Written by: Soleida Perez, Program Director, ADR Learning Institute
One of the interesting things about mediation practice is that the questions do not disappear with experience.
In many ways, they become more nuanced.
How much structure is enough?
When should we challenge and when should we simply hold space?
How do we work with escalation without becoming reactive ourselves?
What do we do when someone shuts down, circles around, or cannot yet hear the other person?
These are not always questions with fixed answers. They are questions practitioners continue to carry, revisit, and refine through experience, reflection, and conversation with one another. Over time, the skills themselves also become more nuanced. Interventions like empathy, reframing, paraphrasing, acknowledgment, summarizing can overlap in live conversations, and practitioners often revisit the distinctions between them as their practice deepens.
One of the areas many practitioners continue to revisit is the art of asking good questions. In mediation, questions do much more than gather information. A well-timed question can slow escalation, shift perspective, uncover interests, invite reflection, or help someone feel heard without agreement.
We also know that not every question creates movement. Questions asked too early, too quickly, or from our own urgency can unintentionally create defensiveness, pressure, or further entrenchment. Part of deepening practice is learning not only what to ask, but when to ask, why we are asking it, and what the question is making possible in the conversation.
As we move toward the summer, we’ve been thinking a great deal about the value of returning to practice in this way, not only through formal training, but through gathering with colleagues, revisiting difficult scenarios, and making space to reflect. This thinking is shaping both our upcoming Mediation Refresher offering in July and the conversations we’re looking forward to during the Mediators Gathering in Mont Tremblant in June. The refresher course is being designed as a practical, roleplay-focused space for mediators to revisit core skills, work through complex dynamics, and explore real questions emerging from practice.
At the same time, the gathering in Mont Tremblant has come together as a small-scale, curated space for practitioners from different areas of mediation to step back from the pace of daily work and spend time in dialogue with one another.
We continue learning not only from conflict itself, but from reflecting on the questions we carry through it.
