Understanding is a collaborative act
Understanding is not something one person can deliver to another. We can explain, argue, present evidence and articulate our position with great conviction, but none of these necessarily produces understanding.
At best, we may have communicated our point of view. At worst, we have simply repeated it more forcefully.
In a dispute, people often arrive with considerable certainty about what happened, why it happened and who is responsible. Their accounts may be detailed, persuasive and entirely sincere. Yet each can be so absorbed in establishing the correctness of their own interpretation that they leave little room for the possibility that it might be incomplete.
The familiar dynamic of I'm right, you're wrong is particularly difficult to escape. To question an interpretation may feel like questioning our judgement, conceding a point or weakening our position. And so the conversation becomes an exchange of conclusions rather than an exploration of possibilities.
What interests me is how that changes.
I have long been drawn to the value of obliquity.
A direct challenge to someone's interpretation is likely to invite its defence. Even a well-intentioned question can sound like an assessment of their judgement or an attempt to diagnose their thinking.
An oblique approach creates a different opportunity.
Rather than beginning with what someone believes happened, I am often more interested in exploring what matters to them. Questions that approach a dispute from an unexpected direction can interrupt familiar patterns of argument. They invite thought rather than demand justification.
Sometimes a question prompts another question. Something previously taken for granted becomes less certain. A distinction emerges that had not seemed important before. An assumption is examined, not because someone has challenged it, but because its owner has become curious about it.
And none of this happens simply because the right questions are asked.
There needs to be a sprinkling of goodwill, although sometimes remarkably little will do. Just enough willingness to participate in a conversation whose outcome is not already known.
There must also be trust in the mediator's purpose.
An oblique question loses its value if it is perceived as an attempt to steer someone towards a predetermined assessment. The mediator must be genuinely open to what emerges, including the possibility that the conversation will challenge her own understanding.
The parties are watching closely. They observe not only the questions I ask, but how I respond to their answers. A genuine willingness to discover something unexpected, even something that fundamentally changes my understanding of events, demonstrates the openness I am inviting from them.
That curiosity matters. When people recognise that they are not being led towards a predetermined conclusion, they may become more willing to share information, including something previously overlooked or thought irrelevant. Occasionally, a single piece of information can transform the understanding of what happened, or why.
The mediator does not need to know what that information will be. She needs to remain genuinely interested in discovering it.
In doing so, she demonstrates precisely what she is inviting the parties to do: remain curious, question assumptions and allow new information to change an established view. This willingness is not incidental to maintaining trust. It is one of the ways in which trust is earned.
Collaboration does not, however, require agreement. Two people may continue to see the same events very differently while developing a more informed appreciation of what matters to each of them and why. They may discover that, although their positions remain far apart, their interests are not entirely separate.
A shared problem does not automatically create a recognised mutual interest. Both parties may be profoundly affected by a dispute without appreciating that the other has anything at stake. Making space for that possibility to emerge can change the nature of the conversation.
The mediator cannot manufacture understanding, any more than one party can deliver it to the other. But she can help create the conditions in which each is willing to explore what they know, what they believe and what they may not yet have considered.
Understanding cannot be imposed, and it cannot be guaranteed. It may begin with no more than sufficient goodwill and trust to venture beyond what seems certain.
What emerges belongs to those who have been willing to discover it together.