As a life-long Winnipegger and Winnipeg Jets fan, I followed this season’s lock-out drama with a mixture of keen interest and a repeating pattern of blooming and fading hope.
So, like many others, I was overjoyed to hear that they finally got a deal done – and thus my beloved team would be flying around the MTS Centre this Saturday (Go Jets!). However, as a professional mediator, I also closely followed the role that mediation played in this roller-coaster of a process.
Just over a month ago, the headlines were all about the apparent failure of mediation. “NHL, Players Cut Out the Mediator” was the Ottawa Sun’s glum, headline on Nov 29. Some commentators laid the blame on the mediators, just like they did in 2004-05 (the year an entire NHL season was lost). So was this going to be the second failure of mediation?
Far from being a failure of mediation, that November experience was a sign that the two sides were too entrenched in their positions.
“After spending several hours with both sides over two days,” said NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly at the time, “the presiding mediators concluded that the parties remained far apart and that no progress toward a resolution could be made through further mediation at this point in time. We are disappointed that the mediation process was not successful.”
What the mediators were essentially saying at the time was: “You guys aren’t really serious about getting a deal done yet. Call us when you are.”
What a difference six weeks makes. After escalating tensions as the NHL and NHLPA tried on their own, the NHL invited the mediators back in to the process. And, after a full day of shuttle diplomacy to cool things down, followed by another 19 hours of marathon face-to-face sessions with the mediator over the next two days, a deal finally got done. Faced with the real threat of a lost season, both sides were more willing to flex and stick it out – in sum, to truly engage one another and the mediation process.
The truth is that mediation almost always works when parties are truly emotionally ready to settle. Likewise, it almost never works when parties are not ready to work it out. When it comes to mediation, the old adage of leading a horse to water certainly applies.
In this sense, just as the process of mediation should not generally be blamed when parties can’t settle their differences, mediators should also not get or take too much credit when parties in conflict do work it out.
So, if we don’t miraculously make conflict disappear or wantonly cause it to become further inflamed, what do mediators actually do? Simply put, we try to lead the proverbial horse to water, by creating conditions that enable parties to work things out. We do this in four principle ways:
1) Mediators help the parties evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of their stated positions and may press the parties to adopt more reasonable positions, thus helping them arrive at a settlement more quickly.
2) Mediators facilitate interest-based conversations so that disputants move beneath their stated positions to the needs, wants, fears and concerns that fuel and drive those positions. This cultivates greater mutual understanding and additional options for resolution.
3) Mediators help parties share and compare their different versions of the “truth.” Because people in conflict generally lose perspective, assigning the worst possible motivations to others and the most noble to themselves, the mediator helps them to move beyond simple black and white views.
4) Mediators support each party to “own” their role in patterns of destructive interaction so that the way they talk and listen to one another at the end of the mediation process is different and improved from at the beginning.
Professional mediators are trained in the art of preventing, managing, and resolving conflict. The processes we lead often prove very useful to those who are tired of stalemates and stand-offs, including those with the biggest of issues and money at stake like the NHL (3.3 billion dollars!).
If you do hire a mediator, just remember the lesson of the NHL lock-out. The single most important ingredient to mediation success lies totally within your control: your emotional readiness to resolve things.
Thanks for reading.
Dave