News

selling mediation: a reflection

It’s almost a year since I last wrote about selling mediation and our one-day workshop that we run for experienced mediators in Scotland. We have been delivering this workshop now for several years and have seen how the message of mediation is communicated differently across Scotland and over time.

What has emerged in the past few years is that the process of selling mediation is an increasingly difficult ask. Selling it comes in two forms. Firstly, there is selling the idea of mediation to two neighbours who haven’t seen eye to eye for years. Secondly (and more challenging) is convincing sceptical officials that supporting a properly funded mediation service can save money and help communities grow and develop. Mediators have experience in overcoming barriers when working with clients, through addressing concerns and explaining the mediation process in ways that are both understandable and reassuring. What can be more challenging is convincing officials.

For the last couple of years Scotland has seen a rise in the number of neighbour mediation services. I believe that one of the key drivers is the realisation that a local mediation service reduces pressure on police, anti-social behaviour officers and other officials when dealing with low-level conflicts between neighbours. If you are a cash-strapped local authority, how you resource different departments to meet needs, whilst balancing budgets, is a difficult task. For those of us who have been in the mediation world for many years, it is somewhat ironical that the very reasons for setting up mediation services in the 1990s and noughties are the same reasons that local authorities are reimagining or restarting services now.

The challenge for mediators and service managers is to keep the stories of mediation successes relevant and current. These stories grow support for mediation, explain the benefits and illustrate the positive impact of mediators. Historically mediation services produced statistics based on outputs. Nowadays the fashion is to talk about outcomes, to dive into details and case studies and tell the story of how a service helped a client’s life. In the past we as mediators have been too squeamish to revisit difficult times with a client; to explore how positive mediation has been for them. I think such times are past. We need to find practical and sensitive ways to tell these positive stories. From where I sit within the Scottish Community Mediation Centre, I can encourage others, but also promote mediation through workshops. But more than that, I hope through some of our podcasts planned for 2026 we can tell those human stories. In the next few months, we hope to launch podcasts on how mediation works in remote rural communities and in commercial organisations.

[image: magnific.com]