The following is part of my 2006-2007 blog to book project that ultimately became Making Mediation Your Day Job.
If you’ve read Bernie Mayer’s Beyond Neutrality: Confronting the Crisis in Conflict Resolution, then you know Bernie makes a strong case that mediators and other ADR practitioners must expand our thinking about what we do and how we do it. If you haven’t read it yet, get it on your list now, because you’ll want this information and the hard questions he asks to be part of your business-building preparation.
Bernie’s rich and provocative book raises two issues that are directly relevant here. He notes that we’re a supply-driven field which hasn’t, for the most part, successfully engaged the public’s interest or consciousness. We haven’t been meaningfully included in some of the most important conflicts of our time and are too frequently left outside of conflicts even in our own communities.
Many more people want to act as conflict resolvers than to use conflict resolution services. The interest people have shown in becoming mediators, facilitators, or dispute system designers has continued to outpace the interest of the public in using these services. – Bernard Mayer, Beyond Neutrality
He proposes that we have become over-committed to neutrality and resolution, and have failed to understand the public’s suspicion of or disinterest in these tenets. He argues that we should be framing our work—both for ourselves and certainly for the public—as conflict engagement.
If we can genuinely liberate ourselves in all that we do from this resolution bias—that is, from the automatic assumption that our role is to bring about resolution—and instead see our role as helping people engage constructively all phases of the conflict process, then our ability to have a constructive impact on conflict will dramatically increase. – Bernard Mayer, Beyond Neutrality
Bernie’s right. When I look at mediators with truly healthy practices, I see that they reflect just this kind of thinking in the services and approaches they use. They embrace the idea of engagement, both as practitioners and business owners.
From a marketing standpoint, Bernie’s message is important. Engagement is critical not just for the services you offer but for how you offer those services in an increasingly wired world and a world that’s growing skeptical of traditional marketing techniques.
A couple of thoughts about this. One small point is that referring to Bernie initially as "Bernie" rather than Bernard when giving the title of the book seems a tad informal, and subsequently as "Bernie" rather than "Mayer" continues that. We who have studied his work all want to take him to heart and refer to him, either appreciatively or dismissively (since he did, after all, turn our worlds upside-down–the rat), as "Bernie," but I wonder if that is right.
The other is that this section seems a little classroom-ish, which seems an odd criticism since I just said he should be referred to more formally. I know that Mayer brought up ideas that hadn't been talked about out in the open before, but I'm wondering if there isn't a way for you to start with what you think and bring Bernie up in ways to support it, rather than starting with him and saying how you agree with him. It is probably dicey, since you want to credit the original thinking, but I think it would be worth considering to think about starting from your vision and citing him as someone who thinks similarly. Though I would hate to dilute your perfect selection and analysis of the quotes from the book.
So I'm being contradictory again. But these are just thoughts I'm throwing out–if you've considered them before and dismissed them, you know what to do with these!
I love these comments, Judy! I really wrestled with how to refer to Bernie in the book. Easy on a blog—he'd be Bernie. A book seems to call for something more formal, yet my style tends toward the informal. Every time I typed Mayer or Bernard, it just seemed stilted and more like writing for an academic journal than a book in which I'm attempting to create dialogue. Hmmm…I'll have to continue pondering this one and see what others think, too.
Your set of thoughts on sequence really makes me think, so thanks for that. Many of the thoughts I wrote about I had before Beyond Neutrality was born, yet writing about them now seems a natural outgrowth of that book. Your feedback brings me back to re-thinking that decision some more.