Mediators must be good listeners. And they must encourage disputants to listen to their adversaries. Some say that this is the most important skill a mediator must develop.  But exactly what does it mean to listen?

To improve listening we’re frequently told to “put yourself in the other person’s shoes.” The phrase is a variant of the phrase “walk a mile in the other person’s shoes.” Variations of the phrase can be found in Cherokee, German, French, Italian and Spanish. All urge us to “look at issues from the adversary’s point of view.” But does looking at issues from the adversary’s point of view really improve listening and understanding?

Recent research has helped us understand exactly what we must do to improve our listening. Researchers from University of Chicago and Northeastern University and Ben Gurion University in Israel conducted a series of experiments with strangers, friends, couples and spouses to assess the accuracy of insights (or listening) into other’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes and mental states. Their studies found no evidence that intentionally imagining oneself “in another person’s shoes” improved one’s ability to understand the other person.  If anything, imagining oneself “in another person’s shoes” may decrease accuracy while occasionally increasing confidence in the accuracy of one’s judgment. What could explain these results? It might be quite simple. For most of us “putting ourselves in another’s shoes” means just that, that is imagining how we would understand the other person’s world. That is, we understand the other person based on our own history and experiences, not on the other person’s history and experiences.

The researchers did find a simple, concrete way to improve the accuracy of insights into others. When the people in their studies were given time to engage the other person in conversation about their opinions the accuracy of insights improved.

The researchers have shown that “taking other person’s perspective” does not improve understanding if that means how we would understand their point of view. On the other hand, if we engage first in “perspective getting” our accuracy improves. That means not trying to understand the other person’s world as we would if we were in their position, but trying to understand first the other person and then trying to understand how that person sees their situation—not how we would see it if our circumstance were the same.

Mediators like myself know we must work to understand how disputants see their situation, but not by envisioning ourselves in that position.

I can’t help but see the application to political discussions. True understanding does not come from assuming that others see the world as we would see it. True understanding comes from first learning enough of the other person’s history and experiences and how that impacts how that person feels about their plight. 

It is long established and recognized that a mediator must be neutral and impartial at all times. In fact, the requirement to be neutral and impartial is made explicit in codes of conduct for mediators. But should a mediator remain “neutral and impartial” even when the parties are moving to an agreement that is grossly unfair to one of the parties? That raises the question of what exactly neutral and impartial means.

In the past I had fallen into the habit of saying in my mediation introduction that I had “no interest” in the parties’ dispute.  I meant I had no personal involvement in their dispute, not that I was indifferent. One time a disputant asked me, “Then why are you mediating if you aren’t interested?” Part of being neutral and impartial does include being committed to a fair and robust process and that includes the mediator’s responsibility to be skilled, reasonable, trustworthy, have no conflict of interest and in all actions be free of prejudice.

But when, in the interests of fairness and of a robust process, should a mediator act in a manner that could be perceived as “favoring” one disputant?

A mediator once did a court session between the owner of a landscaping business and one of his employees. The owner had sold a used truck to the employee and had been deducting payments out of the employee’s paycheck. Bu then the owner terminated the employee before the truck had been paid in full. They were in court over ownership of the truck. As the mediation progressed the owner produced a written sales agreement that he said he had given to the employee. The employee had been contending there had been no written sales agreement, that everything had been agreed upon verbally.

As the mediator sat there she noticed the employee’s eye movements as he looked at the sales agreement. Somehow she had the feeling that there was more to this. She asked the employee if she could read the agreement aloud. His response was a quiet “Please.” Later in a caucus she asked the owner how he communicated with employees who couldn’t read English. He simply said, “Everything is word of mouth.”

I’m not going to reveal the outcome of this mediation, but I am going to point out that a strictly neutral and impartial mediator may not have brought up the issue of literacy. So the question is whether a mediator who is committed to conducting a fair and robust process have done so?

What do you think?