A Letter from Hon. Bill Callahan
Third Judical Court of Michigan
December 3, 2001
Re: Facilitative Mediation Training
Dear Zena,
After having recently attended your training classes, I feel compelled to share with you how gratifying your training was for me, both from the perspective of the training process and the general premises underlying the facilitative mediation process.
From an educational standpoint, the classes were well conducted and the class size was quite manageable. The pace of training was also good in that the concepts were easily understood and integrated into my overall thought processes. The most enjoyable segments of the training were the role-playing sessions where I learned the most by playing the role of a litigant while the student mediators were encouraged to use attentive approaches.
During the role-playing sessions, my feelings about the mediation process changed significantly, opening my mind to a new way of bringing people with adverse positions together. By encouraging a cooperative process, a facilitative mediator is more likely to achieve a more satisfactory outcome whereby the participants can feel as if they controlled the outcome as opposed to a third party forcing them into an agreement.
I expect that the facilitative mediation process will become increasingly more popular with both family law practitioners and judges. I also expect that there will be exponential growth in the use of this technique.
I encourage all family law practitioners to spend one week of their careers for training in facilitative mediation techniques at your facility. The working lives of attorneys will be much less stressful as these methods expand in popularity.
Thank-you for this positive experience.
Very truly yours,
Hon. Bill Callahan
cc: Faculty of Mediation Training & Consultation Institute Participants
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