Meeting in person with your family to discuss important issues almost always works best. Meeting in person better ensures everyone hears the same thing, you can see body language, and you get a better feel for when to take a break.
Fall 2020 – Meeting in the Zoom age
We always meet with individual family members in-person, whenever possible. Whether it’s meeting in their home, first by phone and then somewhere neutral like a coffee shop, or outdoors, but that’s our style. We believe it brings an important, personal touch, to our work. People meet us and can feel more comfortable when we hold the family meeting. We then hold the family meeting in a neutral location with everyone together. That changed with the pandemic.
In March and April 2020, our family meetings were discontinued due to the pandemic – Covid-19. By May we figured out how to utilize the Zoom platform and continue holding meetings for older adults – grandparents raising grandchildren, as well as housing and neighbor issues; young people wanting independence – Youth Transition Conferences; and helping families dealing with addictions, financial loss, and issues with their children. We just had to utilize a different format.
We held a dozen meetings between May and September 2020. While not meeting with people face-to-face, we found ways to make this form of less personal meeting to work for families and for us. Hopefully, soon in-person, face-to-face meetings will resume. And, depending on where people live, some families may choose to use Zoom for their Family Conversations™.
Maximizing the Value of Mediation During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond
July 31, 2020 authored by: Chelsey Rosenbloom
( From Family Conversations™ – Our family meetings are almost always done in a more informal setting then what’s described in this article. And yet, we use many of the practices the author mentioned here )
Perhaps the most obvious shift in day-to-day legal practice in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic is the “new normal” of virtual meetings and court proceedings. While these can present some degree of challenge, video conferencing mediation instead of face-to-face mediation is perhaps one of the most challenging
This post sets forth fundamental tips to navigate a virtual mediation – and importantly – provides a reminder that many of the aspects of a successful mediation remain constant even during a time when so much of daily life feels variable.
Preparation: Several elements should be considered and discussed when preparing for a mediation session in order to achieve the most successful result.
- Goals: Consider and understand your goals. Clients and their counsel often discuss economic goals and alternatives, but should also identify non-economic sources of value. Sources of non-economic value may open up ways of satisfying opposing parties’ goals. For example, if it is important to one party to have the dispute completed by a certain date (perhaps because the dispute is impacting business operations), they may be more willing to compromise on the economics to have the issues resolved quickly and revive relationships with business partners. Take stock of your financial, timing and relationship goals as well as how each ranks in importance against the others.
- Friends and Foes: Assess whether you have any allies in achieving some or all of your goals. Even if you do not view yourself as completely aligned with another party, others may view you as aligned with a particular other party. Coordination with aligned parties – or parties perceived to be aligned – creates a powerful presence. You may benefit from advanced coordination to permit you to express a unified view. On the other hand, if a party’s optimal result is particularly opposite from yours, try to identify aspects of the dispute upon which you agree (or at least do not disagree) to see whether you can offer those aspects as a source of compromise.
- Mediation is Not Litigation: The environment and approach for mediation differs from litigation. Arguments in court proceedings tend to be comprehensive to avoid the risk of a waiving any legal position. Mediation is pursued to ascertain whether a collaborative resolution can be achieved. In a mediation session, focus only on the key issue or issues that would lead to a resolution, rather than arguing every potential issue that would arise in litigation.
- Process: Understand the process for submission of any documents as well as communicating with the mediator and others during the mediation. While remote mediations have turned hallway conversations into conference call conversations, the sentiment remains unchanged. Prior to the mediation, establish how each party can be best reached during the mediation.
During: Of course, preparing fully for the mediation is not sufficient to make the mediation a success. Tips for making the most of the actual mediation session include:
- Prepare to be Unprepared: Have a plan as to how to address questions from the mediator that require you to pivot your thinking or address concepts not fully considered. In person mediation sessions offer the opportunity have a quick hallway chat. Remote mediation sessions do not. Anticipate and plan for side bars using pre-arranged phone lines. Zoom allows a mediator to have breakout rooms and Webex allows for private chats, but those things are not always glitch-free. They can create the potential for inadvertent mistakes in confidential communications. For example, sending a chat to all of the participants instead of a private message can easily occur. Having a separate conference lines set up avoids these types of embarrassing issues (just don’t forget to mute yourself on the group mediation line!).
- Be Cognizant of the “What” and the “How”: Keep a list of the goals discussed prior to meditation handy to serve as a reminder of the principles to circle back to. Remain focused on “what” it is that you are looking to attain. However, the “what” cannot be achieved adequately without honing in on the “how”. If a mediator or party to the mediation agrees to a particular concept, it is important to recognize that parties may be envisioning the method of attaining the goal differently or may not have thought it through completely. Focus not only on the details of “what” you are getting, but also of “how” you are going to get it. Think through the implementation of a desired result and avoid abstract resolutions. For example, make sure that if a party agrees to compromise on a particular issue it is clear how that compromise will be documented, which approvals, if any, are required, and how long the process will take.
Tips
Q 1. We’d like to talk with someone about talking to our children. We’re getting older and we have concerns. Our children don’t want to deal with us getting older, talking about wills or death. What can we do?
Q 2. We’d like to talk with someone about sitting down and discussing things with our parents. They’re getting older and they push the family away when we start talking about advanced directives, their health, death, and other topics. What can we do?
A. For many families, talking about parents getting older and eventually dying can be difficult discussions. Sometimes the older adults don’t want to talk about such things; sometimes it’s the adult children who don’t.
These conversations need to happen. They can be positive solutions to family situations. Working together with family and friends gives you an opportunity to find out what’s really going on, offer support and understanding, and make plans for the future. We can help families open up these discussions with our respectful and confidential family meetings.
Questions to ask yourself:
- How can I talk to my family without worrying them and get them to listen to me?
- What is it I believe we need to discuss? Why?
- How can we broach the subject with our family, and not start a fight?
- Who can help us? What are the options available? What can work best in our situation?
Helpful Tips:
While getting together during the current medical situation may be more difficult than before, newer technology, combined with other communication methods can be used to bring our family together. There are family members and/or friends who might be able to help us come together for these important conversations. There are other services that can help us, too
An advantage to using Family Conversations™ is that we’ve been working with older adults and families for a long time. Each of our mediators has personally, as well as professionally, gone through many similar situations as your family currently may be going through. We know how to ask the right questions and we don’t take sides. Using neutral parties to help you and your family makes sense. Contact us today for a free consultation. rich@familyconversations.com or call 952 884-1128.
by Cinnie Noble Conflict Management Coaching Blog by Cinnie Noble “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” Being spontaneous in many aspects of our lives can be fun and interesting. However, being spontaneous when it comes to difficult conversations – not so much. Preparing for our hard conversations takes time and energy and thought – all of which make those discussions more effective, productive and constructive. Preparation can even make them interesting and illuminating! The thing is, our dread about a conversation can negatively impact our approach and keep us in a mindset that is counterproductive. So, what does it take to properly prepare and gather our courage for a challenging conversation when we feel full of dread, fear and distress? How do we gain the much-needed distance and confidence to effectively “be” in conflict and interact in ways that reflect our values. Preparation takes different forms and this week’s Conflict Mastery Quest(ions) blog will hopefully help prepare you to be clear on your intentions about a conversation – what you want to have happen, how you want to communicate, and who you want to be. Try the following questions as a way of doing this, as you consider a conversation you are dreading. Cinnie Noble is a certified coach (PCC) and mediator and a former lawyer specializing in conflict management coaching. She is the author of two coaching books: Conflict Management Coaching: The CINERGY™ Model and Conflict Mastery: Questions to Guide You. From Family Conversations™ Ms. Noble brings up excellent points. Many of these same questions are ones we ask participants prior to, and during, our family meetings. A family conversation around parents and adult children, or even among siblings, has the potential to be contentious. We’re used to diffusing anger, getting to the heart of the matter, and helping families steer the discussions in a productive and informative direction. Let us explain how we can help you and your family. For a free consultation contact us. rich@familyconversations.com or call 952 884-1128.Conflict Management Coaching – What to ask yourself before engaging in a conversation
January 2020
Benjamin Franklin
Biography
