Designing the Process: What Clients Value in a Mediator

Thoughts sparked by a recent Will Work For Food session with Katie Rodin

Photo by Swanky Fella on Unsplash‍ ‍

In a recent post, The Space Between: What We Hear When We Listen, I reflected on how meaningful progress in mediation often emerges not from what is said, but from the space created by careful listening, restraint and presence.

A recent Will Work For Food session with Katie Rodin offered a natural companion to that reflection. As a senior legal and operating executive who regularly works with outside counsel on complex disputes, she spoke thoughtfully about the process choices that shape how mediation is experienced from the client’s side of the table.

What she described aligns closely with what I see repeatedly in practice: clients value mediators who design the mediation process with intention, rather than relying on habit or default approaches.

What Clients Value Is Intentional Process

Across files, sectors and personalities, certain themes recur when clients and counsel talk about effective mediation. Katie’s observations echoed many of them.

Clients value mediators who do the following:

• Pay close attention to both facts and dynamics
  This includes understanding the relationships, history and pressures that shape how a dispute has unfolded, allowing the mediator to listen carefully and intervene thoughtfully.

• Create space for parties to articulate what they hope to achieve
  When parties are invited to reflect on what they need from the process and the interests that matter to them - rather than positions or demands - they often become more open to movement.

• Help surface deeper thoughts that influence decision-making
  These concerns or motivations are rarely captured in pleadings or briefs, but they frequently drive how parties assess risk and resolution.

• Read the room and respond to shifts in tone and energy
  Effective mediators notice subtle changes and adjust the process in real time to keep the conversation productive.

• Arrive well prepared
  Preparation allows the process to feel considered rather than improvised, and flexible rather than formulaic.

Three Process Choices That Make a Difference

Katie also spoke to several concrete aspects of mediation practice that stood out.

Pre-Mediation Conferences Set the Tone

Although clients may not attend pre-mediation conferences themselves, they hear about them. Counsel notice when a mediator uses this time well to clarify process, surface sensitivities and set expectations. From the client’s perspective, this preparation signals care, thoughtfulness and respect for the work ahead.

Joint Sessions Should Be Used Intentionally

Katie drew an important distinction.

A mediator’s opening delivered in joint session can be a powerful tone-setter. It offers an opportunity to connect on a human level and establish focus and expectations for the day.

Joint sessions involving the parties speaking together, however, should never be automatic or forced. They are a tool to be used when the circumstances support a constructive, collaborative exchange, not simply because it is the mediator’s standard practice or the way things have traditionally been done.

In other words, good mediators don’t default to structure. They design the process to serve the moment.

In-Person Mediation Still Has a Place

Katie also acknowledged the real benefits of remote mediation. For many, it enhances access — reducing cost, overcoming distance, and accommodating disability or other constraints.

At the same time, she noted something many of us recognize: being physically together can create a different sense of shared focus and connection, a feeling that “we’re all in this together” that is harder to replicate online. Both formats have value. The choice, again, is about intention rather than default.

Creating the Pause

Taken together, Katie’s remarks reinforced a belief that has shaped my practice over many years. In many mediations, particularly court-connected matters, the work involves moving steadily toward resolution. At the same time, a good mediator resists the temptation to push parties there before they are ready.

Sometimes the most valuable contribution we make is creating the pause, the moment where parties can see more clearly what is really driving the conflict. That pause does not happen by accident. It is the product of deliberate choices about preparation, structure, timing and restraint.

A Note About Will Work For Food

Will Work For Food sessions are free, with participants encouraged to make a donation in lieu of a registration fee to a food bank of their choice. Katie has supported the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, and I have contributed to The Stop Community Food Centre in Toronto — small but meaningful ways to extend the spirit of these conversations beyond the mediation process.