Most mediators I know graduated from the Facilitative School of Mediation – and we could spend much ink here debating exactly what that means but to my mind we were essentially taught to own the process and butt out of the outcome.

Recently there have been a number of calls for mediators to do more –more what is perhaps a little unclear, but certainly the market wantsmore something.

Just last month the IMI International Corporate Users ADR Survey polled 76 in-house dispute resolution Counsel from North America and Europe with over two thirds of the responders being from corporations with 10,000 plus employees.

Responding to the injunction that “Mediators should not be purely facilitative but adopt a proactive idea generating role, including proposing solutions and settlement options” 77% of responders agreed and 15% did not.

A similar result can be seen from a 2011 Commercial Mediation Group Survey that invited responses from over 60 UK law firms and in-house counsel.  Here 68% of responders agreed that mediators should be more proactive and 7% disagreed.

And most recent of all is JAMS International Matthew Rushton’s interesting piece What Insurers Want from Mediators… And Why Distorting Reality Ain’t for Everyone that came out of a week he spent talking to senior figures in the London insurance market about what they expect from mediators ”… all consulted were clear that they wanted and valued the mediator’s view of their case (and this desire no doubt informs whom parties select as mediator). Practically all mediators in the UK are trained to resist giving a view – and with good reason: done at the wrong time, or to the wrong party, or put insensitively, nothing can compromise impartiality and torpedo the process faster. That said, the desire to hear the mediator’s view was so consistently expressed – and without prompting – that mediators who fail to do so will almost certainly be failing the market”

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Tags: Facilitative School of Mediation, Mediators