Offering tips and suggestions on mediation skills - not only for mediators

Search many opportunitiesto make personal contact with potential customers. When people talk about conflicts, listen carefully and actively to what is bothering them. Make sure and ask questions to build empathy and gain the trust of the other person, and once you have succeeded in doing so, you can let them know that you are an expert in supporting them in such situations. Only use the term "mediation" when you are sure that it has a positive connotation for the other person and when they show interest and ask you for solutions, don't say "mediation"but point out that you first need to understand the goal before you can point out a path. Therefore, first ask about the target state that the other person wants to achieve. Have this state described to you in detail. When your counterpart realises that you have understood the target state and your counterpart trusts you, you can make a suggestion for overcoming the difference between the current ACTUAL and the future TARGET. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to avoid using methodological or technical terms such as mediation, team development, coaching, etc, as half-knowledge is often projected onto these terms or negative experiences have been made. Therefore, describe what you are doing as "enabling cooperation". And only offer it if that is exactly what is needed. Otherwise, recommend something else. Whatever you recommend, make sure that it offers your counterpart added value that they can recognise. Only then will the door to an order open.

Mediation often involves much more demanding tasks than coaching. After all, the trust of not just one, but several people is essential! It can therefore be much more difficult to start a career in mediation than in coaching. Mediators should therefore as process experts for constructive communication cultureto get an easier start in the professional field. And if you focus on communication behaviour in an environment, you will always encounter conflicts or misunderstandings. A high level of sensitivity to these conflicts is important for success.

You can listen to Prof Dr Greif's views on mediation in full in our podcast „Gut durch die Zeit“ (episode #140).

I would recommend not selling a method (e.g. mediation), but a solution to a problem. Customers are primarily interested in the solution to their current problems. Therefore, the Offers also describe concrete solutionssuch as "inheritance without dispute" and the like.

Furthermore, I advise you to Search for a nichewhich complements and expands the competences brought along.

And finally, I believe it is advisable to not to position yourself exclusively as a mediatorbut as someone who has a wide range of different skills, such as coaching, moderation and mediation.

• Mediation is a Service based on trust. This is why most mediation assignments come about through referrals. How do you get referrals? See the following points!
• Acquire Deep conflict competences! The usual 200-hour standard of mediation training was developed in the 1990s. However, there is much more to learn if you want to do justice to conflicts. If you already have training in interest-orientated mediation, you could also learn mediation using the clarification aid approach. Nothing convinces clients more than good work.
• Develop a profile tailored to your competences: offer your services in a narrowly defined field that you have good reasons to believe in. Conflict parties trust specialists.
• Do you know your Unique Selling Point (your story that makes you unique) and put it at the top of your website! Only those who remember you can book you or recommend you to others.
• Make yourself personally in three years of intensive canvassing: Presentations, short training sessions, job interviews. That creates trust.

• The starting point for reflecting on mediation as a product is the experience of mediation in judicial policy and the private sector: in view of the expectations and hopes of the past, this experience is simply disappointing.
• Viewed soberly, the product can at best be categorised as „difficult“: Because Mediation is a counter-intuitive reaction to conflict! 
• Mediations are not sold to conflict parties, but to contacts who remember you in time during the conflict! Your client is not the party in conflict, but the party who is (or was) involved with others, be it in a marriage or in an employment contract, in a project, in an inheritance or neighbourhood community, in a network, or even in an association.
• Therefore ensure in good time for Visibility of their counselling, support and assistance skills! Your digital and social networks should make these three Bs of competence stand out.
• Get clarity about the The core of your mediation service: a straight line Specialist consulting and implementation services, how to deal with the conflict situation step by step. You don't just offer moderation in the dialogue process; you are also not the language police who ensure that the rules of conversation are observed. Nor do you simply offer a space for dialogue in which the parties can act on their own responsibility. The conflict does not need you for that! They have already experienced themselves and their conflict escalating on their own responsibility!
• And compare your own mediation product by no means with the worst excesses of judicial conflict management. Experience has shown that this is useless and damages your credibility enormously.
• Realise what you are asking of the parties to the conflictWhen they advise them to mediate, they are asking for an enormous emotional and counter-intuitive investment, the value of which is written in the stars and depends significantly on the person who is not trusted!
• Focus on the future! Its openness leaves room for visions, wishes and creations; it is in principle limitless, mouldable and tangible. But it takes this entrepreneurial courage to tackle this vague opportunity in order to achieve the improbable after all! This is worthwhile – also for mediators!