Enjoying--yes, enjoying--the mediation process

I sat with a new client on a sweltering summer day a few months ago, when hot weather was the norm instead of a distant memory. This woman was obviously upset, as many people who come to mediation are. After all, a family is in crisis with a marriage likely ending. She asked me, “Is this going to be a disaster?”

I replied, “Of course not. You can actually enjoy the mediation process.”

Well, you would have thought she’d seen a ghost, by the confused and mesmerized look on her perplexed face. She wrinkled her brow and stared across the conference room at me. “Enjoy it? But I didn’t enjoy the consultation I had with a lawyer. Isn’t this going to be the same thing?”

“Not in the slightest. This is mediation, not competition. This is cooperation, not one-upmanship. My goal is to help you solve your case with the least amount of time and money possible, not draw it out as long and expensively as I can.”

Thus began a long mediation process, not because the issues took a long time to resolve but because I genuinely enjoyed this couple and they enjoyed me. We joked about kids and current events, and we shared the same goal--to get their kids out of the fractured situation as smoothly as we could. Because we created a rapport-based approach, the husband and the wife were able to cooperate in ways they never would have in the cold confines of a law-firm conference room.

Their kids came to visit me twice and begged to come back, which I happily obliged. This family was mediation at its best, a shining example of what this process can do for people who want a nicer, quicker, and cheaper solution to what otherwise could be a family-wrecking catastrophe.