Reflective Listening

In order for the storytelling part of a mediation to be effective, a mediator must know how to listen and respond to what each party is saying. Doing this in such a way as to make each party feel heard is called reflective listening. Reflective listening has two moments:
1. Hearing and understanding both the words and the body language
2. Communicating back succintly the content and feelings you have heard using your own words.

Reflective listening requires two skills which are equally important:
1. Attending Skills- This includes one's posture, physical contact, gestures, interested silence, acknowledgment responses and environment.
2. Responding skills- These are verbal communications that capture the essence of the story in terms of content, feelings and meanings you have heard. In order to respond effectively you must summarize by 'chunking down' larger segments through paraphrasing and laundering language.

Example:
Party's story: "I am so tired of being lied to, he makes promises about the rent and then acts like we never discussed it. I feel like I'm getting the runaround. This has really been a tough time for me and he's taking advantage of the whole thing."

Mediator's Response: "It sounds like you have been frustrated by not receiving the rent when you expected and that past communications have not been productive. Before we move on, can you expand on how the rent was arranged in the past?"