Mediator Tips
After Brainstorming

After you brainstorm some options, there are a couple things you can do to help participants reach an agreement. These tips are taken from the book Getting to Yes, which discusses negotiation tactics.

1. Star the Most Promising Ideas: Ask the participants which options they think are the most promising. Remember, you are not at the decision stage yet, just at the point where the most promising ideas are winnowed out.

2. Invent Improvements for Promising Ideas: Take one of the promising ideas and discuss ways to improve it to make it better and more realistic, as well as ways to carry it out. The point of this is to make the idea as attractive as possible.

3. Set up a time to evaluate ideas and decide: If a solution can not be reached in that particular session, it may be necessary to break up and have each participant look over the solutions by themselves. Before you break up, draw together a list of the most promising ideas in their revised form. Then, decide when to meet again and how much time individuals should spend thinking about the ideas.