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Part of the fun of nonviolence is showing where alternative practices and systems already exist and to lift them up to inspire more of us to explore and adapt them to our own time, cultures and needs. Take mediation: We know that when practiced with the intent of healing divides, de-escalting violence, and restoring relationships, it works (and “works” if you know Michael Nagler’s “work” vs. work concept), and we don’t hear enough about it in the news. Everyday mediators across the world are building peace in families, communities, and working to heal even our political divides. That’s something hopeful to remember! And the skills of mediation are also something each one of us can learn and adapt for our own needs as they are life skills and benefit those who use them as well as those who are on the receiving end. Sounds a lot like nonviolence to us.
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio we speak with Mike Fraidenburg who is a mediator and co-author of The Art of Mediation about how this work has changed him, and how it can change the world if we do more of it.
Mike has generously offered listeners of this episode this free ebook on conflict resolution skills.
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Stephanie: Greetings dear friends and welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I’m your host, Stephanie Van Hook. And I’m here with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. And we’re from the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California.
On Nonviolence Radio we like to cover some of the constructive alternatives to systems in our society that don’t seem to work to help rebuild relationships and that fundamental image of the human being that needs to be raised in a way that provides dignity to all human beings. And the justice system is one of those more problematic institutions. And we believe that mediation, as well as restorative justice, have a really big constructive role to play in the building of a nonviolent future.
So, for this we are going to speak today with Mike Fraidenburg. He is a mediator out of Washington State. He’s also co-author of the book, The Art of Mediation. Key Skills for New Mediators, with his friend Terry Teale. And we talk to Mike about mediation, what it is, how it works, and what people might learn from a mediation process. You can also learn more about Mike’s work and the book, “The Art of Mediation” at their website, theartofmediation.org.
But let’s turn now to our interview with Mike.
Mike: I’m Mike Fraidenburg, and I am a community mediator in Washington State, where it’s my privilege to help people inside our community figure out how to unravel their conflicts.
So, my passion is doing the kinds of work you guys try to do, and it looks like in a much larger scale. But inside these communities where I can get neighborhoods, couples, workplaces to come to sort of peaceful resolution to the conflicts they have.
My personal story is a wandering journey. I actually had a first career in natural resources management. And I learned at the end of that career that we didn’t have so many problems with understanding what to do in terms of managing natural resources. But what we did have is a huge gap, was an inability to agree on how to move forward on those issues.
And so, I took an interest in how people cooperate and collaborate on those issues. And then, coincidentally, right at the end of my career, my favorite reference librarian that I used to use as a state employee told me about her involvement in the local Dispute Resolution Center and how enlightening and impactful it was for her. And she invited me in to see what that was like.
And so, I went to a couple of mediations and started taking their trainings. And all of a sudden, 22 years later, I’m still doing it.
Stephanie: Well, why don’t you get us started in thinking about what is mediation, and how does the mediation that you do differ from other forms of mediation?
Mike: So, mediation tends to be a broad term, and it’s applied to a whole variety of different kinds of conflict resolution. If you think about the negotiations that occur in a courtroom, the judge is frustrated, and he sends the parties out and says, “Negotiate a solution that you guys can live with.” That’s sort of forced mediation, where people have – in the face of a dire consequence, letting the judge decide – have to come to a solution. So, it’s forced agreement is what it amounts to.
The kind of mediation space that I like to live in is something more called facilitative or transformative mediation. And it’s at the other end of that scale. Where we offer, or I offer, an opportunity to let me facilitate other people’s work in resolving their own conflict. So, we don’t come in with orders that they must find a solution. Don’t come in with any kind of advice about how to do that. But we do come in, or I come in, hopefully with a package of productive skills to help people figure out their own solutions.
So think, facilitation, think collaborative negotiations, think compromise, think win-win. Those kinds of descriptive terms tend to be where I live inside the space that I call mediation. It’s transformative, it’s voluntary, and it’s people struggling, but ultimately carving out what are solutions that will work for them without me getting involved in the content.
Stephanie: And it seems like an important piece of the conflict resolution, conflict transformation, and nonviolence puzzle in a way because, if we decide that we don’t want to support adversarial processes in courts, then how do we still get our needs met when there is a conflict?
So, the kind of work that you’re doing is also related to people that are going through divorces, right, that are going through tough conflict. This is not just about neighbors fighting over, you know, the property line. You are doing work that otherwise people might bring to a court, and they decide not to.
Mike: That’s correct. So, when you use the term, “How people get their needs met,” that’s a very appropriate way to think about what we’re trying to achieve in doing mediation.
In the mediation world, there’s a way we describe the people’s attitudes coming into a conflict. And I’m going to give you some jargon here, but I’ll try to unpack what its meaning is so it’s easy to understand.
People come to a mediation, and they are approaching their conflict with a sense of what the issues are in the conflict. So, the issues are the things they’re fighting about. So, it could be the property line. In a divorcing situation, it could be about finances. It could be about bad behavior by one party or another during the marriage, like substance abuse and infidelity and those kinds of things.
So, people have thought about, and they spend a lot of energy thinking about what are the issues that are the sore points, the things that I don’t like and that I want to get shed of in some way.
However, almost always behind those issues are some needs that are yet to be identified that those people have. And so, we try to work in the arena of the second piece of jargon I’m going to give you, which is the underlying interest that these people have.
So maybe a couple of neighbors are fighting over a fence line, say, on their property. And the issues they’re talking about is where the fence is and what it looks like and how tall it is, and those sorts of things. And with, hopefully, some artful facilitation intervention, people like me can ask them, “Well, why do you want that?” And try to ask that in a very neutral kind of way.
And then maybe it can turn out that one party needs sunlight to grow their garden close to the fence line. And the other party needs some protection against wandering dogs coming across their property. While behind the issue, they’re complaining about the fence, its size, its positioning, are some unmet needs or the interests. And these are things that if we can discover, we end up with more fertile ground for them developing a compromise solution.
Because then instead of the negotiation on the fence line example being about where is the fence, how tall it is, what kind of materials. The negotiation can shift to, “How do we protect your property from the dogs? How do we create an opportunity for you to grow your garden?”
And those negotiations tend to be a lot more productive and fundamentally more sustainable because people are getting their needs met instead of just getting their issues attended to.
Stephanie: And is that different than what can happen in a court? In that way it seems like in courts that it’s about the fence height. It’s about the location of the fence. It’s not necessarily about meeting needs.
Michael: It becomes more about abstractions like justice and the law, and less about what the people really need.
Mike: So, you are correct, Michael, that in a court it is really about those abstractions you’re talking about. And it’s somebody sitting in a seat of justice, a seat of judgment and making decisions. The first thing a judge will hang his or her hat on is what’s the law say, and what does justice tell us is the appropriate decision, given that law?
The second thing that will happen is if it’s unclear or the judge is frustrated, they will say, “I can’t make everybody happy here. So, I’m just going to decide and you can have to live with it.” So it’s a declarative outcome.
A second approach judges will frequently take is a ‘split the difference’ approach. So yes, I hear both sides of your argument, but nobody is going to get everything they want. So I’m going to give you this, and I’m going to give you that the two different people have different things, and you have to live with that.
So, it’s either somebody wins, loses, or you split the difference, tends to be the most, soft decisions that come out of a court.
Michael: And my assumption is, Mike, that mediation takes longer but is much more sustainable in terms of the result.
Mike: I know, as my loving wife says, “Mike, please avoid clichés like the plague.” The one that’s appropriate here with your observation is it’s really a testament to the value and the accuracy of the cliché, “go slow, to go fast.”
And so, mediation takes more time because you need to slow the process down. People have come to the conflict, and they’ve got a head of steam up because they’ve been fighting sometimes for a couple of years, over this issue. And so, they got a lot of stuff on their chests that they want to get off and a lot of heartache. And they’ve got a lot of rehearsal of who the bad guy and the good guy is in that story.
And so, it takes a long time to start unraveling that history and back up a step or two, and have that conversation about, well, to despite the history of what are your needs here? A very common question I like to ask that seems to be a way to nudge that process forward is to ask them a question.
I’ll preface the question with an observation that’s usually some form of, “I appreciate the history that you have shared with me, and understand that you both have these – your own histories that have had a huge impact on you. There’s not probably very much I can do to go back and correct and adjust that history. But what we can do is to talk about what the next step is going forward that will make your situation better. So, can we talk about what might come next to help you guys?”
What we’re doing when we do that is we’re hopefully validating that the history is – their personal histories are true to them, but we’re acknowledging that we can’t go back and renegotiate old history. And then so until that point, the participants or the clients have been living in the history just telling it in front of you in the mediation room.
When you ask a question like that, “What is the next step you could take that you both can agree to,” they’re casting their thinking forward into the future. And that is a transformation moment in most mediations. When people quit talking about the history and start brainstorming and thinking and creating ideas about what a different future might look like, then the mediator can latch on to that and then have them negotiate. Well, what does that look like? Who’s going to do what? Who’s going to pay what? All those questions become legitimate at that point because you’re deciding about, and you’re making possible that new future they’ve just defined together.
Stephanie: That’s beautiful. Something that comes up for me is – in our work in nonviolence, what we really try to prioritize are human relationships. And that that sense of when violence takes place, what is broken is our relationships in that process. And even beyond, you know, the hurt of the object broken or some kind of issue. The biggest problem is that our relationship seems that it’s been fundamentally hurt in some way. Can you speak to how that influences your work?
Mike: Yeah, definitely. Relationships are key to making forward progress, even in a mediation where we’re doing a lot with all of these facilitation tools. Because anything that’s going to work for the future is going to require a relationship that the parties have that’s going to outlive the current debate.
So, you’re always thinking about and trying to probe what’s gone wrong in the relationship, and what can they agree to to either give themselves permission to let go of that and create a new relationship or do some retrofitting on their own. And often apologies are very common. Tears are very common, especially in the more emotional mediations.
And then one, you get people to have an opportunity to let their emotions about relationships show in the mediation room. The other party can see and hear, hopefully with a more empathetic frame of mind and empathetic set of eyes, that the other party is just a person too. And they’re going through all the same, emotions that I’m going through. And we have not done a good job of attending to those relationships. So, a good part of the mediation outcome is, is helping folks attend to their relationships and relationship’s reconstruction.
Now, what we don’t do, especially in the facilitative, transformative mediation that I like to do, is offer counseling or other kinds of services that are met to fix their problem. What we are trying to do is bring those to the surface, legitimize it, that everybody has a story, and that story has had their own impact on them. And get acknowledgment, hopefully empathetic acknowledgment, that there has been this impact back and forth across the mediation table. And the question is, what is a new way to manage that and not let that dysfunction that you lived with in the past go forward into the future?
Michael: What you were just saying, Mike, reminded me of an extreme example we know about with a Palestinian friend that we’ve got in our film. His brother was murdered. So, this is not just the neighborhood fence, you know. And it was poisoning him until he encountered some Israelis who had also lost family members. And he said, “They were crying with the same color tears that we have in his home.” And that that really touched him and created the space for renegotiating relationships.
Mike: Yeah. How impactful that phrase, he came up with crying with the same colored tears. And that is a horrible situation that’s occurring now. But it is a very pointed example of this whole difference between issues and interests.
So, the issues going in and our blame about, in this case, the killing of a family member. And the underlying interest people have is wanting acknowledgment about that, perhaps, and I’m speculating here, but they want it acknowledged that this has had that kind of an impact on me.
I didn’t hear that that interview that you’re talking about, but I would speculate that both parties, the Palestinian friend and the Israelis that he was talking to, want some kind of cessation so that pain doesn’t go into the future. So, that’s an underlying and shared interest that they have. So, the history is going to be hard to renegotiate and all of that.
But the future about how we avoid this kind of tragedy in the future is more negotiable. You can talk about how to manage a conflict zone. You can talk about kernels of peace development in communities first, and then cities, and then, you know, just building up peace from a small seed to a more manageable governmental kind of size.
So, I’m thinking you’re telling a story that’s a fairly clear, albeit tragic, reflection on what the difference between issues are and interests.
Stephanie: You responded to that so beautifully. I bet people come in with a lot of doubts and leave transformed in some way. And so, how do you address those doubts at the beginning that, you know, through this process, we probably can we humanize each other, find our interests and resolve this in some way that’s going to feel good to you?
Mike: Yes, I can. And your observation is accurate. People come to the mediation thinking the fight is continuing. And in fact, it really is. And so, they come in – and you’re inviting them into a new space, a new process for most people. Because, you know, we can define the mediation term, and we can give them a description of what the whole process is going to look like. But they show up still not understanding what it is and what it’s intended to do.
So, skepticism on the party’s part is very common. And they come in wondering, is this going to work for me? And so, the unraveling of that is, again, a lot of preventive work up front before they even come to the mediation room, trying to explain the process and how it works and what their behavior needs to be to make it successful.
And then when they come to the mediation – so I’m giving you mediator skills here – when they come to the mediation room, you repeat a lot of that. So, they hear it at least twice. That this is the process, this is how it works, this is what it takes to make it work, those kinds of things.
And then we have a model. Most mediators use a fairly standard model, at least in Western cultures, of a series of steps that people are taken through, and that the mediator facilitates. Now it’s a very highly structured model, but it also is a very friendly, conversational, warm kind of model.
So, it’s not you have to do these steps. But we are taking people through steps that are meant to let them tell their story. So, you get that out on the table, and we come back to the opportunities we just talked about for empathetic understanding of one another’s situation.
So, they tell their stories. That gives the parties a chance to hear the story from the other party’s perspective. Gives you, as a mediator, a chance to learn what the details are. So, it’s a big learning moment in the mediation conversation.
Then the next step we take people to, generally speaking, is we feed back what we heard from these people because they need to hear that somebody hears them. And so, that offers a really helpful moment in the model because person A talks to me and I feed back what they’ve heard, they feel acknowledged. But the other person hears a neutral third party, me, saying the same thing. So, the new the other party is hearing it for the third time, often, that there’s humanity on the other side of the table.
Then we take them into a process of building a discussion agenda, the neutrally worded list of topics that if they had a conversation about them, they could make their world better. And it’s usually topics that we try to put names on that are not only neutrally worded, but talk to the underlying interests, going back to our definition, that we have.
And those are things like, that would show up on the agenda, are things like safety, security, like financial security, emotional calm. People need to feel that their relationship with the other person is going to be calm. Those kinds of things are what we hopefully can get down on an agenda.
Then we have the parties actually turn to one another and pick issues off of that agenda and negotiate a solution with our help. And at this point, we typically give them a bit of training about what collaborative negotiation looks like. So, they’re not just on their own. They’re doing that work with coaching from people who have helped other folks do this.
And then we come to a more formal end to the whole process where they make their agreements, and often we’ll write those down. Very commonly, we’ll write those down. Because the agreement that has any chance of being durable, three factors, actually to making a durable agreement.
One is they showed up in good faith. So, you’re always testing that they are there in good faith in negotiating. The second is your process works. So, it’s felt by the other parties to be something that works for them and that there are agreements that have a future to them. And those typically are things that need to be written down, even if it’s just an informal checklist so people don’t forget.
Michael: Do you find, like sometimes, that parties come in very head up about an issue, but what’s really going on is self-respect? They feel disrespected and when they get their self-respect back, suddenly the issue is very easy to negotiate.
Mike: Yeah, that’s a real common transformation. For me, the common lead in to that is people feeling hurt and acknowledged.
And so, if they can sense, hey, I’m not crazy because I have these thoughts because at least somebody in the room, the neutral mediator, says that he or she gets it. They understand where I’m coming from. Then that gives them permission to give themselves back some self-respect instead of having it come from the party they’re fighting with, necessarily.
The ultimate achievement is when the other party can hear that and say, “Gosh, I really didn’t mean to be disrespectful.” I did a mediation just last week, and that was the case. The two people who work for one of the largest cities here in Washington state where I live. And it’s been a two-year dispute between these people.
And they came to the mediation. They didn’t know what it was about. They didn’t know if it could meet their needs. And so, they came in thinking, this is a normal negotiation that they do all the time in their business life. We’re going to make trades. We’re going to give this to get that. It’s going to be a quid pro trading. All of that kind of give and take.
And we slowed the process down as mediators. And said, “Well, why don’t you talk about what this kind of personal impact this has had on you?” And all of a sudden, the business side of the conversation was put on hold. And they started talking about their fears, their apprehensions, their dislikes of what was going on in the workplace, how those dislikes impacted them.
And before the two-hour session was done, there were hugs and handshakes, and a few tears before it was done. And this is a business setting. These are pretty technical, hard-core business people who never even came close to accessing that personal impact that you’re talking about, Michael.
And when they could do that, then they felt heard, understood, and respected for their point of view. And when that acknowledgment came back and forth across the table, the barriers just started to float away. And we didn’t have to do too much work at that point, as mediators because they were then invested in what does it take to make a decision. So, we preserve that relationship that we’ve just started to build? It was a really transformative moment.
Stephanie: Are you familiar with restorative justice?
Mike: In my context, I have an appreciation from listening to some of your shows, that that is a topic you guys think about and work with a lot. In my world, which is not global conflict like you guys talk about. We’re talking about community mediation here. Yes, we are, but it’s got a little narrower connotation for us. Which is restorative justice when there’s been a crime committed.
So, the judge will be adjudicating an issue and get some intuition or request that there might be a way for the perpetrator of the crime and the victim of the crime to come together and figure out what might be a solution that not only attends to what the legal requirements are, but also what the future for these people can be, or should be, even if it’s an agreement to separate in some form.
And that almost always, in our case, because of the way our dispute resolution center gets its caseload, is between a teenager and an adult. And the teenager does some kind of crime, like damaging somebody’s car or stealing some property or, you know, doing those kinds of things.
And so, the mediation is between usually a teenager, mostly males, and, unfortunately, a lot of elders because they seem to be easier victims, but adults in particular. And we do restorative justice at usually the judge’s direction. They come to mediation and give it a try.
So, we’re trying to figure out, not what the law is and not what the judge should decide, because he or she is going to apportion punishment, whether it’s fines or jail time or whatever that might look like.
But the judge is hoping, and if we’re lucky, we can get the parties to say, “Despite what you have to do as a judge because of your judicial responsibility about a crime being committed here, we, the victim and the perpetrator, have some other things we would like you to do because we want to invest in some kind of restorative solution here that can work for everybody.”
And they’ll proffer some ideas about that. Which is usually the perpetrators agreeing to meet in an informal way, once a week, once a month, whatever that looks like, have a third-party go between that they can call if they’re frustrated with the other party so that somebody can do a little shuttle mediation for them. Commitment to come back to formal mediation if it needs to happen.
So, there’s sort of those two sides to what we think about as restorative justice. One is not get in the way of the judge. But the other is what else can happen, in a restorative sense, to make the likelihood of a future relationship between these people something that’s possible.
Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. And it comes up for me, the limitations of mediation. If you feel like there are any. With Michael and I for nonviolence, I mean we are all in. So, we think that nonviolence can solve every single problem that is in the world today if used, you know, through right methods and practice and tools, and you know, and mediation.
Michael: And good faith.
Stephanie: Yeah. So, and we like having that conversation a lot. But what do you do about mediations between places where there could be, you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse, interpersonal dynamics that where, somebody’s at continued risk of violence or abuse.
Mike: We divide that issue up. So, in front of any mediation is a fairly extensive case development by people who are pretty expert, or very expert, at doing an intake process to decide is the solution mediatable? Is there a possibility that mediation can be helpful? And those issues where it’s not, then they’re excluded from an opportunity to mediate and their relegated back to whatever form is appropriate.
They never just turn the parties loose when they have to say no to mediation, but they give them some other place to go. Either back to court or back to counseling or whatever that might look like.
However, the bigger share of the cases are mediatable, so they’re taken on board. And then the issue is handed off to the mediators. And in our model, there’s always two mediators in the room so I don’t have to think up all the stuff myself. If I get lost in the debate, there’s a co-mediator in the room that can help me if I stumble, or I’m not quite tracking the way they think I should.
So, there’s two of us thinking about the same question, what do we do next? And if there are irreconcilable differences, especially irreconcilable differences that impinge on issues that present personal safety risk to people, then we need to make another decision at that point. Does the issue remain mediatable? And so, we will continue with the mediation, or is it not?
So, we will end the mediation if we don’t think that, say, one of the party who has a history of violence doesn’t look like they are willing to stick to an agreement of some sort. We don’t go and try to fix that. We acknowledge our skill set comes in front of that sort of having to call it quits and relegate it back to someplace else, somebody who’s got major authority to insure, in this case, say, personal safety.
If, after having made that judgment, we think the issue can be mediatable, then we take them into a laundry list of what behaviors we encourage people to negotiate that will ensure safety.
The situation I get into when I’m negotiating trust, when trust has been broken between people. Irreconcilable differences around safety issues and trust are not something you can really negotiate. But what you can negotiate are what those new behaviors are. So, what we do, and I have a personal list of questions and a checklist I use when things are that difficult in a mediation, and I get the parties to talk about them.
So, what does it mean to provide safety for one another? So, what is it you’re willing to give? If that doesn’t work, then how does the other party implement something that will ensure their safety? So, you take the elephant in the room. When we’re using safety as an example here, and you name it. “Sounds like the thing that’s going to hold you guys back in the future is that you don’t feel safe talking to one another. Well, what can be done about that? How are you guys going to manage that? What are the techniques and the decisions and the compromises and the commitments you’re willing to make one another to ensure safety.”
And we try to create a checklist of what those look like that’ll work for the parties. And then I’m pretty cautious about those because, you know, that’s difficult territory that you’re trying to mediate in. And so, I almost, almost always call a caucus near the end of the process when the agreement looks like it’s coming together. And I get the parties in separate rooms. And especially for the party that feels most at risk, I have a private conversation and ask them, “Is this going to work for you? Are you really comfortable agreeing to these sets of steps?”
So, I’m trying to get free will agreement, but creating a safe environment for them to say, “Yes, we have this conversation in the open mediation system, but I still don’t feel safe, and I’m not comfortable agreeing to the things we’ve just talked about.” And I, as a mediator, have basically the permission from one party to call off the mediation and say, “We did good work, but it’s just not right. I’m going to suspend the mediation and send you guys back to whomever, the court, or whatever it might be. But mediation is an option for you to use in the future. I and other mediators would be here to help you if we can.”
So, I hope I’ve been responsive to your question. When there are differences, like a history of sexual abuse or violence or those kinds of things, it’s a very stair-stepped process where you’re constantly checking in. Is this thing appropriate for mediation? And then when you get to the end of it, you do some sort of fail-safe check-back, especially with the weakest party, and get them to agree, “Yeah, I’m willing to take a risk and give this a chance.”
Michael: Yeah. I was wondering – by the way, this is fascinating. Very informative for us. I was wondering what relationship you professionally have, if any, with nonviolent communication.
Mike: I’ve een through the several trainings about it. And it’s an element in the training that we get as mediators. But I can’t say I’m very conversant with it. And I don’t think I am competent to try to do much of any kind of a detailed intersection between nonviolent communication and what we try to do using the mediation model that I work under. I just don’t feel fully informed about nonviolent communication well enough to help with that.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michael: Yes, but it sounds to me like you’re actually doing it, whether you name it or not.
Mike: Okay. Maybe I better go back and read the book again.
Stephanie: We don’t we don’t particularly teach nonviolent communication either. But obviously, communication is key to mediation. You are opening up, communication between parties within themselves to understand what their real needs are. And between parties as well, in terms of being able to have a safe space to communicate, which can be very scary when you’re in conflict.
Mike: Oh, definitely. Yeah. And communication is the pathway to the future. It’s the roadmap. It’s the trail. It’s the way people get into the future. Because they’re communicating now, because of you, because of a forced process as a mediator.
So, they’re in the room together. They’ve agreed to be there voluntarily. And we’ve got this model we’re implementing. So, they’re communicating by force, albeit gentle, and it’s voluntarily, and you know, it’s comfortably managed for people so they feel safe, but it isn’t going to work unless they can maintain some kind of communication in the future because likelihood is they’re going to have a relationship in the future of some sort.
Now, occasionally there will be a mediation where the parties just agree to separate. So, I like the dissolution of a business, for example. That’s pretty cut and dry. People can go their own ways, and they don’t have to interact. But the dissolution of a marriage, for example, the resolution of a neighborhood dispute, fixing the problem that a church might be having inside of its congregation. Those are all environments where people are going to have these future relationships, and communication is the pathway into the future and the way forward for resolving future disputes.
Another cliché, now I like to teach when I’m given the opportunity to teach conflict resolution skills to new mediators, is that conflict always happens. And the question is how do you manage it? And so, getting people to the stage where you can – getting into the weeds here of what mediator communication skills look like.
But a really common communication skill we use is something called normalizing, where you take the thing that is icky and messy and uncomfortable for people, and you normalize it, that it’s something everybody experiences. And so, what we’re doing is normalizing the fact for now in the mediation room and for the future in their relationship without us, conflict happens. It’s just normal to have it.
And the question is, how can you constructively manage it? So, I’d like to leave people with that thought as often as I can possibly squeeze that in to training or the mediations.
Michael: The mantra that we often use in our field is, “Conflict is inevitable, violence is not.”
Mike: Yeah, very much.
Stephanie: I want to talk about this idea of neutrality, the importance of neutrality in mediation.
Mike: So, in terms of us being mediators who’ve gone through a fair amount of training and practicum where we have to practice the skills, working as an apprentice mediator under somebody who’s more experienced. If all of that training and experience, it’s just absolutely drilled into you that you have to be a mediator, a neutral mediator, and that’s part of the part of the culture as well as all of this training, saying that it’s just not going to work unless you do that.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Dispute Resolution Centers in the United States anyway, where I know more about it, have asked certain mediators to exit their Dispute Resolution Centers because they were unable to maintain a neutral stance. So, there’s a certain amount of policing internally to make sure that people are behaving in that kind of a direction.
So, if you think about, “Well, who can I turn to for neutrality?” It is not in your normal communities. Might be able to get it from some really specialized people, like clergy in a community that perform a lot of informal meditative jobs as part of their management of their diocese or their flock or whatever that might look like.
But by and large, people who want to be helpful third parties have not had that training, have not had that acculturation, have not had that practice at trying to stay neutral. So, when you move into formal mediation, you’re moving into an arena where that is pretty well drummed into, and you’ve been forced to practice it and live it for a long time.
Now, when we’re in the mediations, we mediators have our own problems with maintaining neutrality because we’re people and our buttons can get pushed. In our model in the Dispute Resolution Center where I volunteer, we always have two mediators in the room. So, one of the things we look out for is the neutrality of the other mediator. Never turns out to be really a significant kind of problem, but it’ll be there.
Telling on myself a little bit, I did a mediation between a separating couple in an alternative sex relationship. And look at me, look at my age, you know, getting up close to 80 now, and a privileged white person in our society, I used some inappropriate terminology that implied non-neutrality for people with different sexual orientations.
And right there, Stephanie, my co-mediator, I’ll make a little noise here with my microphone, she went bam and jumped right in and didn’t let the parties react to that. She turned to me and said, “Mike, I’m a little uncomfortable with the language you’ve just used there. Can we talk about how you get your answer met in a way that might be heard by our colleagues and our clients here, in a way that seems more neutral to them?”
All of a sudden, the red flags went up in my brain that I had slipped into some stereotyping and some little too casual use of language. But I had the fail-safe of a partner in the room, and she was quite skilled, being able to turn and mediate me at that point and to change my mediation style. So, that helped the clients.
So, it’s a setting, it’s the training, and acculturation to ensure neutrality. And it’s not expecting it from people who are third parties in your normal work environment. Because they want to do good, and they want to be helpful, but they are not in a good space to remain neutral because the probability is they know you and like you. And so, there’s going to be an implicit bias that they have to be more helpful to you, without thinking about the other person in any kind of instinctive sort of way. So, it’s a real balancing act to make sure we do that.
Stephanie: And it’s just interesting as somebody who is sometimes in conflict, like other people, that sometimes you want somebody to be on your side though too, you know?
Mike: Yeah. Well, not necessarily. I mean, we all need these sounding boards and you need a sounding board who listens to your side of the story and says, “Yeah, you’re not crazy.” So, we need that kind of assurance because one of the dysfunctional phenomenon that can happen is, especially in mediations where there’s a power differential between the people, that the person who has less power gets into self-doubt about the legitimacy of their concerns and their needs, and about their ability to articulate and be an advocate for their own needs.
So, we all need that support from our communities. What you don’t need is that in the mediation room because that party is playing a balancing act to make sure it stays neutral. And so, we’re trying to be very careful to be that neutral force in the room that can hear with a little different set of ears about what is going on in the mediation and that the words coming out of our mouth are neutral.
Guaranteed, we get plenty of requests from the clients asking us to not be neutral and agree with them. And so, we are frequently turning that back to them in a kind, hopefully, and respectful and supportive kind of way, saying, “Well, thanks for sharing that with me, but my role here,” so you tell them what your role is again.
“And what’s really important is for the other person to hear what’s going on for you. So, would you mind telling your story so that we all can hear it, including your colleague in the room here, to get a deeper understanding of where you’re coming from on this issue?” So you send it back to them to advocate for themselves and telling their own story.
In the mediation world where I live and work, and especially in the community of mediators that I work with, we have another cliché. And that cliché is, “Trust the process.” And so, what you’re doing is you’re putting your faith in the process that you have puzzled out is the right way to proceed in this whole broad spectrum of situations that come up. And your role is to implement that process, not make judgments for other people.
So, my encouragement is, if you’ve got a process that you think is viable and workable and creates lasting positive impact, trust the process.
Stephanie: Hey everybody. You’re here at Nonviolence Radio and we were just speaking with Mike Fraidenburg about the power of mediation, how it works, and his recent book with Terry Teale, “The Art of Mediation. Key skills for new mediators.” You can lean more about this book at theartofmediation.org.
Let’s turn now to some positive nonviolence news, what’s happening out in the world of nonviolence with the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
Michael: Greetings, everyone. This is the nonviolence report for the middle of April. And the question on all of our minds is probably, is there nonviolence is going on in Gaza, and could there be? It seems like there are some episodes, some projects, some efforts. And of course, what usually happens in these cases is when the war is all over, it will come out because reporters are not there looking for nonviolence. That only becomes the privilege of nonviolence people, who will go around and get stories that were not known at the time.
But anyway, here’s what we know now. There is an audacious project underway. It should be reaching Gaza soon. It’s called US Boat to Gaza. It’s coordinated by Nonviolence International, in Washington, DC. They are ships, in mid-April, right now, which is part of a Gaza flotilla to break the illegal naval blockade of Gaza and stop the criminal starvation of Gaza. Which and I could not agree with more.
And you can apply to the flotilla or make donations at Nonviolence International. There’s a bit of trepidation here because, if you remember, the earlier attempt for a flotilla for that very purpose was thwarted by Israeli commandos and there was a fatality. So nonviolence also has its risks. And nonviolence also demands courage, perhaps even more than military action, as Gandhi often pointed out.
Still, looking at Gaza, there is an excellent ten-page concept note that Mel Duncan has written for – well, actually not for, but in the context of Nonviolent Peaceforce. It’s now revised, and it’s been presented to contacts in Palestine, primarily through Sami Awad in Bethlehem.
So it’s really quite comprehensive. And so, just to give you one example, there is the question of checkpoint abuse. And this is a quote from the report. “Respondents consistently reported that UCP activity,” that’s Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping activity, “has diminished violence from soldiers, settlers, and actually from Palestinians.” So, as we speak, Nonviolent Peaceforce is establishing teams in the West Bank. And when these teams get established, they could serve as a staging ground for teams to go to Gaza when the opportunity arises.
They have been invited by Palestinians who are dedicated to nonviolence. And you may remember that that is a standard protocol for nonviolent intervention. We do not like to intervene spontaneously. We have to be invited by somebody on the ground.
Now, there’s been a project going on for a long time called “Run the Wall 2024”. It’s an event that stands for solidarity, Palestinian rights, and demands an end to Israel’s war on Gaza. It started back in 2021. One of the partner organizations was Amos Trust, and some other Palestinian partners in something called the Right to Movement. That happened when the Palestinian marathon was canceled because of COVID-19, and it has since become an annual event.
So, interesting. This is, again, a question of something which is a – you might call it a symbolic protest. It’s a rally. It’s an expression of support, but it is not a direct question of civil disobedience. So it has it’s it has its role.
Now, there’s other news concerning Israel and the United States. There’s a very bold project from World BEYOND War. And they say that it’s time to begin a conversation about using boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, the famous BDS, to bring the US government into a global community of law-abiding nations. So the tagline is, ‘BDS The
US’. I don’t know what kind of traction it can get or what kind of emphasis it will have, exactly. But, it is interesting that people are starting to look at BDS against this very country.
Now, Nonviolence International, again, has just welcomed its first Israeli fiscal partner called The Villages Group, [Hebrew], in Hebrew. Which supports Palestinians community resilience by fostering long-term relationships and partnerships, expressing solidarity, and responding to community’s needs. This certainly is an ongoing trend, which I think we should all welcome, that is the trend of getting out of our silos and into coalitions. It’s bound to make us more effective in the long run.
Some of this is repetitive, but I want to offer some homage to three greats who have recently passed. They are representing the New Story Project and anti-nuclear activists, and other things. They are Johan Galtung, who really is kind of a founder of Peace Research. He passed at the age of 93 recently. And you can look at his website called Transcend.org.
The other is, someone whom I became close with in the context of working on our film, The Third Harmony. And that’s Frans de Waal, the Dutch primatologist who did so much to overthrow the old theory of ‘nature read in tooth and claw.’ And of course, finally, let me mention again a dear friend, Daniel Ellsberg. And there’s going to be a ‘Daniel Ellsberg week’ from June 10th to June 16th. And they’re planning a lot of events.
Moving on a bit, Utah Senator Robert Steiner, wrote an article in Fellowship Magazine, that’s the magazine of Fellowship of Reconciliation. I want to share a quote from, Senator Steiner, quote, “Finally, we are desperate enough now to recognize that we cannot overcome this power,” he’s talking about the power of the gun lobby, “on our own. I think that we must more often say out loud that our undue protection of gun rights is itself modern idolatry; that it is disordered and wrong.” I really want to, this is me speaking now, I really want to bring out that idea of idolatry. I think it’s insightful. It’s helpful for us to think about it that way, and to reorient our projects against gun violence accordingly.
Senator Steiner goes on, “I think our faith leaders can raise awareness that exalting gun rights is wrong and needs correction. We need help from above.” Unquote. In this connection, the next Guns to Gardens days are going to be June 1 to 2 and June 8 to 9. So, I can imagine billboards instead of saying, “got milk?” You know, they might say, “got weapons?” And give you a chance to turn them in. I think, again, that’s, in a way, just symbolic. It deals only with the technology of violence. But it has its role. It has its role.
If someone can bring themselves to renounce a weapon and to transform it into something useful for life, namely a garden, I think it’s not only – it is a powerful symbol, but not only an empty symbol. It’s very real once you’ve really got that weapon involved. So that’s the way nonviolence can really be done.
I want to mention, if I may, two little contributions of my own. I gave a talk recently for the Beatitudes Center that I think was very good. And in it, I made a little contribution to the language of peace.
Now, we’ve all heard about the Sixth Extinction that may happen because of climate change if we don’t correct course. But I use that term to talk about the sixth rediscovery. According to Geoffrey Nuttall‘s important little book, Christian Pacifism in History, the fact that Jesus was nonviolent has been rediscovered five times in history leading up to the present. The final of those five, I think, in Nuttall’s book, was the Quaker movement.
I think that there’s a big movement happening now. We recently saw a meeting at the Vatican to support this, to rediscover the fact that Jesus was, in fact, in favor of nonviolence. That could have important repercussions, for example, for people who are part of a – violent movement within Christianity. I’ll just put it that way. So on to the sixth rediscovery.
And this is from The Peace Alliance, finally. They say they are continuing to observe the season for nonviolence by meeting with congressional offices to dialog about transforming our culture from one of violence to one of peace. I mean, that is a big project and desperately needed. And they’re asking members of Congress to co-sponsor a bill that will create a cabinet level Department of Peacebuilding. The bill is, H.R.1111. And, they have a growing list of congressional offices that they’re going to visit, starting with 16, at present.
I just want to point out that this effort to create a cabinet level Department of Peace goes back to the early years of the founding of the United States of America. It happens again and again. It has led to, a kind of institution in Washington. The Department of Peace, which was a good step in the right direction, but left some things to be desired. So, let’s hope this final push will carry us over the finish line.
Thank you for listening, and I look forward to sharing more of the world’s nonviolence news with you in our next program.
Stephanie: You’ve been listening to Nonviolence Radio. We want to thank our guest today, Mike Fraidenburg for talking to us about mediation. And for you, our listeners, remember you can find out more about mediation and his work at theartofmediation.org. We want to thank our mother station, KWMR to Matt and Robin Watrous, Annie Hewitt, Sophia Pechaty, thanks for making this show possible. To Bryan Farrell over at Waging Nonviolence, thank you for syndication the show also. To our friends across the Pacifica network, thank you for sharing the show.
Now to you our listeners, if you want to learn more about nonviolence please us at MettaCenter.org. And you can find more about our show at NonviolenceRadio.org, or listen to other episodes at all the places that podcasts are shared, including iTunes, Spotify, whathaveyou. And until the next time, as we say, please take care of one another.