Application:
In virtually every situation where negotiation is not going well, or where for one reason or another it seems impossible to get a real discussion going with the other party or parties, it's worth asking whether bringing in someone else might at least help get communication going. That someone else is likely to be, or act as, a mediator. While parties' understanding of this process varies from setting to setting, in some places it is now routine to use mediators where two decades ago there was no practice to speak of.? For example, the courts of the U.S. State of Florida alone now refer approximately 150,000 cases per year to mediation, rather than expecting the parties to fight their disputes out in trials or to work out settlements without third-party help. While most of these cases are likely relatively simple to resolve, routinizing mediation is one way to prevent conflicts from becoming intractable.
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