Bon dia,

Glad to have found my tribe. I am a lawyer and a mediator in the Caribbean. In a recent mediation we were at the end of our first session, navigated some difficult moments but I thought it had gone quite well, I thanked both parties, asked if they were comfortable with closing for today and picking up next session, and then one of them made a remark that almost put us back to square one, along the lines of: all I want to say is that I am sorry my... is feeling so sad, that really hurts me, because everything is perfect with me, I am living my best life, never better, so sad for her, yeah, so sad. In my opinion, this was not empathy but a parting power move to have the last word and put the other party down. I addressed it neutrally (I think) by repeating what I heard her say, checking if that was indeed what she said, stating that this gave me the feeling there was still something unpacked she might want to say, and that I was curious to see if she could elaborate a bit further on this remark. Not much success. How would other mediators have addressed this? Would you have asked the other party neutrally if she wanted to react to that remark? (I didn't) Should I pick up on it with the next session and if so, how?

De-escalation Skills Training for Employees

Bianca Scheepbouwer LLm, ADR