PL4 – Closing Plenary Session – The Human Touch in ODR – Noam Ebner (1.2 CME Credits General)
$5.00
Video recording: Technology has been available to support conducting mediation online for the past two decades. However, in practice, most mediators avoided conducting processes online. One oft-voiced concern was the loss of the “human touch,” upon which mediation relies, in the online environment. The pandemic era generated an unprecedented shift in the field of mediation, with most practitioners simultaneously experimenting with a new mode of process conduct. In shifting their practices online, many discovered that their initial and continuing experiences with online mediation and the human touch did not live up to their trepidation. This remarkable natural experiment offers the field a unique opportunity. Now that preconceptions are in the rearview mirror, the time is ripe for deep exploration into the human touch in mediation, its specific functions in the process, and pathways for mindfully bring it to bear in online mediation processes. Technology presents challenges as well as opportunities to a mediator’s capacity for generating trust, building rapport, and expressing empathy, to note but a few human-touch domains. As our experience with online processes grows, what might we learn about enhancing our abilities in those domains? Along the way, there is much to learn about working with the human touch in our in-presence processes as well.
