Defining Mediation

What is Mediation?

Mediation is a voluntary collaborative process where

individuals who have a conflict with one another identify
issues, develop options, consider alternatives, and
develop a consenual agreement. Trained mediators
facilitate open communication to resolve differences in a
non-adversarial, confidential manner.

The Central Goals of Mediation are to:

• Reduce obstacles to communication between

participants
• Address the needs of everyone involved
• Maximize the discovery of alternatives
• Help participants to achieve their own resolution
• Provide a proven model for future conflict
resolution

Why Mediation?

Mediation should be considered when prior attempts at

resolving conflicts have failed or when people need third
party assistance in confronting issues. It is an
alternative to filing formal charges.

Mediation usually succeeds because it's...

• Efficient: Sessions are usually held within two

weeks at a convenient time.
• Effective: Issues causing the conflict are
identified and addressed.
• Confidential: The content of the mediation is
 private, known only to participants.
• Empowering: The ultimate authority belongs to
the participants themselves.

Mediation: A Guide to Conflict Resolution - U.Tulane

Mediation is a means to resolve disputes without

resorting to litigation or other adversarial modes of
dealing with conflict. By seeking a "win-win" solution,
acceptable to both sides, mediation promotes better
understanding among disputants. It also costs less,
results in more lasting agreements than litigation, and
can be used for emotionally sensitive disputes where
other forms of conflict resolution are inappropriate.

As a result, mediation has proven useful in a wide range

of arenas including parent-child and family disputes,
divorce, business and organizational disputes,
environmental conflicts, community/neighborhood
conflicts, and victim-offender mediation.

Mediation activities makes extensive use of negotiation

skills, communication skills, conflict dynamics and
analysis, and mediation concepts and techniques.

1) Conflicts are part of life's experiences and have

positive value.

Conflict is not the exception. It is the norm and familar

to everyone. Conflicts have meaning. When this
meaning is understood disputants have an opportunity
to improve and change their situation.
2) The peaceful expression of conflict within the
community is a positive value.
Perhaps the easiest way for a community to assist in the
resolution of conflict is to advocate for its early and
peaceful expression, not waiting until it has escalated
and can no longer be avoided before taking action.
3) Combining individual and community
acceptance of responsibility for a conflict is a
positive value.
The community can demonstrate its willingness to share
responsibility for conflict resolution by making available
to persons in conflict a team of competent and trained
volunteer community mediators. However, the
mediators must place the responsibility on the
disputants for the actual expression and resolution of
the conflict. By building a new structure, the community
is maintaining a vital mechanism for the direct
expression and reduction of conflicts that maintains
control in the hands of the disputing parties.
4) The voluntary resolution of conflict between
disputants is a positive value.
We can model the advantages of cooperation and
mutual responsibility-taking if we keep participation
strictly voluntary and work toward jointly constructed
agreements that address the needs of both parties.
5) Community diversity and tolerance for
differences are positive values.
The mediation process, especially when using mediator
teams, can be used to model respect for diversity, and
may help provide a space where tolerance for
differences can be learned by disputants.

Conflict must be acknowledged as part of everyday

living in a community and its surrounding areas. Unless
people live in virtual isolation, they are bound to
occasionally experience conflict in their interactions with
others. Community-based mediation services can help
enable individuals to make the most of conflict. Some of
the important functions and goals of a conflict resolution
Service include:

• A community infrastructure prepared to respond

to conflict promptly and flexibly, before it
escalates toward violence or abuse.
• A forum that promotes taking responsibility for
one's own affairs and which helps participants
develop critical life skills by modeling cooperative
means of resolving disputes.
• A tool for helping to improve retention rates and
improving morale.
• An avenue for building and enhancing relations
with local community members, police, landlords
and neighborhood associations.
• A neutral source of moderators or facilitators for
public debates or discussions.
• A rare opportunity of close interaction (during
training and while co-mediating) between
members of a community, around a shared
project.
• An informal forum for dispute resolution for people
who would prefer to privately handle their
disputes rather than go public.
• An inexpensive resource for the ongoing training
of an increasingly diverse group of community
members in conflict resolution skills.
• An increasingly widespread network of trained
individuals from all areas of the community
structure who are committed to the nonviolent
 resolution of conflict and are willing to volunteer
their time to help it happen.

Adopted from - Bill Warters, "Some Important Functions

Provided by a Campus Mediation Service" and
"Beginning Thoughts on The Values and Ethics of a
Campus Mediation Center

There are three other compelling reasons why mediation

should be used early. Mediation:
...preserves important relationships,
...allows for sensitive negotiations to occur in private,
and
...allows for negotiations to be confidential.

The benefits of mediation are that the process is:

understandable, convenient, comfortable, timely,
affordable, confidential, healing, empowering,
and effective.

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