Banana writing for mediation?

“I think cheese smells funny, but I think bananas ‘are’ funny.” – Joe Murray

If there was ever a tool designed to promote combinational creativity, it has to be the internet.  And social media makes it so much easier to “stumbleupon” wonderful ideas from entirely unrelated fields that – with a little bit of “yes, and-ing” – can provide a nice jolt of new thinking to one’s mediation practice.  This post was inspired by a friend’s facebook status – just one part of a long, and growing, chain of online sharings and re-interpretations that led me to consider how an idea for making one’s children feel loved at lunchtime could be utilized to good effect in a mediation (or in a strategic planning meeting, board meeting, etc.)

Thanks to Pinterest.com, a not-so-recent blog post in Cute Food For Kids has been making the rounds.  Back in October, Vancouver mom and blogger Tiffany 楊茜茹 showed “How to Draw on a Banana.”  Thanks to the amazing connectedness of everything on the internet, Tiffany’s blog for a very specific audience was picked up first by the slightly more broadly aimed Come Together Kids craft blog, and from there by the much more mainstream and widely read The Bloggess.  And suddenly banana writing is everywhere!  And hence the inspiration to consider its application to mediation.

Banana writing is simple: take a banana, lightly scratch your words (or a picture) onto it with a toothpick or similar sharp object, and allow the letters to darken.  Over the course of an hour or two (depending on the initial ripeness of the banana), the letters will become more and more visible.  You can cover bananas in a fruit bowl so that the words emerge suddenly, or leave them out on the table to see who spots the emerging words first.  Or write only on the underneath layer of a bunch of bananas, so that the words are seen only as time goes on and bananas are consumed.  However the writing appears, it’s a quick pattern interrupt!  and a chance to refocus a discussion on problem solving.

Jolts for Mediation

I imagine a variety of approaches to banana writing in mediations.  Here are a few ideas for how and where to introduce a little banana jolt.

1. The evaluative mediation

The commercial mediation has been dragging on all morning, and it’s clear that parties will be taking a quick working lunch together at the table.  As a mediator who is comfortable evaluating but has a preference for solutions arising from the parties themselves, you take a quick break to come up with a number of possible approaches to resolution and to jot them on the bananas that will sit on the table as dessert.

I’ve commented in many presentations over the years that my preference in making suggestions about solutions is to make at least 3:  it always promotes discussion and brainstorming, whereas a single suggestion tends to limit creativity, and too often polarizes parties further.  So how about three or more ideas on the bananas?  I won’t try to generate ideas for a specific case here, but some ideas that might be used in almost any situation are:

“Rock, paper, scissors?“

“Settlement value = (damages X probability of liability X likelihood receiving full damages) – cost of proceeding”  coupled with a banana that reads: “Do the math.”

“Donate the disputed amount to charity?“

“What is the value of finality?“

2. Peace songs

Keeping with the triggering notion of idea generation through social media, it so happens that another facebook friend chose to post a series of links to music that have been formative for her musically and ideologically.  Given that she was born in the early 60s, it will not be too surprising that she has posted a number of peace songs.

So, you’re mediating a family dispute between baby boomers; maybe your bananas have some catchy 60s and 70s folk song lyrics on them?  The parties both are infected by “ear worms” that keep lyrics like  ”Imagine all the people, living life in peace…” or “A time for love, a time for hate.  A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late” running through everyone’s head as they discuss parenting plans.

Of course, music can be very generational, and tastes vary considerably.  My favourite artists all have great advice about negotiation in their lyrics, but my personal mission to expand the fan bases of Todd Snider and Marian Call might be more effectively accomplished by playing the music than by including their lyrics on bananas.  In other words, you do need to think about your audience – as always.

(That said, here’s a link to one of my favourite songs about power in negotiations.)

3. Conflict resolution quotes

The idea of having conflict resolution quotes visible during a mediation, perhaps only as a subliminal message on the pens or notepaper that the mediator hands out, becomes much more overt when the quote appears mysteriously on food!  Check out John Ford’s Conflict Management Quotes as a great place to start the search for ideas.  I liked the Lily Tomlin quote below.  It requires a bit of thinking, and might just lead to conversation; especially if you’re as unpracticed in your banana writing as I am, and you need to help with the reading.

“Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”

4. Pattern interrupts

And let us not forget that banana writing might simply be funny.  The Bloggess speculates on the best phrases to carve into supermarket bananas to startle unsuspecting shoppers.  While I don’t see myself writing “Act natural.  You’ll be contacted soon.” on a mediation banana, I can imagine quite a few things that would strike me as funny if I were a party, and would help me to break out of a pattern of frustrating deadlocks.  What about a quote from television mediator Kate Reed of Fairly Legal?

“Coffee, muffins, [bananas], anything that might make grumpy men feel warm and fuzzy inside.“

Or a horrible flashback to the old knock, knock joke:

“Orange you glad I brought bananas?“

Or the punny:

“I a-peel to your sense of ________“  [Fill in the blank with appropriate sentiment. e.g. compassion, fairness, etc.]

And I’m sure there’s a great banana split joke to be made!

Do add your own ideas as comments below!

Adult development theory applied to impasse breaking

“Conflict is a fortunate threat to the integrity of the self.” – Gordon White

On April 29th and 30th, I attended the Northwest ADR Conference at the University of Seattle.  This annual two-day conference always offers an array of thought-provoking presentations.  Often I come away intrigued by the cultural differences in mediation styles between neighbouring jurisdictions, and grappling with ways to apply ideas that work in a different mediation context to my own practice.  Working in an explicitly  interest-based context (which I do in Small Claims Court mediations, for instance), which parts of an evaluative mediator’s lecture on impasse breaking techniques, have potential for rethinking my approach?  Trying to think through how to make a square peg fit in a round hole can be a very helpful process for bringing about new ideas.

Gordon White

This time, however, I travelled to Seattle to be most inspired by a workshop presented by a BC mediator – Gordon White – and it is Gordon’s work-in-progress on breaking stubborn impasses by explicit application of adult development theory that I would like to highlight here as a an innovative and thought-provoking approach to thinking about impasse breaking.

In brief, Gordon described the evolution of his own thinking on stubborn impasses and the connection between his personal experiences and ruminations with the seminal academic work on adult development by Robert Kegan, the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Development and Professional Development at Harvard University.  I plan to read Kegan’s book, The Evolving Self, as Gordon has convinced me that there is value for mediators in working through this academic text, but for purposes of this blog, I’m focusing on Gordon’s own theories.

Gordon’s starting point is a belief that people develop their selves over the course of their lives, some more slowly than others.  No matter how far along one is in this development, conflict can be conceptualized as a threat to self and the self may respond by reflexively defending its current state.  At the same time, conflict is a growth opportunity that may or may not be taken.  Within this frame, Gordon suggests that “the mediator can assist the self to crack open a door and see or discover a new avenue of development and expression.”

Gordon identifies four avenues of development that provide the mediator with alternative paths of inquiry when negotiations become stuck.  I’ll describe  these in more detail below in connection with a discussion of how a mediator’s choice to focus on each avenue might lead to “jolt”, but in brief they are:

• Acquisition – sense of an abundant universe or not
• Directionality – sense of direction
• Worldview – the beliefs and values through which we interpret and interact with all aspects of reality
• Identity – how we view ourselves

(NB – The glib naming of these “avenues” below as “jolts” is mine, and is meant purely as a mnemonic aid – not as a trivialization of Gordon’s theory.)

It is important to note that Gordon suggests these alternative paths as options in addition to the normal range of mediator skills, not as the starting point for mediations.  These are approaches to try after one has already tried all of the standard interest-based mediation approaches yet parties remain stuck.  Similarly, the majority of the ideas that he generates for questions that explore development are by their very nature questions that would be confined to private meetings with a party.  So Gordon’s developing model is intended to expand the mediator’s options once they have exhausted other more common tools.

Jolts for Mediation

1. Acquisition (or the “Red Truck Jolt”)

Most mediators can quickly bring to mind a situation in which one party was stuck in the belief that s/he needed something and was so focused on getting it from the other party that s/he could not even begin to think about alternative ways to achieve the same goal.  A story that Kathleen Kelly told me many years ago comes immediately to mind for me as an example of this kind of impasse, and I offer a short version of it here with apologies to Kathleen for any garbling that has occurred over the years.  In essence, Kathleen described a situation in which a plaintiff seemed inordinately fixed on a specific dollar figure.  After a great deal of probing, it emerged that the plaintiff had already spent the settlement money in his dreams – he had picked out a red truck that he would buy with the settlement proceeds.  So naturally, he was unable to entertain any settlement that didn’t cover the cost of the red truck!  And he was definitely not thinking about any other ways he might acquire the truck, such as contributing some portion himself.  The truck had nothing to do with the issue in dispute, but the plaintiff had connected the idea of settlement and a red truck so closely in his mind that he no longer saw them separately: he could only get a red truck if he got at least $X in the settlement.

Similarly, many wrongful dismissal claims have an acquisition aspect to them: the plaintiff may not be focused on financial issues, but on receiving some form of recognition or acknowledgment for good work over the years.  The nature of such disputes can cause a plaintiff to lose sight of all the other people who might provide that recognition and to insist upon receiving it from the defendant.

In both of these examples, one party is stuck because they are so hung up on what they expected to receive from the other party that they can no longer value alternative suggestions.  Gordon suggests that we think about asking questions that go directly to a party’s sense of dependence on a set outcome and that open up the possibility of self-sufficiency.  In terms of adult development, such questions follow the path of development from a dependent and isolated self to one of greater awareness of one’s own abilities.

e.g.  from Gordon:

“You are wanting X from him.  What are the ways in which anyone might acquire such a thing?”

In the red truck scenario, perhaps one could ask “If you were to leave here with $Y (or some creative non-monetary settlement), how else could you find the remaining funds to purchase your red truck?”

2. Directionality (The “Six Feet Under Jolt”)

Gordon notes that “conflict tends to distract disputants from their important intentions.”  In the context of a stubborn impasse, questions that help a party to think about those intentions or to contemplate bigger picture plans may help parties become unstuck on the smaller details.  Family mediators, for example, will have come across the person who is afraid of the great uncertainty facing them on separation and avoids thinking about that uncertainty by focusing on the minutiae of their conflict.  An ex-spouse might insist on repeating over and over what their former partner did wrong or failed to do and be unable to move into a future-focused discussion because of a lack of conscious directionality.  

Gordon offered us several possible questions to consider using in such circumstances, and I am repeating them all here (with his permission) because they each helped me to think of several more questions that might have a similar impact in the right context.  They could be risky questions to ask, and will sound to some like therapeutic questions, but the intention is not to engage in a counselling discussion, but rather to dislodge the blocked thinking that prevents a party from looking forward.  Each question is clearly a “jolt” to a person focused on rationalizing their own perspective on the underlying conflict.

“What matters most to you?  What do you want people to say about your life at your funeral?”

“What are the most important directions you are taking in your life at this time?  How come that matters to you?  How much clarity do you have?”

“What tiny doubts or uneasiness might you be having about your direction?”

“What are your current life concerns and what are you doing to address them?”

3.  Worldview (The “Fraser Crane Jolt”)

We all have deeply held beliefs – frequently unconscious – that impact our decision-making in conflict.  These “worldview” beliefs often present as black & white thinking – I’m 100% right, so he’s 100% wrong.  When we are locked into unconscious, mechanistic thought patterns, we can’t imagine more complex worldviews and miss out on opportunities for creativity.

This type of thinking permeates all kinds of disputes, but an easily recognizable example of worldview “blindness” is television’s Dr. Frasier Crane.  Over the course of many seasons, Frasier’s constant disputes with friends, family members, and strangers arise from his stubborn refusal to examine his worldviews.  He engages in every dispute, no matter how small, from a “principled” perspective: in other words, “it’s the principle!” and he will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain his view of that principle.

If you watched Frasier, then you’ll recognize the dispute he has with a parking lot attendant in “Enemy at the Gate” (10:2) as typical.  In that episode, Frasier is driving his brother, Niles, on an errand.  As he pulls into the parkade, Frasier realizes that his dashboard clock is wrong and he has to rush to get to work, so he drives directly to the parkade exit and tells the attendant that he didn’t park – check the time stamp.  The attendant demands $2 anyway as the price of any portion of 20 minutes.  Frasier, of course, refuses to pay.  The dispute escalates as Frasier decides to pay $2, but then sit and block the exit for 20 minutes so he gets full value.  He truly expects the drivers lined up behind him to support him in his protest and lectures them on the importance of standing up for principle.  In the meantime, Frasier’s brother tries repeatedly to pay for him or to convince him that he’s made his point and should move on – it’s just not that important a principle.  Frasier, of course, is locked in a worldview where the parking lot attendant’s actions are unjust, rather than limited by his lack of power and authority.  Frasier can’t see beyond his own black and white view of the dispute, and won’t/can’t entertain any alternative viewpoints.  His brother sees the world in more complex terms and places value on both harmony and efficiency, but Frasier can’t imagine other worldviews having validity.  Eventually, Frasier goes to pay his $2 and exit at the end of his 20 minute blockade, but is so overwhelmed by the need to lecture the parking attendant on the “rightness” of his stand, that he overstays the 20 minutes: the parking lot attendant tells him to pay $4 now since he took so much time with his speech.

Frasier’s dispute is trivial, but so very many disputes we see  are based on a similar rigidity of worldview that requires a plaintiff to pursue “justice”, no matter how disproportionate the cost of its pursuit with the potential result.  Small Claims disputes may look the most like Frasier’s dispute, but many larger commercial disputes are driven by the same “principles”.  Child protection mediators see fundamental conflicts around beliefs that parents are simply “good” or “bad” based on highly complex circumstances.  Estates disputes may escalate due to deeply held beliefs that a sibling always has bad intentions.  Worldview rigidity appears in all types of conflict.

Gordon’s identifies several different ways that worldview may come into play in a dispute.  Recognizing that I do not do justice to Gordon’s complex schema for worldview disputes, two examples of questions that one might draw from his work to address Frasier’s parking lot dispute on a worldview level are:

Can someone “have good intentions and produce a bad result?”  What good intentions might the attendant have?  What values might underlie his position?

“What decisions did you make that had some effect on how the situation played out? … Which ones led to less constructive relations?… What could you have done that would have been better?”

4. Identity (The “Pinocchio Jolt”)

We all tend to understand our identity in absolute terms.  “I am an honest person.”  ”I am not a violent person.” ” I am friendly.”  Depending on how closely any particular aspect of our identity connects with our values, we may be incredibly uncomfortable with entertaining thoughts that in a specific situation, our own actions have not been honest, non-violent, friendly, etc. Gordon explains that development towards full self-realization “involves developing a more complex identity.”  Intellectually, we may understand that we exhibit contextual variations in all traits,  however, “in the face of attacks we tend to reject the offending party unless we are able to consider what aspects of his or her derogatory characterization of ourselves might contain some truth.”

When Gordon explained this avenue for growth, I thought of the many, many times I have heard parties assert that they “don’t lie!” Clearly this is an important part of identity for the person who feels the need to assert it over and over in the face of conflicting narratives of the conflict at hand.  And very often, this assertion leads to both parties trying to convince the mediator that they are “truthful” and the other person is a “liar.”  Because this was the example that occurred to me, I thought of Pinocchio as an exemplar:  Pinocchio’s nose is a built-in “jolt” to his sense of identity!  If we think of Pinocchio as believing that he is fundamentally honest, then he would resist a characterization as a liar even knowing that he has fibbed on occasion.  Pinocchio, however, runs up against an immediate reminder that in some situations he just might have been less than perfectly honest.  Admitting to a more complex, contextual identity is a part of Pinocchio’s development, just as it would be part of our own.

Gordon suggests that in times of stubborn impasse, a mediator might ask questions that explore identity explicitly as a means of encouraging a party to consider a more complex view of their identity.  Some examples he suggests are:

” What makes it difficult to think that you were unfair?  …  How possible is it for someone to be partly fair and partly unfair, how about 80% fair?”

“How have you not been true to yourself?”

More information?

This is a quick summary of a very complex theory that Gordon considers a work-in-progress.  As a consequence, it offers just a taste of the ideas that Gordon presented.  Fortunately, Gordon offers 1-day Pro-D courses on his method and will be presenting in Edmonton in September 2011.  Watch for notice of upcoming local presentations or contact Gordon directly at gcwhite@telus.net.

Taking the “Cake” Challenge in Combinational Creativity

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.” – Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss)

After more than two months absent from this blog – and from virtually everything else that requires a reasonable degree of concentration  -  I am finally feeling clear enough of the symptoms of concussion to develop and post some new ideas.  Definitely time to “wake up the brain cells”!  And so I’ve chosen to give myself a nonsense challenge in combinational creativity: take the word “cake” and use it a launching point for five “jolts” that could be used in a mediation.  Before I get there, however, a little background on what I mean by combinational creativity…

Compotier avec fruits, violon et verre (Picasso)

Compotier avec fruits, violon et verre (Picasso)

Dr. Margaret A. Boden, OBE, is a Research Professor of Cognitive Sciences who has published many fascinating papers on topics in artificial intelligence and creativity.  She identifies three ways in which humans generate creative ideas – ideas that are “new, surprising, and valuable”.  Most relevant to this blog entry, we create through combinational creativity - the generation of unfamiliar (and interesting) combinations of familiar ideas.  (Boden also studies exploratory and transformative creativity, both of which I will look at in future postings.)  Combinational creativity surprises us by connecting things and ideas that are not normally linked.  Collages, Bizarro cartoons, and metaphors are all examples of combinational creativity.  Each combines things in ways that are unexpected, creating thought-provoking, humourous, and surprising results.

Creativity trainers encourage the use of combinational creativity to stimulate new ideas for businesses or new perspectives for problem solving.  For example, the exercise that is sometimes known as Random Input, asks participants to use combinational creativity to break through roadblocks in their thinking.  (And yes, Random Input is one of the 5 Jolts!  It’s the process I’m using to write the blog, after all.)  In this technique, you select a random word or image as a starting point for brainstorming.  Open the dictionary, newspaper or novel at a random page, and choose a word that is unrelated to your topic.  Concrete nouns work especially well.  It happens that I started out my Random Input exercise with an image that caught my eye – a cake!  You can see why it screamed creativity to me in the second jolt below.

“Cake” Jolts for Mediation and Mediators

1. Random Input

I’ve described the basic concept of Random Input above, and I’m sure that you can imagine lots of ways that it can be used in a mediation, even if it is more commonly used as a brainstorming tool for teams.  Consider, in particular, how you might use it as a “deal mediator” – someone who is acting as a mediator in the development of a business transaction or the development of an estate plan, etc.  Random Input can be fun, stimulating and a great team building exercise for groups that are not trying to resolve a problem, but instead trying to develop the best possible deal.

A few resources for Random Input:

• MindTools - A useful educational website with lots of brainstorming ideas.
• Roger von Oech’s Innovative Whack Pack - Small Claims Mediators have seen my Pack at an Impasse Breaking workshop in 2009.  Von Oech has created a deck of cards with different creativity strategies on each.  Instead of choosing a word, choose a strategy and try to apply it.  And he now has a Creative Whack Pack iPhone app.

• Tarot cards – Books, magazines, newspapers …  Anything can be used to find a random word, of course.  But images are fun too, and can lead to even wider interpretations.  Tarot cards are a handy size to carry, and the 22 cards of the Major Arcana can be especially evocative.
• And, it’s easy to create your own Random Input toolkit.  A bag of miscellaneous objects, a collection of photos from magazines, or a simple word list – all will work to inject a new and random element into the group’s brainstorming work.

2. Battlestar Galactica Cakes

This was the image that caught my eye and made me think – CAKE! – as the trigger word for my contemplations.  It’s a glorious example of combinational creativity, of course – while the combination of baking and popular culture is growing these days, it is still surprising when one stumbles upon such a fabulous example.  This one comes from Kandy Cakes in Cambridge, Ontario, but I spotted it on the fascinating blog Between the Pages: Where pop culture and food meet.

I’m naturally thinking about what kind of cake I’d bake for impasse breaking purposes?  Anything this intricate would be a jolt, but I am decidedly not so skilled with the icing application as this, so would have to be more creative about type of cake instead.  Here’s my top 5 list:

a) Flourless chocolate cake and b) wacky cake:  Both of these cakes offer the opportunity to discuss creativity.  Flourless chocolate cake works as a metaphor for problem-solving – you really don’t have to include all the same ingredients in every cake, and there may be excellent reasons to leave some out (the guest with wheat allergy might stand in for the party with any number of interests that run counter to a “standard” way of resolving a problem).  Wacky cake, aside from having a great name, is a different variation on the non-standard ingredients idea – in this case, the cake is made with ingredients one doesn’t expect in a cake: no eggs, but there is vinegar!

c) Devil’s food cake – clearly the food for the devil’s advocate.

d) Marble cake – All of the flavours manage to work together, even if they never really blend.

e) Upside-down cake – Why don’t we look at this in an entirely different way?  (Maybe an accompaniment to a session of reverse brainstorming?)

3. You Cut, I Choose

Wikipedia calls “You cut, I choose” a “two-party proportional envy-free allocation protocol” which is quite representative of the considerable scholarly literature on the concept of fair division of a limited resource that starts with a discussion of the classic sibling rivalry over the last piece of cake.  (Between the innumerable articles on cake cutting and the ubiquitous DR references to expanding the pie, it may be time to question the eating habits of DR scholars.)  Here are just a few resources on the eternal question, all of which are specifically focussed on the topic of impasse breaking.

I haven’t read Robertson and Webb’s book Cake Cutting Algorithms, but the publisher writes that “[t]his book gathers into one readable and inclusive source a comprehensive discussion of the state of the art in cake-cutting problems for both the novice and the professional. It offers a complete treatment of all cake-cutting algorithms under all the considered definitions of “fair” and presents them in a coherent, reader-friendly manner. Robertson and Webb have brought this elegant problem to life for both the bright high school student and the professional researcher.”  Given how complicated the math is in some of the texts I’ve looked at, I may just check out a book that can be read by bright high school students!

I have read Brams’ and Taylor’s Fair Division: From cake-cutting to dispute resolution and would recommend it only to readers who are comfortable with math.  That said, the basic premise of most of the chapters is simply described at the beginning and is itself a reasonable talking point for discussing fair division options.  The book itself might be a good “prop” in specific business negotiations, much the way von Oeck’s list of creativity strategies works by asking parties to think about using a specific technique.  Thinking about why or why not the technique might work refocuses parties on criteria for settlement rather than specific points of dispute.

Both of these books are available through CoRe’s aStore.

The Cake Cutting Problem on mathematics-in-europe.eu – a short and sweet overview of the fair division problem.

4. Cake – the Band

I’m planning to write a post on music in dispute resolution at a later date, so I’m just going to touch on the most obvious points about Cake:

• The band combines multiple musical genres to create its unique sound (ska, rockabilly, jazz, country, rap…) and so could be viewed as the musical equivalent of marble cake as a metaphor for conflict resolution.
• Any musical interlude has the potential to act as a pattern interrupt, of course, but the music video for The Distance is itself a wonderful example of combinational creativity!  And it even has a business theme going on.

5. Make Mine Chocolate

This one is simple chemistry: caffeine and serotonin are the most commonly identified sources of chocolate’s mood altering chemistry.  Caffeine, of course, increases mental activity (and wakefulness in a long drawn-out discussion); and serotonin is described as having a similar effect to Prozac – calming and relaxing.  Make your afternoon snack chocolate cake in one form or another  for a relaxed, but wakeful discussion.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Conflict Resolution

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” - Carl Jung

Some of you will know that this post has been delayed by a bizarre sporting accident – I was pretty much head-butted by an aggressive 14 year old field hockey player and have been reeling with a very nasty concussion for close to two weeks now.  In a future post, I may explore head jolts in more detail – not, the “Attitude Adjustment” type of head jolts depicted in the old Hank Williams, Jr. song, but artificial means of stimulating the brainstorming state that follows a head injury, without the head injury!  My lack of concentration of late does seem to come with lots of creative ideas: I just am not managing to record them anywhere before a new one occurs and takes me off in a new direction.

For now, though, here’s a post I started when I was presenting at the CoRe Clinic Speaker Series on the topic of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Conflict Resolution. I had been focusing on how the MBTI can assist us to improve communications when we hit an impasse.  Coming out of the second session, in particular, I’d like to suggest a “jolt” for each of the lead communication functions – S, N, T and F.

Now, while I know that there is a lot of information available on using the MBTI for sales and persuasion (which assumes that you listen for clues about people you are negotiating with and reply according to your best read of their type), my focus is more internal:  rather than trying to improve communication by guessing at someone else’s type, the ideas contained in these jolts are about techniques to try based on your own MBTI preferences.  We can be sure of our own preferences, and we improve our overall mediation and negotiation skills by identifying our own “blind spots” and finding ways to correct them.

I’ll start with a very quick overview of psychological type for those readers who may not have been introduced to type before, but it will necessarily be incomplete and I very much encourage people who are interested to explore much more information than is provided here.  A list of recommended books to start learning about type  is included at the end of this entry.

Psychological type is a theory of personality developed by Carl G. Jung to explain differences in patterns of behaviour amongst normal people.  Jung determined that there are fundamental differences in the way people take in information (perceiving) and organize information in order to come to a decision (judging).  He also observed that people tended to prefer one of two differing orientations of energy – extraversion and introversion.

Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers took up Jung’s theories and Briggs Myers worked to develop an instrument to help people determine how their own personalities mesh with Jung’s theories.  The resulting instrument – the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – is now a widely used psychometric tool with a very rich history of rigorous study and research.

If you’ve taken the MBTI, and hopefully explored your own “best fit”, then you know your four letter code for your preferences on four dichotomies.  A quick reminder of the dichotomies:

Extraversion – Introversion – the natural direction of our mental energy (externally or internally)

Sensing – INtuition – Our perceiving function – what we pay attention to and how we understand something

Thinking – Feeling – Our judging function – how we make decisions

Judging – Perceiving – How we deal with the outer world

The middle two letters in the code represent the functions we prefer to use in taking in information (the perceiving functions, S and N) and making decisions (the judging functions, T and F).  Type theory tells us that one of these four functions is our dominant function.  It is the function that we developed earliest and use most readily, and so is our most comfortable.  For extraverts, our dominant function is also our communication function: we use it in our dealings with the external world.  For introverts, the auxiliary function – the second most developed function – is the communication function.

How does it help us break impasses to know what our communication function is?  Well, one common  description of preferences in this context is to liken a preference for Sensing (as an example) to a preference for right-handedness.  A right-handed person might be quite capable of doing many things with her left hand, but in crisis, she simply won’t reach with the left.  Using the left hand takes more effort, and it may require conscious thought to choose it.  Similarly, a person with a preference for Sensing can use Intuition, but in a conflict situation, may simply keep approaching the problem through Sensing unless he makes a conscious choice to try Intuition.

The jolts below are ideas for each of the four communication functions on what they might not be doing because of the tendency to draw from one’s strongest functions – especially in conflict.  For example, as an ENTP, my communication function is also my dominant INtuition.  When I’m mediating or negotiating, I prefer to focus on the big picture and may resist parties’ efforts to “bog down in details”.  This preference is so strong that I may (and certainly sometimes do) lose sight of the  possibility of making use of details in a productive way.  If the parties to a mediation both prefer Sensing, I may simply be frustrating them by insisting on big picture, future-oriented thinking.  I don’t need to know that either or both of the parties are Sensors; I just need to know that I never seem to think of Sensing approaches to make a conscious choice to try one when at an impasse.  It’s astonishing how often that choice helps.  It jolts me out of a focus driven by my own preferences and helps me try something new that may work better for the parties.

Jolts for Mediators

N (Communication preference for INFP, INTP, ENFP and ENTP)

Will tend to neglect Sensing approaches, so:

- Use a white board to collect details.  There are a number of types of information that may be collected as a precursor to further discussion: a list of items to be discussed, a timeline of events, criteria for a resolution, criteria for what won’t work, etc.

- In a negotiation, prepare a written proposal.  You may change it on hearing what the other person has to say, but you will still have a detailed list to present and can show how you’ve adapted your prior thinking to recognize their interests.

S (Communication preference for ISTP, ISFP, ESTP, and ESFP)

Will tend to neglect INtuition, so:

- Ask whether parties need to work through the details or whether it might work to spend some time thinking about a global solution?  Do you need to decide who is “right” about the facts?  Or could you each try to imagine a resolution that would work for you without reaching agreement on what it represents for each of you?

- Challenge the parties to independently come up with a minimum of two different solutions each.  Encourage them to think creatively about what might have value to them (or to the other person) that is not presently part of the discussion.  [These are the kinds of questions that result in non-monetary solutions in civil actions, but may lead to easier resolutions.]

T (Communication preference for ESTJ, ENTJ, ISTJ, INTJ)

Will tend to neglect Feeling, so:

- Identify and emphasize shared values rather than simply agreements on facts.

- Create space for a friendlier exchange by shifting attention to sharing food, taking a break and regrouping with small talk, etc.  Focus on creating a sense of comfort and harmony for the discussion to change the mood rather than trying to move people forward on the content.

F (Communication preference for ESFJ, ENFJ, ISFJ, INFJ)

Will tend to neglect Thinking, so:

- Consider using a table of pros and cons with parties – either in private meetings or in joint session as appropriate to the specific context.

- Use a risk analysis tool, like a decision tree, to help the party walk through a risk assessment of their case.

Type Resources

Isabel Briggs Myers.  Introduction to Type: A Guide to Understanding Your Results on the MBTI Instrument.

Sondra Van Sant.  Wired for Conflict: The role of personality in resolving differences.

Carolyn Zeisset, The Art of Dialogue: exploring personality differences for more effective communication.

The above books are available through the CoRe Clinic aStore.  CoRe Clinic receives a small percentage from sales made through the aStore.

Pattern Interrupts

“It’s been quite a ‘pattern interrupt’, a massive change of the old programming.” Kenny Loggins

Take 3 minutes and make a list of all the ideas for impasse breaking that occur to you in that time.  Then have a look at the list with an eye to sorting the various techniques you’ve come up with into a maximum of 5 categories.  If you’re like me, and like every group of student mediators that I’ve asked to complete that task, then the category that has the most options in it will probably be one that contains all the explicit “pattern interrupt” techniques that you’ve learned or developed.  Take a break, change the seating pattern, silly hypotheticals, start writing on the white board, humour, food and drinks, certainly improv jolts …  All of these techniques, and many more are really about interrupting patterns of communication that are bogged down.  Any negotiation can slip into a repetitive and unproductive pattern.  In the case of negotiations between individuals with a long history together (e.g. family disputes, parent and social worker, estates, and long time business relationships), the years old destructive interaction patterns can make problem solving discussion an impossibility.

Pattern interrupts quite simply interject an unexpected element into the old pattern and create a window of opportunity for restarting somewhere new.  Successful speakers, stand-up comedians, and marketers all use surprise to grab attention and refocus their audience.  Most mediators can expand their range of pattern interrupt tools simply by thinking of them in that way – as means to interrupt, often only briefly, an unhelpful pattern that is emerging.  Most often, we use pattern interrupt tools less consciously than we might.  We choose to try a technique because we think of it as a tool in our toolbox that works when this sort of difficulty emerges.  If we instead think that we want to interrupt the pattern, then we are more likely to come up with new ideas for doing so that are tailored to the participants.  A break may be a wonderful pattern interrupt for some people caught in a loop of blame and self-justification, but it might give others time to entrench themselves further.  Consciously aiming to interrupt the pattern engages the mediator in a more analytical process choice than testing learned impasse breaking  tools does: it encourages the mediator to create something specific to the situation and to keep trying new ideas if the first one doesn’t work.

I haven’t always come up with pattern interrupts in the midst of mediation in the conscious way that I describe above, of course. Many (and in my early mediations probably most) were accidental the first time they occurred; but reflecting post-mediation on what changed the mood or how the parties suddenly seemed to transition into a problem solving approach, I’d realize that something small but repeat-able had created a break in the pattern.  And once I started tracking some of these small pattern interrupts, I found it much easier to introduce them consciously in later mediations.  I also found that I was much more willing to take risks in trying new ideas for pattern interruption in the moment.  After all, every pattern interrupt presents an opportunity to discuss with the parties your perception of a need to interrupt the pattern.  You try something that falls flat?  It’s a chance to talk about why you tried and to bring the parties into a discussion of how to do it more effectively.

Jolts for Mediations

Two pattern interrupts that I have stumbled upon accidentally, and now employ consciously.

1.  Bright colours.  Some stand-up comedians catch their audience’s attention, and create a short window of opportunity for winning them over, by appearing in startling outfits so that they stand out from comedians who have gone before.  Dressing in a goofy manner runs the risk that the parties will think you’re not taking their dispute seriously.  But I discovered that you can get the same effect in small ways.  I’ve taken to carrying an array of brightly coloured pens to mediations.  I know, sounds a bit silly, and perhaps precious, but it almost always gets people talking.  Someone will ask me about whether I really am using green ink to take notes because it’s Saint Patrick’s Day, or make a sneering “nice pink ink” comment.  It often happens near the beginning of a mediation as people are getting organized, but if it doesn’t it’s easy enough to introduce yourself.

Once the subject is raised, there are lots of options for linking it to the mediation process and reintroducing it for a pattern interrupt when it’s needed later on.  For instance, I’ve chatted about the studies on the impacts of colour on creativity and the theories that say purple and orange are creative colours.  If I’ve got several pens, I can then switch pens when things are stuck and explicitly move to my creative orange ink to kickstart a different discussion.

Of course, pens are only one tool for talking about colour.  The colours in the mediation room are a natural topic of discussion, too.  ”We seem to be going around in circles.  I wonder how much that’s because of the beige walls?”  Check out Color: Meaning, Symbolism and Psychology for some talking points about colour and look at your mediation surroundings from that perspective to interrupt your own patterns of thinking.

2. Bad food.  Most mediators see food and drink as an important aspect of “hosting” a mediation.  The “breaking of bread” sets a tone for cooperation in so many cultures that sharing food in mediation is a natural means of creating a collaborative atmosphere.  Naturally, as the “host”, the mediator will strive to please the parties with the food as a means of setting the mood.  Well, a few years ago I discovered, quite inadvertently, the great potential of really bad food to bring people together!  I was asked to mediate at the last possible second in an emergency child protection matter.  I was quite ill (which is why I’d been the one mediator they’d been able to reach at home) and tried to say “no”, but was talked into meeting the parties in 2 hours time because of the impossibility of finding someone else within that time frame.  Well, I wasn’t very interested in the food myself, and I was rushing to get there, so I stopped at the one drive thru place on the way – a donut shop.  Their selection of muffins and fritters had been wiped out by the earlier crowd, so I ordered an assortment of donuts and headed off the to mediation.  The participants were rushed too, and frantic about getting things done in a hurry, so emotions were high and even before we started the lawyers were anxious and aggressive with each other about what their clients needed to see happen right in the next two hours or else.  The pattern of communication was dreadful before I even walked into the room.

Well, the second I opened the box of donuts, the focus shifted.  Everyone in the room hated donuts and especially hated my selection and the choice of donut shop.  One of the lawyers was the first to complain out loud, but others quickly chimed in.  I was grumpy enough that my response to the donut attacks was, “Well, I can see this mediation is going to be simple.  Everyone already agrees that the worst thing we have to deal with today is my choice of donuts!”  From that point on, the bad donuts were an explicit point of agreement, and teasing me about the donuts was a fall back for everyone whenever the conversation was difficult.  When we’d reach a bit of an impasse on a point in discussion, someone would blame the donuts and announce that we’d be doing much better if the mediator were X with his renowned fruit platters or Y with her home-baked cookies and muffins.  Of course, the truth was that everyone was using the attack on my donuts as a pattern interrupt tool and placing blame for any difficulties on the donuts, not on the other party!  And it worked brilliantly to dissolve tension.

Now, I don’t go out of my way to have bad food at mediations, but …  I probably don’t worry quite as much as some of my colleagues about ensuring that the food is setting a mood of comfort.

And one that I’m wondering about:

3.  Socks! Do you notice people’s socks when you’re in a business-y setting and everyone is dressed somewhere between business casual and suits?  Not usually.  For the most part, socks are chosen to blend with the outfit.  But there are people who wear statement socks.  Amongst mediators, Paul Taberner, a past president of CoRe, comes to mind immediately when I think about socks.  Bright colours, dynamic patterns, his socks draw your eye, and are a pattern interrupt.  I’ve never thought to ask Paul if he consciously uses his socks in mediations, but I’m thinking he could…  And that suggests that anyone could.

I received some great socks for Christmas this year, and while I may keep the “Zombie Love” socks for a pattern interrupt in my classroom, I can imagine lots of ways to make use of the “Calfinated” knee socks from Sock it to me to break a pattern and create a space for a shift.  And a quick online search shows that there are dozens of vendors for “peace” socks!  I may just turn my mind to designing the perfect mediator sock collection …