Not Ready for Mediation…Oops, Waited Too Long

Ian over at Conversation Marketing shares a terrific little story that made me chuckle and rang true as can be for a lot of us in the ADR world:

A colleague of mine (Lenora Edwards) told me a great story today: A friend of hers signed her daughter up for Chinese language classes. Her daughter didn’t want to go. When asked why, she said “Because I don’t speak Chinese.”

You’ve no doubt run into a fair number of folks who are disinclined to try mediation until they’ve tried everything they know how to do first. Seems reasonable, except that we know that these delays often lead to much more entrenched conflict than it need have been.

How do you help people choose mediation before they’re already so stuck they wish they’d come to mediation sooner?