Reflexive Journal

Reflexive Journal

Dispute Resolution Reflective Journal

I felt that the role play performance that I participated in during week 12 of Dispute Resolution classes, did not allow me to adequately show my mediation skills. I felt that the partner in my mediation was quite overpowering and I struggled to speak before he jumped in. It was almost like it was a race to see who could speak first and say more in order to gain a better mark. Therefore I was not able to think clearly about what I wanted to say to the disputants rather I was more concerned with trying to find a gap in conversation to try and get a word in.

I did however think that I showed some good listening skills as I listened to each group of mediators who came on before me and was therefore able to pick up on things that they had missed. For example during our tenant and landlord mediation the mediator pair before me kept discussing with the disputants the concept of an ‘original agreement’, which seemed to be an issue that kept coming up between them. But this issue was not listed on the whiteboard for further discussion during the ‘exploring issues’ mediation stage. Therefore I asked the disputants if it would be useful to list it on the board to further discuss, to which they agreed and stated that it would be quite helpful. I also picked up on a few mistakes that my co-mediator had made including when he said during the ‘exploring issues’ stage of the mediation, that the issue of ‘repair costs’ should be discussed next. I corrected him and stated that the disputants had wanted to discuss ‘costs’ and ‘repairs’ separately and the two had been broken up in to separate issues for further discussion.

Although, I did find that I could have improved during the role play in several areas. I could have summarised what the disputants were saying after they discussed each issue, therefore providing better active listening skills. As I did not really summarise back to the parties what they were saying often enough....

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