How can you help parties agree on a shared vision during mediation?

Usually, I will ask parties to bring a photo of the child or children. I add a piece of tape on the back of the photograph, and I put the child/children at the top of a triangle. I didn’t draw two lines down to each party (parent/guardian) showing their independent support for the child/ children. I then point out that if there is good communication between the two of them, the child will not fall through the gap between them. As a child of Divorce, my parents coparented well and communicated consistently. While there is no single measure of success, all of my siblings have graduate degrees, are happy, and doing well. Communication is essential.

Mediation is tough for all parties, including the Mediator, the parties will never have a winner, but some may think that they are beat the other side. The Mediator must bring the all members to the middle of the table.

In my eyes own vision has a spiritual standing and the major impact to inner happiness. I believe that everyone knows or uses to know what and how to achieve that point for being happy. With shared vision own happiness and vision could take a benefit of that. A small or minor adjustment to achieve that could be a shared vision and the readyness for adapting some changes. The major challenge of mediators could probably be to find that path for all stakeholders which doesn't destroy the inner happiness and so the shared vision of all. How do you see that?

One thing I've found helpful in the past was to find the WHY, what in general means the reason for the own vision (happiness). Knowing it helps more to adapt it to shared vision and strengthen that shared vision by every individual at all. To create that connection from individual to shared community vision is not so easy. Asking, negotiating, yielding, adapting, discussing, making failure, reworking and so on and so far are just some of the steps from the tool box.

There might be different ways of efficient use of that. Two versions could be to create fear or take or remove that fear from stakeholders. More successful and sustainable is in my eyes could be to take that fear out of them. It helps probably to reduce or to remove the uncertainty, complexity, volatility and ambiguity of external factors.

Another useful methods is to connect deeply through empathy and deep listening with each one of the parties to learn about the needs behind their goals . Once you manage to get down to the needs which are common to most people (safety ,appreciation) the equation becomes a whole lot simpler