High-conflict mediations

Deborah Lynn Zutter wrote a fantastic article outlining strategies to help mediators handle high-conflict couples. The article can be found here.

Ms. Zutter's suggestions include:

• Maintain a healthy skepticism and suspect lying. Ask, “Is that really true?” or “What is your part in all this?” or “Tell me in detail.”
• Avoid taking responsibility for their behaviour and set relationship boundaries. Insist that mediation participants bring the documents to you that you have requested.
• Build a detailed agreement. Avoid ambiguity. Be careful to seek agreement on every small step along the way.
• Develop and explain consequences clearly. Here’s an example: If Jack is late to pick up the children by more than 30 minutes, he will pay a penalty of $50 to Jane and he will miss that visit with the children.
• Listen to fear and anger without getting hooked. Say, “That sounds really sad,” or “I hear what you are saying and I understand how strongly you feel about that.”
• Contain emotions. Do not permit venting of emotions in joint mediation meetings. Mediators should acknowledge emotions – to assure participants that they have been heard – and then move on to another topic. Also, avoid asking “How do you feel about...?” and instead ask, “What do you think about...?”
• Focus on tasks, thereby changing from the focus on emotions. In mediation, keep bringing the HCP back on task and encourage HCPs to work in joint cooperative tasks.
  Recognize cognitive distortions such as emotional reasoning, minimalization, exaggeration, personalization (when someone takes an event personally that has nothing to do with them) and projection (blaming others, never taking responsibility).
• Continuously check for safety. Separation is a dangerous time. There can be one aberrant act of physical aggression at separation, or, in many cases, the abuse will continue or escalate post-separation.

These are terrific suggestions, not just for high-stress family mediations, but for other types of conflict as well. Some of my family law friends have told me how "lucky" I am that I primarily handle business disputes because the emotion is taken out of the equation. Let me tell you, business disputes may have the rubric of efficiency and economy behind them, but at their core, there can be highly-charged emotions involved.

Thanks, Deborah Lynn Zutter, for your excellent article and advice.