Identifying Some Obstacles to a Successful Mediation Process

Instinct and common beliefs can sometimes misguide the mediator and be obstacles to mediation success. Following five different stages of a mediation session, this articles underlines a series of such obstacles and explores their underlying intuitions, as well as their subsequent usual behaviors and negative effects. Each time, instead, we suggest alternative strategies which increase expectations of success, with their expected outcome. This article combines a descriptive approach to obstacles, which increase the risks of a negative process and mediation failure, with a prescriptive approach of alternative behaviors which increase the chance of a positive process and mediation success.