in that moment though you could see that having said it out loud, she was already processing it in a new way. A while ago I conducted a mediation where the parties both seemed to want to settle but one of them was holding back from fully engaging in the process. There was a part of the picture that I wasn’t seeing. It took quite a while of discussing subjects outside of the mediation, building rapport, trust, that eventually she opened up to me.
She said she had debts. Big debts. I asked how much. That was when the shame came across her face, the tears welled up in her eye, her voice broke as she spoke, as she told me the number. It was big. But it wasn’t the biggest debt I’d heard about, in mediation or in life. And it was clear she was taking steps to deal with it. I found out that the debt was stopping her processing, dealing with, settling the current dispute. It was stopping her moving forward with anything else in her life. So we talked. I mutualised. I appreciated how we all had issues in our lives that dominate them, yet we do manage, she had managed, to keep going. I normalised. I explained other examples that I knew of where people had debts of comparable amounts. This wasn’t an uncommon situation, especially when legal costs are racking up. We discussed her fears. Her biggest fear was that the debt would hang over her head for nearly a decade to come. I mentioned someone I knew of who, after a few years of instalment payments, had made a successful offer to make a final amount to pay off the balance. The debt wasn’t a ‘life sentence’ and it certainly over time might look very different to the catastrophising she was doing in the present moment; of thinking of years of financial struggles to come. We spoke about the opportunity costs of the current dispute. She identified a lack of time to work on other potentially very profitable projects she had in the pipeline. We then looked at her options. She started to see that failing to settle the current dispute was going to have a worse impact than the debt. Rising legal costs, the time and emotional energy, the lost opportunities. She started to reframe the debt in her mind. She started see how much the thought of the debt was holding her back, like some Sword of Damocles, hanging over her at all times, when in fact it was a problem, an issue, but not an all-encompassing one. She settled the dispute. She walked away able to use her time more profitably and (I hope) with a lasting improved view of her situation. Notice how the conversation developed. It went from me (‘I normalised…’) to we (‘we discussed her fears…’) to her (‘she started to reframe…’ ‘she settled’); her taking ownership of her own destiny. The power, and total and utter joy, of mediation. Comments are closed.
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AuthorRichard Marshall is an Accredited Civil and Commercial Mediator with over 25 years experience as a Litigation Solicitor, as well as being a qualified Solicitor-Advocate. He is the founder of Striving to Settle, through which he works as a mediator and provides negotiation training. www.strivingtosettle.co.uk Archives
August 2022
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