AoD (6)

After last AoD class, the one about what not to do in negotiations, I started to see that these things appeared in many of the arguments that happened in my family. Wanting to help, whenever an argument went on in the house, I attempted a form of mediation that included relaying this information of negative negotiation traits to the members included in the conflict. I later realized that this was actually more of a form of mentoring than mediation.

As informed in the last post, arguments regularly occur in my family. I have recently attempted to use AoD skills to prevent or resolve these conflicts, although they haven't been very effective. After noticing that many of the things that my family was doing in arguments was on the "what not to do" list for negotiation, I decided to attempt to mediate using this knowledge. When they began to argue, I would intervene, listen to both sides on what was going on, and tell them what they needed to do to solve their own conflict, hoping that these conflicts might stop completley, or perhaps change into actual negotiations. It somewhat worked, they did stop the things I tolf them about, although that made them use others. This showed me that improvement was possible, so I constantly pressed these points into any conflicts I saw between them. Eventually, I noticed certain things not appearing in their conflicts anymore, such as:they stopped name calling, a lot less sarcasm, and they didn't bring up the past. I am very happy with this evident improvement, althouhg I do realize that maintainence is neccesary, but overall, it seems like they are begenning to learn how to negotiate properly. This mentoring process was a bit harder than regular mediation, because I was attempting to stop them in the heat of battle and teach them things that were pretty much displaying the idea, you're wrong! Being determined in my mentoring actions, they began to change their ways of conflict solving. It seems mentoring requires understanding of the people involved in the situation, being neutral, and relaying the proper ideas in ways that are identifyable by both sides.