The Mistake You Don't Want to Make as a Mediator

The mistake you don't want to make as a mediator is to think that your job is fundamentally to be completely neutral. Every conflict is different, and sometimes the person they need is some one who's neutral but can come up with good ideas. Some they need somebody who is not neutral, but has certain leverage over one of the parties. The comment you made about if i had gotiate against a good negotiator or bad negotiator, i would take a good negotiator any time. I think it's so revealing, because many times you approach a negotiation looking for the weakness on the other side. You need to approach this in a way of thinking, we need to find the optimal outcome.