Another technique that I like with everyone is to make short individual interview and to make sure there aren't fear issues about violence or domestic violence. Actually that is required in terms of ethical guidelines for family mediators. But I also do that where there are more folks who are involved internationally. Where there are a lot of tensions with parties and so on, because my concerns are with what happens after the meetings. Will they be safe? So I might again want to have individual meetings first and make sure I understand what some fears might be as well as some hopes for the meetings that are coming up. ...

I think presence, just as a human being, is really crucial. You can make a lot of technical errors if you somehow establish the fact that it's ok to make mistakes. If I don't know that I'll find it out, or maybe you have a better way of doing this than anything that I've come up with.