The Old Way …

Many mediators have adopted positional bargaining as their default lens, unaware of how their perspective inadvertently limits the parties’ ability to imagine non-monetary aspects of settlement.

For mediators with this lens, “progress” in a mediation means the parties are sending numbers back and forth.  Before long, lawyers and their clients find themselves trapped in a discussion of “brackets,” with a seemingly endless exchange of monetary proposals being shuttled back and forth between rooms by the mediator, who at some point becomes little more than a message carrier.  The case may eventually settle, but the lawyers, clients, and often the mediator leave feeling exhausted, beaten up or beaten down, and frustrated with the process.  

Ready for something different?  

Resolution offers an alternative.

To be sure, positional bargaining, evaluations of case value, brackets, and a certain amount of horse trading are and always will be a part of negotiation.  The essential difference in Resolution’s approach to mediation is that discussions do not start there.  

Instead, Resolution employs a wide array of tools and theories of conflict resolution.  

These tools are designed to increase the parties’ awareness and understanding of the goals, needs, and interests involved in the case – their own as well as those of the other parties.  The parties become more aware of how their own perspectives and “lenses” affect how they see the other parties and the dispute in general.  

In most cases, this awareness elevates the parties (and the lawyers) from their “down in the weeds” vantage point and provides altitude.  The parties can address and resolve the emotions underlying the dispute that are likely getting in the way of them moving forward. They become less entrenched in their positions.  They become less wedded to a particular imagined outcome and can contemplate different pathways to resolution.

Sounds goofy, right?  A little too touchy-feely?  

It works.