Introduction: How much should a mediator reveal about him or herself to the parties involved? More than the standard wisdom indicates, says professor and civil rights mediator Wallace Warfield. He says that to share the occasional personal detail with parties can help to humanize the mediator and actually gain parties' trust.

For hear more about mediators sharing with the parties with which they are involved, listen to interview segments with Susan Dearborn.


This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Self Humanizing
Wallace Warfield
Associate Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University
Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

Humanizing yourself as part of a process of inserting a certain degree of revelation. It's more than revelation, it's vulnerability of coming in like that I'm not some sort of deux es machina, but I really am a human being that has my own problems that I'm working with. While I have some authority (and you can't deny you have authority as the intervenor), but I also have faults. I also have my own concerns and fears. I find sometimes revealing parts of me to them saying, "I'm not feeling very good this morning, I just feel like I'm not really with it." They say, "Well what's wrong?" "I don't know. I'm just kind of shaky." People start identifying with you, and there's a trust that gets built up, because you sharing with them.

Beyond Intractability Version II
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