Self-Determination in Mediation: The Art and Science of Mirrors and Lights - Paperback

by Dan Simon (Author), Tara West (Author)

Mediators are often pulled in many directions--they want to help their clients reach a speedy agreement, ensure the agreement is fair, and avoid coercion so they can honor mediation's primary value of party self-determination. Can we have it all?
In this groundbreaking resource, Dan Simon and Tara West illustrate how self-determination can mean much more than the absence of coercion--it can mean the opportunity for participants to increase their sense of agency as they gain clarity and confidence to make their own decisions, including those that express their highest values. Offering psychological research, philosophical principles, and real-life mediation stories, the authors examine where self-determination belongs in relation to other values, such as fairness, protection, and efficiency, as they wrestle with how to apply their principles in particularly challenging divorces, workplace conflicts, and more. Readers will be challenged to think deeply about how their values and assumptions guide their practice, and they will be inspired to more fully embrace their commitment to self-determination.

Author Biography

Dan Simon, MA, JD, is a fellow and board member of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation (ISCT). Dan has practiced and taught mediation since 1996, and he has been licensed to practice law in Minnesota since 1992. He is a past-chair of the ADR Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association and served for six years on the Minnesota Supreme Court's ADR Ethics Board. He wrote "Transformative mediation for divorce: Rising above the law and the settlement," a chapter in ?Transformative Mediation: A Sourcebook ?(ACR, 2010), and co-authored "Transformative mediation: Illustrating a relational view of conflict intervention," a chapter in ?The Mediation Handbook? (Routledge, 2017). He also writes the blog for the ISCT and is a featured blogger on Mediate.com. Dan has provided mediation training as an adjunct professor at the law schools of Hofstra University and the University of North Dakota, as well as through his own organization, Simon Mediation.
Tara West, JD, PhD, author of The Mediator's Approach: Five (and a Half) Paths Through Conflict, is a certified transformative mediator and conflict coach. She has been trained in facilitative, evaluative, understanding-based, and transformative approaches to mediation, and has mediated in public and private settings. Tara has taught and developed undergraduate and graduate psychology courses covering topics such as socio-cultural approaches to psychology, developmental psychology, personality psychology, group processes, and the psychology of conflict resolution. Tara earned her PhD in Social and Health Psychology from Stony Brook University and her JD from the New York University School of Law.