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Curiosity – the overlooked/underrated trait of a great mediator



As I sat down today to rifle through my growing file of unread RSS feeds I stumbled upon Diane Levin’s blog post, “The why’s have it: teaching curiosity for effective negotiation and mediation.”Sheer genius I tell you ,sheer genius!

 
 
I cannot tell you how many articles I have read, webinars and seminars I have attended, and blogs I have written that list for us the most important qualities of a mediator. We all discuss “patience,” “perseverance,” “objectivity,” and “creativity” and we can all agree that those qualities are imperative. However, no list that I have read has mentioned “curiosity.” In truth and in fact, isn’t curiosity the most important quality of all? Of course it is. This is how you learn the motivating factors of the parties. This is how you get beyond impasse.
Diane ponders whether curiosity can be taught. I tend to think that curiosity cannot be trained. To be inquisitive is to have an instinctual need to learn more and get to the bottom of something. How do you teach that? It would be like teaching someone to have empathy or teaching someone to love cats. It’s simply not going to work. Either you have it or you don’t. Either you like cats or you don’t.
 
So, find a mediator that likes to dig deeper, that likes to ask questions and likes to learn about the parties and the underlying problems. Find a mediator that isn’t afraid to ask the all-important but very simple “why?” As we all know, litigation is the present problem but not the root of the problem.

Sandra C. Upchurch

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