The A-Z of Mediation: Zones

Throughout a dispute, the participants will find themselves in several different “ZONES”: Past, Present, and Future.

When they arrive in mediation, participants are mainly focusing on the Past:

“They played music really loud and it kept me up!”

“They didn’t do their part of the work project on time!”

And it’s perfectly understandable. When we have this perception of conflict being a win/lose battle, parties want to convince and prove to the mediator that the other person is to blame.

However, when you’re trying to reach a mutually-beneficial outcome, this isn’t very helpful. In mediation, we are trying to shift the focus from the past to the future: we’re trying to remove the idea of conflict being a competition, while also trying to improve the current relationship that is happening right here and now.

In the individual sessions, we do actually want to address the Past:

“What’s been going on from your point of view?”

While we do want to build an understanding of the dispute to this point, we don’t want the parties to spend too long in this frame of mind.

We may also start to see another area introducing itself: Elsewhere.

We may hear reference to other places, such as incidents that happened on social media or at work parties, or other individuals may be introduced. Commonly, this could be a manager, other colleagues, or another individual not directly involved in the dispute.

Going into the joint session, we now want the parties to start looking at what’s going on in the Present.

We want to find how the dispute makes the parties feel, what they’re thinking right now, and what they want to say to the other party or parties. This can help us to identify the underlying interests and motivations.

We can also use Reframing, where we can reframe how these thoughts and statements are presented so that they are more likely to support a resolution.

Once the parties are ready to leave the historical stuff behind, we can look at what they want to happen in the Future. This is, of course, where we start to build the agreement.

By putting together an agreement that is achievable, measurable, and future-focused, they can then begin to address and establish what they want from the relationship going forward.

We can then start to reintroduce the ‘Elsewhere’ section: how they are around other people in the office, how they incorporate the management team, and how they communicate outside of the office.

By doing all of this, we can hope to move the participants away from the Past and into the Future, via the Present, while also building a more positive and future-proofed relationship.