17 e-Mediation - Mediate.com

17 e-Mediation
problem with asynchronous communication is that as time passes, people forget things.
Raines 74 recommends that mediators consciously use many summary statements, to
overcome the effects of time passing in asynchronous communication. 75
– Providing signposts: Mediators are both more experienced with the platform than parties,
and have the advantage of being able to tailor it to their preferences. Parties are likely
to be a lot less comfortable and adept. 76 Mediators need to recognize points in the
process and/or areas on the platform which tend to confuse people, and provide clear
instructions regarding where parties need to go, what they need to do there and when
they need to do it by. 77
4.3.1 Communication and Language Skills
In the piece on e-negotiation mentioned above 78 many of the key communication skills
necessary to negotiate effectively online were identified. In this section, several issues that
have been raised in the e-mediation literature as particularly important from the third
party perspective shall be addressed.
Active listening: Much of a mediator’s active listening toolbox, so important for trustand
empathy- building, relies on contextual cues that are not part of text communication.
Mirroring or reflecting parties’ words back to them is another element that does not
translate easily to the online environment. Hammond 79 noted that some mediators reported
difficulty with mirroring. Elsewhere, 80 I have noted that reflecting is challenging primarily
as it seems superfluous online: If a party’s words appear in an email trail, what good will
it do to repeat them back to him or her the way we do in face-to-face mediation? And yet,
active listening and reflecting serve the same purposes online as they do in face-to-face
settings, and mediators cannot afford to pass up these valuable tools for showing empathy
and generating trust. A good way for a mediator to demonstrate online listening is to stress,
in words, that they have read the party’s message. For example, “I read your message
carefully” or “Reading your letter last night, I realized…” might seem like casual opening
lines, but they convey a powerful message: “you have been heard”.
While demonstrating listening in e-negotiation may take some creativity, word processing
can actually make reflecting relatively simple. Cutting, pasting and editing make creating
a paraphrased summary of a party’s statements an easy task.
Questions: When using questions to further understand a party’s position and needs,
we can utilize the benefits of word processing to connect our question to specific parts of
74 Summers Raines (2006).
75 Id.
76 See Hammond (2003).
77 For other elements recommended for the mediator’s skill-set, see Katsh and Rifkin (2001), pp. 147-162.
78 Ebner (2009).
79 Hammond (2003).
80 Ebner (2007).
391