Frequently asked questions

I began mediating when I was a dean of students and faculty member at a private women’s college, as a necessary part of my work. I’d earned an undergrad degree in world literature (Middlebury College) and master’s and doctoral degrees in higher ed leadership (The University of Vermont). My dissertation work focused on human behavior change.

As I started to get more requests for help from other sectors of the campus and the president, then from other institutions, I realized I had a knack for conflict resolution and decided to take a course in mediation. That basic mediation course ultimately led to me resigning what was by then a vice presidency, enrolling full-time in a year-long, 500-hour post-bac certificate in mediation and conflict management, and using that year also to begin building my private practice.

I launched my full-time private practice in 1997 and later became a core faculty member and curriculum designer in Woodbury College’s nationally recognized graduate program in Mediation & Applied Conflict Studies. I have guest-lectured on mediation, negotiation, conflict resolution and mediation marketing at other institutions, including UMass Boston’s doctoral program in higher education and a non-credit course for UConn, and now serve on the adjunct graduate faculty at Lipscomb University’s Institute for Conflict Management.

It’s always lovely to hear from folks who see me as a good resource. And I’m grateful for each and every one of you who has bought my book (for which I earn a royalty of a couple of bucks, by the way). While I’m not able to offer free consulting by phone or email, I have recently created a new online discussion forum where you’re welcome to post questions and comments; there’s even a section for those of you who’ve read my book. You can find it here: Conflict Zen Commons.

• Get really good training. Skip the trainers that primarily teach via lecture and demo — mediation isn’t a spectator sport. When you see a good mediator at work it looks simple. That’s because we’re good. It’s an entirely different story to have something useful come out of your own mouth in the heat of the moment. Choose trainers who have been and remain successful practitioners, and who teach with roleplays and real engagement. If you have to travel a bit to get better training, go as far as you need to and your wallet will allow. Poorly prepared mediators drag the entire field down.
• Get more than 40 hours. A lot more. I’m unapologetic in my belief that really good mediators need more than a workweek of instruction. I’ve taught and trained mediators from every imaginable background for over a decade and few can mediate their way out of a cardboard box in 40 hours or less. That includes you, too, attorneys. We don’t call it basic mediation for nothing.
• Stop relying on panels and rosters to build a practice. I wrote a lot more about this in my book, so I’ll leave it this way here: Rosters pay pathetically and don’t have nearly the number of cases needed to sustain all the mediators who want a piece of the pie. Rosters are a lazy marketer’s crutch (gee, I must have been in a particularly snarky mood when I wrote this section).
• Start thinking of yourself as a businessperson as well as a mediator. You’ll need to be both to make a living at it unless you’re a trust fund baby.
• Look for under-served markets and places where there’s demand for people with good human relations, conflict engagement and problem-solving skills. Stop selling a single process and start unbundling and rebundling your skills in new ways. I say much more about this in the book, too.

Yes. How do I know this globally, without knowing your particular background? Because I’ve trained thousands of mediators at the basic, advanced and master’s level and I’ve seen terrific mediators who started professional life as horse trainers, realtors, anesthesiologists, builders, teachers and moms. I’ve seen terrific mediators whose profession of origin was counselor and attorney; I’ve seen some truly awful mediators who hail from those professions, too.

While the flooding of attorneys into the mediation field is signaling to the public that the most common or acceptable background for a mediator is a legal degree, neither of those is true. It’s not about what you did before and in some cases, what you did before will blind you to what you don’t know or don’t do well yet.

Sometimes co-workers, family and friends will wake you to your potential skill as conflict resolutionary. I think the best way is to take a basic mediation course, particularly the kind I describe on this page, and then ask your instructor for honest feedback. If you’re taking a course from a credible instructor, and not one whose primary drive is to get you to enroll in more trainings, then this will be helpful, objective feedback. If you’ve got good potential, happy day! If you stink at it, yes, that’ll be painful to hear, but less painful than investing thousands of dollars and three years of your life to find out others aren’t captivated by your skill.

Mediators, like people in other fields, come in all temperaments and with myriad different talents.

I can comment on two programs with which I am familiar. I am sure there are other fine programs out there but I’ll restrict my opinions to those with which I have direct experience as a professor or guest. Both offer both basic mediation courses, certificates in dispute resolution, and master’s programs. I prefer to refrain from recommending (or not) programs or trainings with which I’m personally unfamiliar – not fair to you or them.

• Champlain College’s Woodbury Institute (formerly Woodbury College)
• Lipscomb University’s Institute for Conflict Management.

For a list of some other program out there, check out Mediate.com’s Academic Program list.

Well, me. If you’d like to know each time I announce a training, I recommend you subscribe to my blog. If you want a basic mediation training and don’t want to wait ’til I offer one, either tell me you want one now, dammit or head to Woodbury’s Basic Mediation Workshop — they do a top-notch one and I occasionally still co-teach it.

Here’s a post I wrote on mediator certification. I was feeling particularly New York blunt that day.

Here’s a post I wrote about setting your mediation fee, with a link to help you calculate your overhead costs if you’re new to private practice or haven’t yet had the chance to tally those. Here’s a link to a podcast I did on the topic of value-based mediation fees.

What I charge isn’t going to help you determine what you charge because I’ve been in the field successfully for quite a while and probably don’t have the same market you do. Sorry, telling you would just be feeding your voyeurism.