Mediators need to remember stuff – lots of stuff.

Sure, it helps to have a flush mentality – as my very first, and now long gone, boss used to tell me. Mr. Dalgety would come back to the office after a hearing, raise his hand beside his head and pull an imaginary chain before moving to his next case.

Likewise for the duration of a mediation, especially on mediation day, successful mediators need to hold, and retrieve, large amounts of data. Our ability to take in information, store it, and recall it is crucial to our task.

It’s short term working memory that mediators need most, kind of like the temporary storage (RAM) in your laptop that you write over when you need more space but without it clogging up your long term memory – names, timelines and figures… that type of thing. Just ask any busy mediator the names of the people in last Monday’s mediation and they will struggle. It has been written over by the two mediations since.

At mediation, mediators use the quick recall of facts and documents from pre reading to establish credibility and to demonstrate thorough preparation. We pick up industry jargon at the table and repeat it back for the same reasons. We master names quickly at the start of the day to create connections, which in turn builds trust.

And read any one of the numerous research projects that attempt to distill the secrets of successful mediators showing that in demand mediators are regarded as quick studies, able to grasp key facts and issues quickly enough and well enough to be credible, especially when it comes time to reality test.

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