I recently finished co-teaching a basic mediation workshop I deliver about four times a year to people from many different backgrounds. In this most recent workshop, we had a social worker, several attorneys, a nurse practitioner, a teacher, a builder, two human resources directors, a college student, a human development trainer, and a long-retired World War II vet, among others. All were there because they had an interest in either becoming mediators or integrating dispute resolution skills into their professional work in some way.
On the first evening of the training we tell participants we really have just one rule: No advice giving. We tell them they can’t give disputing parties any advice or suggestions for resolving their problems because that’s something they already know how to do, perhaps a bit too well. No sense in coming to a training and just doing what you already know. We tell them we want to develop and stretch some new brain muscles and that we’ll spend the coming days teaching them other ways to approach problem-solving.
That single rule creates some real havoc for many of our participants. Over the four days we’re together, we usually hear responses like this, usually at the moment we stop a participant from solving someone else’s problem for them:
“But I know what those people should do! They can’t see it and I can. Why shouldn’t I just tell them?”
“It’s hard to stop giving advice when that’s what I’ve been paid to do for 20 years.”
“I don’t know what else to do instead! Advice-giving is like a crutch.”
“But it makes me feel powerful and helpful!”
I’m sure it does. For people who want to be helpful, making suggestions feels like a normal way to be of service. And I’m struck, after teaching mediation and conflict resolution for almost a decade, just how insidious a tool advice-giving is for many professionals and how skeptical some are that there might be another way to be helpful.
Here’s why, as a mediator, I refrain from listening to parties and then suggesting what they should do:
- It would be arrogant of me to assume I understand the complexities of their lives and minds sufficiently well to know that my advice is what’s best for them. They know themselves far better than I ever will.
- I could easily insult my clients. If it were such an easy or obvious solution that a mediator (or co-worker or boss) can see it, they probably wouldn’t be stuck in the conflict. Complex problems usually call for less obvious solutions.
- When I’m mediating (or when you’re supervising), I have power I can misuse, even inadvertently. It’s too easy for a participant to assume my expertise is best and to give up control to my ideas. People may say “yes” without fully considering the implications ‘til later. Or they may well know the implications, say yes anyway, and then the advice is ignored or avoided.
- Most of us, including me, tend to follow through better on ideas that are our own. Whether you call it buy-in or ownership, the chances of an agreement lasting are greater when a solution isn’t imposed.
- When I give advice, I risk becoming too enamored of my own creativity and brilliance. When I do that, I’ve started to make the mediation a platform for my own power and knowledge instead of a place for folks to tap into their own.
By the end of four days, our participants were starting to have some powerful light-bulb moments. Said one, on the last day: “Shining a light on a problem is a whole lot more elegant and effective than yelling through the darkness that they should just follow the sound of your voice.”
How can you shine a light for others?
A version of this article was originally published in my regular column for The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.
Thanks Tammy for writing it down so clearly.
I recognize myself in the advice giver. I have a very creative mind when it comes to problem solving. On top of that I switch to over-active every time people start yelling help (most of the time I think they are yelling help). The times I'm most successful in helping are the times I encourage them to do what they think is best. Generating ideas/options only seems to be helpful when asked for specifically.
Vincent, I love this! You're picking good time and place to use your best skills — that's great for you *and* the people around you.
Thanks for taking it back to the roots. Advice-giving – or at least sharing experience – is often part of how I support people, so I aim to be very disciplined about leaving it outside when I am doing conflict resolution work. I’d welcome your comments on the following situation, where my practise was not “pure”, but seemed to help.
My conflict coaching client spent some time exploring option A and option B. Option C was flashing like neon in my mind, but the client didn’t seem to see it. Eventually it was getting in the way of my listening, so I interjected: “Sorry to interrupt your train of thought, but is there a reason why you’re not looking at C?”
The Client said: “Well it has crossed my mind, but I dismissed it because I assumed the other party would find it unacceptable”
To me, it felt important that the client got nudged out of an assumption that might have limited her options – she said she found it valuable, too. I feel like I compromised a principle – but I wonder if that’s too pernickety.
Thanks, Tammy, for modelling what I aspire to.
Karen
Hi, Karen – Thank you for the kind words!
The situation you described is one of those fine-line situations. There are many mediators who wouldn’t blink an eye at what you did because that’s mostly what they do when they mediate — offer their own solutions. I think there’s something thats much harder — which you’re talking about — and yet much more powerful and elegant: Helping people solve their own problems. I say this as background for other folks who may be reading this exchange between us. I know from what you wrote that you already totally get the difference between the two and the value of the second!
The situation you described is the kind that gets newbie mediators in trouble because (a) it lets them off the hook for developing more advanced problem-solving skills, (b) may cultivate a white-knight attitude about the mediator’s role, and/or (c) they may like their own idea so much they start pushing their parties toward it, subtly or directly.
When you said, “…is there a reason you’re not looking at C?” I see you doing something different and better. I see you saying, essentially, gee, this other option seems so obvious…what am I missing? have you considered it? why did you reject it? In other words, you’re exploring with them and not advising them to choose your idea. So, I think what you did, if you’re working to be the kind of elegant mediator with the ability to help people solve problems without inserting yourself into their work, was totally on the right side of the line.
It also occurs to me that there a few other options available:
1. Invite them to generate more options before starting to weigh any of them. It might sound like this: “Before you start weighing options, I’d like to make sure you’ve done a thorough job exploring what else might work. What other options might work, even crazy ones?”
2. Invite them to discuss what options they rejected before they met with you. It might sound like this, “In my experience, sometimes options that were rejected before you got to mediation/coaching might have elements in them that could be useful. Have there been any options you’ve already considered and rejected? What about them didn’t work?”
3. Reframe the way they’re naming the problem they’re generating options for, as I did in the case described here: Getting Relationship Conflict Unstuck: A Mediation Story
Hope these musings are useful to you!