Mediator's Many Hats

Silke Hansen

CRS Mediator, Denver Office


[Full Interview]

Question: Did you see your role changing during this particular case? You mentioned being a facilitator?

Answer: Not really. When we were doing some of the telephonic things, a major role ended up being a scribe. But of course, what we would do is focus on a particular aspect of the negotiations and then put together suggested language based on what we think we heard. Then we'd send that out to everybody and get the input and revise it and so on. But I think it's all part of that mediation process. There are about 30 or 40 different roles mediators play, and to some extent, I suspect we probably played them all at one time or another. Sometimes we were the scapegoat, sometimes the reality tester. But it was fairly consistently sort of a mediator/facilitator role throughout this case.