Finally I had the chance to meet a real mediator. At the moment there is a seminar at the Medienanstalt Sachsen-Anhalt. I attend there in order to get to know more about mediation.

The participants are three women, a girl and me. Five. This is way too small the course leader said. The ideal group would be seven till ten. However, I like smaller groups better. It is easier to get in touch with the people and to open oneself.

The mediator said he is in a foundation. I suspect that it may be the same the newspaper article is about. But I am not sure. I will ask him occasionally. He is very friendly and maybe I can stay in touch with him even beyond this seminar and suggest cooperation between him and the university. He already said that he had supervised a group of pedagogic students once.

Today, everybody had to fill out several sheets with personal questions to conflicts and our behaviour. We also discussed the aspect of winner and looser in conflicts. The result was that also the winner is a looser because he/she has to defend his/her victory against others.

Every conflict shall cause from a problem. Logical. And every conflict shall be caused because of a lack in personal needs. Interesting. And when we speak about conflicts it is always about a relationship (or else it would be a “problem” for instance). Values and dealing with those values have to be in accordance or else a conflict would result (might be also a personal conflict: driving without ticket in the tram – can be okay or not okay to you).

We trained judgement-free speaking and should become aware that interpretations (of words, gestures etc.) are only possibilities among a variety.

All in all it seems to be very complex to understand even inner-cultural communication. I wonder how it shall be in “intercultural” situations then! It would be interesting to meet an intercultural mediator one day.

Finally we were asked to read one of our conflict examples. Everybody hesitated, so I thought it would be okay to give the example. We analysed it. Two participants then played the roles and the professional mediator did his job (“on the moving staircase” as he called it because of the rapidity):

I once had a little argument with one of the other tenants in a house where I just moved to. He blamed me for twice not having switched off the lights in the stairway and basement. I felt innocent (I ALWAYS switch them off! Plus, I am SELDOMLY there!) and in the end was frustrated.

I am curious to see what we will do tomorrow.

So long!