Expert Mediators: Overcoming Mediation Challenges in Workplace, Family, and Community Conflicts - Softcover

This wonderful and important work by authors Poitras and Raines offers great promise to significantly advance the art and science of mediation practice. They have carefully benchmarked experienced mediators and 'best practices' from a wide variety of mediation settings to codify and explain how to overcome eight predictable challenges mediators are likely to face. By colorful and user friendly illustrations of mediators at work, they provide numerous key insights and tools that stretch far beyond the basic mediation training that limits the effectiveness and utility of many mediators. They have done a masterful job in providing readers an opportunity to be guided by an august group of talented experts! -- Neil Katz Ph.D, Professor, Nova Southeastern University and Professor Emeritus, Maxwell School, Syracuse University This book fills a gap in the literature for novice mediators. It provides a deep understanding of strategies and techniques that experienced mediators use when faced with challenges which lead to an impasse. It should be recommended reading for mediation training programs. -- Dale Bagshaw Ph.D, University of South Australia

In the last three decades, mediation has been increasingly used in the United States and elsewhere. Much has been written about the philosophical underpinnings and ethical dilemmas of mediation as well as its applications both within judicial systems and beyond the limits of these systems. However, some very basic challenges remain: How can entrenched positions, strong emotions, and cultural differences be dealt with? Mediation expertise is truly achieved when a mediator learns to overcome these challenges through experience and intuition. To speed up the learning curve of mediation expertise, Jean Poitras and Susan Raines have benchmarked the mediation process in Expert Mediators: Overcoming Mediation Challenges in Workplace, Family, and Community Conflicts. Tapping the experience and wisdom of over 175 highly qualified mediators from across different realms of the mediation practice (e.g., family mediation, workplace mediation, commercial mediation) and across geographic regions (e.g., U.S., Australia, Europe, Israel, Canada), this book integrates best practices in order to improve the performance of mediators. For each proposed strategy, this book discusses conditions under which each practice should be used as well as approaches to mitigate risks associated with using each strategy and technique.