Getting to grips with mediation can leave students and trainees overwhelmed. That favourite training tool, the roleplay, throws most in at the deep end. The sudden immersion forces them to speak, listen and observe while trying to remember models and skills plus a sea of reading and the trainer’s feedback. Oh, and all combined with performance anxiety.

Disagreements often start when someone doesn’t want to discuss something or take a necessary action, and someone else accuses that person of avoiding. That accusation will generate a wide variety of responses based on the kind of avoidance being demonstrated. 

A few weeks ago, I spent the afternoon driving around the Coromandel with an exponent of kickboxing. My friend is a very kind, gentle woman who is married to a kickboxing instructor. As she talked, I found myself seeing the analogy between the process used to teach kickboxing and the skills we need to learn as mediators.

This article will give a brief overview of the following topics; What is evaluative mediation?, Who cares about a name?, The quest for “successful” dispute resolution processes, Why the apparent interest in Evaluative Mediation (EM)?, What are the types of EM? Eg Process; Medrec; SIMSLILC, Core description of “advice”, What are the common types of advice?—Seven types suggested, Advantages of EM, Disadvantages of EM, Consent to advice; Advice to whom? Timing? Tone? Words and images, Some standard hurdles during EM and the Conclusion

In our every day conversations we ask others a lot of “closed” questions. Closed questions are ones that only require a “yes” or “no” answer. Yes or no really doesn’t give us much information and we’re often missing out on crucial pieces of info that could help us to resolve something.

Have you ever heard the theory that shame and guilt are good things because they support community cohesiveness and personal accountability (eg - that shame and guilt exist, evolutionarily speaking, to help individuals know when they've broken a norm which helps defend the collective welfare)?