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A good summary

In this blog I will talk about summarising. For those who know anything about mediation, you will know that the mediator is not there to make suggestions or force people to an agreement. What they are there for however is to help all parties involved move forward and find a way to negotiate and reach an agreement. One of the skills that can help is summarising.

So what good is there in a summary? A good summary can achieve several things:

· it is an opportunity to check your own understanding of what has been said

· it provides all parties in the meeting to hear again - in shorthand - what has been said by all parties. Remember that this meeting is probably the first time a party will have heard, calmly and from a place of safety, a different perspective

· it demonstrates to both clients that they have been listened to

· it holds up a mirror to them, allowing time to reflect on what they have said, on how they’re feeling. It allows them to perhaps change their perspective slightly, to say “That’s not what I said, that’s not what I meant” even if you have accurately summarised what they said.

Another way of describing a summary during a mediation meeting, is that it is a moment in time where the mediator takes stock of what has been said, what has been achieved and provides a space to pause and reflect.

For the parties in a mediation meeting, they may have each said a lot but may have become a bit lost. Lost in their own thoughts and ideas, lost as to what has been said so far and what progress has been made. So the mediator, by summarising, helps everyone focus on where they all are right now.

There is definitely an art in summarising, after all you are not going to repeat exactly in their own words what they have just said, but you need to avoid embellishment or skirting around issues or emotions that may seem difficult.
In our training, we talk more about the benefits of summarising and provide learners with lots of opportunities to practise during the course.