table and crafting what they want to do next And that turning point, sometimes somebody says an apology Sometimes someone will say something like, "I had no idea you were ill" So they get new information that puts people's motivations or actions in a whole different light Sometimes I have experienced people who are peacemakers at heart and have found themselves in a difficult point Who will say something really redemptive to the other side about how they really want to live in peace with that person Or they really admire that person When that tone shifts, then you know you're on the homeward role There's sometimes a few bumps on the way, but if that moment happens, then you're good Major portions of the mediator's handbook are concerned with the toolbox that you're bringing to this And I think you mentioned one of them you said in the case of two relatives That you invented a reason for a break The creative use of space is a tool There's also phrasing, you point out if you say it this way as opposed to this way There's consequences down the road So could you mention a couple of the tools, the framings that you get through the mediator's handbook Which are important or key from your point of view There's so many of them that I use that I find, I use in my daily life, whether I'm mediating or not The first one is you can't solve it, only they can solve it It's their life, it's their decisions And so, as you were mentioning with space, you're present for them You're giving them your undivided attention And you're giving them a structure, but they're the ones making the decision And in your other life as well, and I have trouble with this, I'm an advice-giving person So it's been very useful to me to have that not my decision, not my life I would say another thing that's useful is that we do not persuade anybody So if Susie is talking about what she wants to have happen And she's demanding a certain amount of money or demanding the other person do something Instead of turning to John and saying, "So John, Susie says that she's willing to offer $800 And that she would like you to finish this work in two weeks, is that okay with you?" Now I'm sort of advocating for what Susie has said, or I'm presenting what Susie said to John Instead I will talk to Susie, and I will say, "So Susie, if I understand you correctly, you're willing to offer $800 and you'd like the work finished within two weeks" And then I turn to John and ask him if he would like to say anything But I'm not explaining to John or persuading John, I'm merely making sure I understand Susie And coincidentally John is sitting there listening to me talk, but I'm not talking to John or trying to persuade John to do anything Another is an interesting thing, and that is that we know that people need to work through their emotions in order to be in a cooperative or collaborative mode But if you ask people directly for their emotions, you get a lot of display of people yelling or screaming or crying or whatever it is they are doing to express their emotions And that leaves the other person with nothing they can do They know they've made you mad, they know they've made you cry, but they can't do anything with that Particularly if it's an event that's happened in the past One of the tasks of a mediator is to take that emotional pile of accusations and stories and demands and figure out what is the plain information here that is non-reactive And so it's not that you deny their emotions, but you don't reflect them back directly So instead of saying "so Jane, you're really angry about X, Y, and Z" What you want to do is say "what Jane wants in the future" You make a positive, you do what we call "flip it" So you take all the nasty things she's talking about and you say So for you, a workplace that is clean and bright and is relatively quiet is the environment that's easiest for you to work in So that "flip it" you take whatever negative things people are talking about and there are two things you can do The first thing is you can flip it to a positive future This is what you would like, is this what would work for you And the other is you ask people for one example So let's say Manuel says "well, she just doesn't respect me She doesn't treat me with respect and I don't like to have to even be in the same room with her The question is "can you give one example of something she does that feels disrespectful to you? And can you tell me what impact that is had on you?" And this is a way of getting out emotions when you ask about impact It allows people to talk about emotions if they want or if they're in a setting where they don't want to reveal their emotions it allows them to talk about practical impact The advantage is now I'm over on the other side and I'm thinking "oh, now I know exactly what he's angry about" or I can say "oh yeah, I remember when I said that" or "did that" and I understand why it matters because they've talked about the impact and I have more reason to want to change my approach or my way of behaving towards Manuel So it gives the other side something practical to hang on to and to change It's interesting that you comment about making space and I think one of the most important things we all do for each other in conflict and it's very difficult to convey in a book is tone and pace and what happens when you lower your voice, when you look into somebody's eyes, when you take some time when they say something and you hold a reflective moment before you then say something in response All of those things change the rhythm and the pattern particularly if you have people who've been fighting for a long time I will tell them "yes, I can see that you've rehearsed this argument many times" So you want to get a whole different feel so that they don't necessarily go back into the groove and I think attentiveness and a slower pace or silence is sometimes a good way to do that Silence is also precious at moments when people have made an apology or something else that can potentially turn into a turning point So if someone says "you know I'm really sorry that happened" I don't immediately turn to the other person for their response and I don't thank the person for apologizing, I just sit with it a minute so that it can sink in before I will say "thank you for that, how would you like to proceed?" so that I don't put the other person who's being apologized to on the spot sometimes they're not ready to accept an apology yet but silence is quite wonderful however as Quakers we're used to longer silences than other people and so I think you also have to watch for when people start shifting in their chairs and making sure that you haven't lapsed into a silence that's too uncomfortable for them You say Jenny that it's not the mediator who's solving it it's really the parties there that are making their agreement it's their problem, you get to leave at a certain point as a mediator are there things though that the mediator should do? I saw some comments about it when certain languages being used when certain things are happening where you have a role to step in and say "no that's not the way we do this" that's the hard part, yes because for me anyway I want to avoid being a parental voice, a teacher voice, a judge voice and so I want to provide structure but I want the meeting to be their meeting and so I wouldn't say we don't talk this way in mediation or we can't go that way I would again go back to example and impact so if they're yelling accusations they lie, this isn't true, how dare you say this I would go back to can you give me one example of something that happened and how that affected you or I might take a break and have people just cool off or I might consult with them and say it seems that we're devolving into an argument here that's not moving us forward what would make it easier for you to have this conversation or if I think they're very low skill in process issues I would say let's think about what might make it easier for you to have this conversation or make it easier for you to really be heard because I think each of you really want the other person to hear what you're saying and then I would give two or three suggestions and say we could either take a break now or we could take turns or perhaps you want to consult with your spouses before you continue which would you like to do next so that even though I'm structuring the process it's their choice all the way through I think it's very important to remember that they may have a problem to solve they may have a decision to make I don't always know what outcome it is that they need or want or able to get but they set the compass point they decide what they want out of a mediation and my job is to gently help direct in the direction that they have said so if they really want to repair a friendship and they want to have a deeply emotional conversation then I will create a place where they can do that if they want to be very businesslike and they have no intention of sharing their emotions with this person they hate and they're not going to see again then I will do something that's crisper for them that steers away from histrionics the problem of course comes when one side wants to be very emotive and the other side wants to be crisp and businesslike and then you have to again put what's real on the table and say so and so you've been very emotional this morning and very open about how you feel and you other person you're really interested in getting a problem or a concern resolved here today and that's what you're most focused on and just there may not be anything to do with that but to just say it out loud there's a whole bunch of direction clues information in the mediators handbook how big is this book? I mean you said Jenny that back in the early 1980s this was the first available to the public or at least as far as you know in the US how big is it now? Are you still the gorilla in the room the one that dominates the entire marketplace? There are dozens and dozens of books about mediation now I would say some of them are much more sophisticated or are oriented towards lawyers and other kinds of settings and some of them are much more academically rigorous this book is really a how-to book that's why we called it a handbook we cut out as much as we could any sort of rambling text or anything that had to do with storytelling or anything that was our own academic perspective because both Caroline and I are PhDs we have lots of academic perspectives on what we are writing but we wanted to make something that was really accessible to someone who actually needed to mediate or resolve a conflict now the book has been a bestseller for decades I think because it lends itself quite well to being a text in high school and college and also a text for training and now we're finding that mediators are also using it for advanced training because there are a lot of subtle ideas and methods in the book that can add to the basic knowledge that mediators get in their early years of mediating so it's been, that's been really fun and I believe we already have the Chinese rights sold and perhaps the Spanish rights also so yes, it's moving out there I want to end with a few questions about you personally the person who became this mediator expert how has being involved in doing teaching mediation how has that changed Jenny Beer? Is Jenny Beer the same person or has this fundamentally altered your personality or your way of doing things in the world? I hope so, at least most of the time on a facetious note, I would say the first thing I learned from mediation was how to be relaxed when people are screaming and cursing at each other I did not grow up in that kind of environment the woman who founded this mediation program named Eileen Steff is also a partial author of this book she grew up in a nice raucous Catholic family and she used to say if you can foment trouble you'll be a better mediator than people who are always looking to make everything peaceful and nice so I think my ability to foment and to be easy with more overt conflict has actually been a major victory for me and I think also I don't know if this is mediation or aging I feel less pulled towards one side or another than I used to I see every person who comes to me in mediation or outside of that is someone who is dealing with difficulties in life and trying hard and meaning well even though they may make decisions that I think are insane and so I find that I see the world in shades of grey and I feel much more compassionate towards people and the situations they find themselves in at the same time I think this is probably true of anyone who does professional work with people in trouble I also forget it after I leave it doesn't linger with me often and I feel guilty about that sometimes but then I think no I was just a moment in their life and they're going on down their path whatever direction they're going and I would say from teaching negotiation I negotiate better than I used to and that's been from practical point of view quite useful in my business since I'm an independent consultant and do a lot of training and teaching on the side besides working at Wharton and in terms of spirituality and religion you've been associated with Quakers for a long time are you lifelong Quaker it's clear that you work at Wharton for instance is not Quaker work so how much of this mediation is rooted in your Quaker identity versus it's really something that's just general in the world this book does present a model of mediation that is deeply rooted in Quaker practice consensus methods respect for every individual self-determination letting things unfold with deep attention however we've been very careful in this book to I wouldn't say put aside but to put that at the last two pages of the book so that it can really be used in secular context with people who have very different ways of understanding or being in the world that said we felt that there were a lot of mediation books that are pragmatic in a way that didn't reflect what we thought was valuable about mediation and we wanted the Quaker model to be out there that was one major reason for rewriting the book to make sure that it stayed current and I think that the Quaker values that are reflected in the book are not unique to Quakerism particularly that light in every person that respect for each person trying to do the best in their life they can and being able to move forward even if it looks like they are recalcitrant and not capable of it you hold out the belief in your own mind as a mediator that somewhere this person has capacity to expand what they care about and what they're willing and able to do but I would say the Quakerism particularly is very skilled at process and that's one of the gifts that we bring to the rest of the world is our ability to really help people have hard conversations help people listen deeply to what the voice within is saying and the three or four hundred years Quakers have been working with that gives us a deep background for creating a process that will work even with people who are not particularly focused on God's will or a Christian interpretation of life I was raised Quaker in a very small meeting and one of the nice things about that was I got to have a role in that meeting in the meeting for business and in the work the business of the congregation when I was a young teenager so I was trained up in process from an early age and became really almost like an adult member in some ways and I've appreciated growing up in a small meeting for that reason I quit officially when I was 28 and I've been attending meeting in the last 15 years again in my local town I'm really glad to know more about your personal journey into this crucial form of Peace Work Jenny and it's clear to me that the mediators handbook is a powerful and fruitful tool in this work real gift to the world I'm thankful for your work along with others like Caroline Packard in bringing this book to birth again we've been speaking with Jennifer Beer co-author of the mediators handbook also peacemaking in your neighborhood which we didn't talk about today plus there are some bonus excerpts of this interview not included in this broadcast due to time limitations you can find them at northernspiritradio.org don't miss those gems and remember to post a comment when you visit thank you so much Jenny for your peace work through mediation and for joining me here today for spirit in action thank you Mark it's been a pleasure I want to add that we think everyone has the capacity to mediate not just special professionals so I encourage all of you to go out and look at how you can use conflict resolution and mediation skills for your community, for your family, for your workplace so that we can bring these small skills of peacemaking and spread them out as widely as we can thanks for your time it's fun the theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson this spirit in action program is an effort of northern spirit radio you can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org thank you for listening I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action with every voice with every song we will move this world along with every voice with every song we will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo of our healing