At the start of a term, I often ask my new graduate students why they want to be mediators. I ask participants in mediation trainings a similar question: Why are you here? The most common responses would sound familiar to most of you reading this blook:

• To help people find more peaceful resolution of their conflicts.
• To reduce the scarring caused by poorly managed conflict.
• To help people the way I was helped during my divorce.
• Because I think effective dialogue is the key to healthy families, communities and organizations.
• To make a difference in people’s lives.
• Because peace on the macro level means finding better ways to resolve disputes on the micro level.
• I’ve been a litigator for years and have grown weary of the divides I’ve helped create.

Exercise 2.1.1: Why Do You Mediate?

What are the reasons you chose to become a mediator or are considering becoming a mediator? What drew you to this work? To what purpose do you put your conflict management skills? Be as specific or as broad as you wish.

After my grad students take an initial pass at this question, I like to dig a little deeper. I ask them what other reasons brought them to the study of mediation. Other people who want to make a difference become physicians, or counselors, or perhaps artists. Why, I ask do they want to be mediators? What is it about mediation that drew them to my classroom instead of into another discipline or field? The answers are often different than the first set:

• I’m afraid of conflict and want to get better at it in my own life.
• I grew up in a family that abused me emotionally and I want to understand better.
• My parents argued all the time and now I argue with my partner the same way. I don’t want us to become my parents.
• I don’t fear conflict enough! I want to get better at letting some things roll off my back.
• When my father died, my siblings and I had an awful time settling his estate. My brother’s still not speaking to me. I hope I can help the family heal with these skills.

Exercise 2.1.2. What Drew You to Mediation?

What are the deeper reasons you are drawn to mediation? Why are you choosing mediation instead of other ways to be of service? Are there reasons you’ve never said out loud? Take time to dig deep and reflect on the inner reasons you may not have allowed yourself to fully acknowledge before.

At the most recent graduation at Woodbury College, where I teach mediation and applied conflict studies, a newly minted master’s grad was one of the ceremony’s speakers. In preparation for her speech, Mary Ellen asked her fellow graduates what they had planned to do with their conflict management and dispute resolution skills at the time they enrolled. Many of them wanted to be mediators in the traditional sense of the term. She asked them what they planned to do with their skills now that they were completing the master’s journey. She summed up their responses with the simple, elegant words of one: To be of service.

Exercise 2.1.3: How Does Mediation Help You Be of Service?

How does being a mediator allow you to be of service? Create a list of as many answers to this question as possible; you’ll have an opportunity to narrow and focus later. For example, one way mediation allows me to be of service is that it makes good use of my loud New York heritage—I’m unflappable in overt, argumentative conflict! Kristen, one of my consulting clients, told me that mediating helps her be of service by offering bite-sized, resolvable disputes that are a good counterpoint to the extended diagnostic framework she used for years as a therapist.

Copyright © 2006 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.