How do you sell peace 'in an adversarial world?

A Friday night in October in a hotel banqueting room near Washington DC and a group of lawyers ?and other professionals eat a conference dinner, talk shop, and anticipate the keynote speech. 

An hour later they are singing protest songs led by a man in his late 70s with an acoustic guitar. Keynote speaker, and sing-along leader, Peter Yarrow of the 60s band Peter, Paul and Mary is speaking about Operation Respect, an anti-bullying project working with young people. ?His audience is the Academy of Professional Family Mediators, gathered for their 2015 conference under the title ‘Selling Peace in an Adversarial World’. The title seems appropriate for Yarrow, known for a lifetime of activism, as well as for ‘Puff, the Magic Dragon’ and ‘Leaving on ?a Jet Plane’, but how was this relevant to the work of the average family mediator? 

As it turned out, this seeming incongruity was a pivotal theme of the weekend and a reflection of a challenge central to the project of promoting family mediation. In essence, it is ?the challenge faced by any movement ‘going against the grain’ of the mainstream of the culture that it works in. 

The world around us can seem pretty adversarial; from reality shows to international politics, high conflict is acted out all around us. The language used ?to talk about relationship breakdown reflects common underlying beliefs, with warfare metaphors rife. Couples get ?in ‘fights’ and seek to ‘defend themselves’ in the ‘battle’ of ?the traditional legal process of divorce. Increasingly, however, many people want to avoid the cost and high conflict that they see in ‘classic divorces’. 

And yet, non-court based dispute resolution is not the dominant model for dealing ?with separation. Time and again we hear that mediation is only suitable ‘if people get along pretty well’, or ‘if the assets are not complex’, and from people divorcing: ‘I’d like to, but he or she won’t’ or ‘I will only mediate ?if (insert long list of ground rules that precludes the possibility ?of productive discussion). ‘

A hard sell

In an adversarial world the idea of ‘peace’ can be a difficult ‘sell’, and we hear all the time why peaceful solutions are inadequate or weak. In a world that views relationship breakdown as predominantly adversarial, mediation can also seem a difficult choice. This ?‘lack of fit’ with the mainstream narrative was highlighted in Justin R Corbett’s plenary session, discussing his ongoing research at Advancing Dispute Resolution, which will provide essential reading for all involved in family mediation.

Calls for help

Using large data sets and crunching a lot of numbers, Corbett is finding out what people across the US are searching through Google when they face conflict. ?The results are fascinating. ?They show where people seek information (down to county level) and who they approach for help and when they do so (for example, divorce-related searches spike in January and October, but inheritance dispute searches follow a different pattern). Waves of domestic violence-related searches could even be tracked as storm weather travelled across the country. 

Corbett calls these searches ‘calls for help’ and argues that it is essential to provide services that resonate with the terms in which these requests are made. Popular online search terms like ‘fights with partner’ or ‘cheating spouse’ are not much used by mediators, who are more likely to talk in neutral terms and to highlight factors like improved communications. These are undoubtedly key benefits, but searches are not framed in ?those terms because people ?are not thinking like that. 

As Corbett points out, search engine results are essentially ‘matches’, and if the online presence of mediators and the terms searched by potential clients don’t match, the harder ?it will be for mediation to ?be ‘found’. 

One interesting result relates ?to how people make decisions about where to turn for help ?in family disputes. A key determinant is the ‘perceived intensity’ of the conflict. Initially people turned to the internet, colleagues, counsellors, and religious leaders, then in higher intensity disputes to law enforcement and lawyers. Mediators, perhaps surprisingly, show up in the searches when the conflict intensity is almost ?at its highest, only just below attorneys. Having this kind of information could be important to mediators, to help them ‘capture attention in that thin zone’ where their services are perceived to chime with what people need. Corbett argues ?that mediation and its clients ?may currently be talking ‘past’ each other, both in a very technical way to do with search engines and in the sense of worldview. In a world where ?it is very easy to find reasons ?‘why not’, the task of mediation ?is to show the ways in which constructive dispute resolution may still not be the obvious choice for many people, but it could well be the right one.

Julia Thackray is a family mediator and non-practising solicitor. She directs the family law programme at Central Law Training @realfamilylaw www.juliathackray.com