Metaphors Used by Mediators As They Practice Mediation

Now we turn from client metaphor to metaphor operating in the minds of mediators as they practice their preferred form of the mediation process. As you consider with me the metaphors implicit in your own practice of mediation you will be developing general skills in the use of metaphor that you can also apply with clients.

Mediators around the world name a huge variety of values, principals, and approaches that they believe form the basis for the practice of mediation. I will not try to survey them here. Instead, I will offer several which guide the practice of mediation where I live and work in the American state of Colorado.

When I attended my first mediation training almost ten years ago I learned a series of steps a mediator can follow to ascertain clients’ underlying needs related to a dispute and to facilitate a mutual solution. This can be called a sequential, needs-based, facilitative approach to mediation (Antes et. al., 1999; Moore, 1986; Riskin, 1994). It is a very basic approach to mediation taught now in many places around the world – and I bring it in here not to argue for its strengths or weaknesses – but to illustrate how primary conceptual metaphor operates to guide the practice of mediation. You will see that use of metaphor is not necessarily an exotic enhancement for the more advanced and sophisticated mediator, but an essential tool already in the hands of even the most inexperienced practitioner.

According to the basic mediator training I received, here are three early steps for the needs-based, facilitative mediator to follow:

1. Listen actively to what the clients say and pick out their issues; set the agenda for mediation.
2. Identify the needs (separating them from more general issues or specific client solutions or positions) that must be met for a solution to be satisfactory.
3. Generate multiple options that may satisfy one or more of the needs (while postponing assessment or evaluation of the options).

Let us take the first of the above: “Listen actively to what the clients say and pick out their issues; set the agenda for mediation.”

The language used tells the mediator (Agent) to become active – in motion, we might say – and to take hold of issues (Possessions), as though they are things or objects, and then to put them somewhere, namely in the “agenda for mediation” (Affected Entity). So the mediator at first acts upon him or herself to move about within and among the things said by clients, interact with these things – perhaps touch and handle them – to find out if they are, or could be easily shaped into, a particular form called “issues”. Then the issues are put into a special place or container – the agenda. The agenda is the common workspace of the mediation session. As were many of you, I was taught to write the agenda on a writing board or tablet that everyone can see and use. This writing space continues throughout the mediation to be the place to put everything important and useful and from which solutions arise. Notice that the mediator gives Possessions (issues) found in the client conversation to the common “agenda” container. The mediator applies a certain force first to him or herself to be active, then on the “issues”, to move them to a specific location.

Knowing, as we do now, about aspects of primary conceptual metaphor we begin to re-experience the sensory motor aspects of what is going on here. I immediately find myself thinking about how I might move among things, reach out and take them to where I can feel and see them, perhaps squeeze them or trim them, and then put them somewhere handy.

Bringing the bodily movement aspects of this phase of mediation into conscious awareness instantaneously reveals very obvious choices that the authors of this method of mediation have made. Now I can see that this step quite deliberately excludes many possibilities, such as applying any kind of force on the clients, moving them or forming them – they are not the affected entities. And the possessions are not taken away from them or given to them, but to the agenda container.

Conscious awareness of the bodily movement aspects also suggests a whole range of possible nuance in how we might execute the step. For example, the mediator can move among the issues in any number of ways – as a swimmer in a crowded pool, as a dancer, as a pedestrian in traffic, as a shopper in a market, etc.

Conscious awareness of the bodily movement aspects goes even further to suggest options should we decide to vary from our training and do something a little different. Take for example the metaphor element we introduced much earlier that is missing from this particular step – obstacles. This step in the needs-based, facilitative mediator’s routine doesn’t speak of obstacles. However, the metaphoric versions that we have just generated can suggest some that we might want to take into account – such as the strong flow of client remarks for which we may decide to set up channels, or what to do with the energy generated by possible collisions of issues.

Moving on to the step wherein you “Identify the needs (separating them from more general issues or specific client solutions or positions) that must be met for a solution to be satisfactory”:

In this step the mediator, again the Agent, is acting on what is in the container of the agenda (again the Affected Entity). According to the instructions in this step the mediator is to identify the needs that are in this container. This agenda container is to be divided into sub-parts – one for actual needs, others for general issues, client solutions or positions. Occupants of the “needs” part of the container are special – they “must be met for a solution to be satisfactory”. What does this mean in metaphoric terms?

“Met” in this case seems to mean “fulfilled” or “satisfied.” Therefore we might think of a need also as a kind of container in its own right which, when filled, changes into something else. But not anything can be used to fill these “need containers”. The options that fill them must be satisfactory in some unstated sense. Is it the shape of the options, the color, or what that might enable them to fill these needs? The next instruction may help us with this.

The third step says to “generate multiple options that may satisfy one or more of the needs (while postponing assessment or evaluation of the options)”.

The word “generate” might mean to start searching, or moving and looking around in nearby terrain, until you stumble on a number of things called “options” that inhabit this terrain.

It also might mean to fertilize your thinking with information you have collected regarding needs, and see what emerges. This latter interpretation uses a special case of cause and effect metaphor based on procreation – conceiving and giving birth to something new, by blending things already present.

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I have illustrated the use of metaphor in three initial steps of the needs-based, facilitative approach to mediation that I was taught years ago. The method is the same as that used to identify client metaphors. I leave it to the reader to look for conceptual metaphor in the particular style of mediation he or she practices.

What do we learn from this metaphoric account of mediation? Aside from the simple stimulation and curiosity generated, probably the two most important things we learn are (1) some options for enhancing how we conduct mediation and (2) how to bring conceptual metaphors into our conscious thinking so we can more quickly detect and begin working with the metaphors that are always present in our clients’ versions of their problems.

Understanding the metaphoric account of mediation has other benefits to recommend it: One can begin to create a more detailed model of how mediation is or should be conducted. The vast diversity of meanings within simple mediation precepts is often readily unpacked. Having done this we can more easily see how mediators with the same professed approach might initially clash, but find ways to harmonize. Or, to understand more clearly the diversities of different mediation approaches. This may offer ways to fine-tune your approach to specific clients or circumstances. You may more readily find ways to be both more precise and more flexible in the application of your preferred mediation approach.