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A Trainer Responds to the Model

Zumeta, Zena D.
June 4, 2015

Source: (2006) In, Harrman, Margaret S., editor, Handbook of Mediation: Bridging Theory, Research, and Practice. Blackwell Publishing pp.412-419

The model that Margaret S. Herrman, Nancy Hollett, and Jerry Gale pose in chapter 2 is a sophisticated, comprehensive model of the mediation process. For me, as a trainer, it is exceedingly helpful for several reasons. Mediation training has been a collection of techniques hung on a theory for most of the short time this field has existed. What the authors offer is a way to look at the context of both theories and techniques. Negotiation theory and technique has a longer history and a more sophisticated approach than mediation. The authors take the best of that theory and research and apply it to a mediation model. I consider myself a facilitative mediator in the nomenclature of Riskin’s original gird. I reach a sequential model of mediation, knowing that this is only an approximation of the approach that I and other sophisticated facilitative mediators use. And yet a sequential model is helpful to beginning mediators, because it offers a skeleton on which to hang actions and a theory to approach a new way of problem-solving for most beginning mediators. (excerpt)

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