Hi. I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to "Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together." Today, we're going to talk about how and why we would initiate a private meeting during a conflict resolution process.
A private meeting, or also known as a caucus, is where the mediator or conflict intervener meets separately with each party during the conflict resolution process. And we may choose to call a caucus or private meeting for a variety of different reasons-- maybe to get more information or ask some clarifying questions, or to get some more information that the parties are having a hard time expressing with the other person in the room. And in order to prepare the parties for the private meeting or possible private meeting during the process, we need to let them know about it upfront.
So let them know that during the process, we may have to take a break, where I, the intervener, meets with each party individually. And this is a normal part of the process. It's not a negative or secretive part of the process. It's just another tool that we use during our mediation or out conflict resolution process. And also, let the parties know that if they feel that they want to have a private meeting with the mediator, they can themselves call one. And not just the intervener has the opportunity to ask for a caucus or a private meeting.
So why would we have a private meeting during a mediation or a conflict resolution process? Well, there's a variety of different reasons. It could be when we are having an impasse. So the parties are at a stage where neither of them are willing to move, and the process is starting to become unproductive.
So we may call a private meeting to really ask the parties what's going on-- get some more information if possible to see if we can move through this impasse that the parties are having. We also may do it just as a process check, to find out that it is working for the parties or if there are things that need to be changed or we could do better-- just to see if the process is working for them and to make sure that they are feeling comfortable during it.
Also, we could do it to gather some more information. It's really hard to share some stuff with other party when you are in conflict. And so the private meeting gives us the opportunity to ask some more questions individually, one on one, to get that information that maybe isn't being shared but needs to be expressed during the process. And further, once we get that information, we can coach the parties to give them the skills to display or express their emotions or information or other things that they want to share with the other party, but really may not have the skills or the confidence to do so. So as the intervener, we can give them those skills and coach them and give them the opportunity to express those unsaid things.
Another important thing that we need to know about the private meeting or caucus is that it's confidential. And we need to let the parties know that upfront, that the conversations we are having in our caucus are private, unless you give the intervener permission to disclose any of that information. And that's up to the parties to let the intervener know that they want them to share that information.
Let's take a look at our key points on the private meeting before we go. We use the private meeting for a variety of reasons, and one of those is to check in with the parties to make sure that we are doing what we need to be doing in the process to make sure it's working well for them, et cetera. We also may do a caucus, or a call for a caucus, rather, because we need to find out some more information.
We can tell that the parties are not sharing everything, and so it can give us an opportunity to ask some more clarifying questions and to get some more difficult information from the parties that they may be uncomfortable sharing. Also, the private meeting is confidential, unless the parties give us permission to disclose that information that is shared during the caucus.
Here are your key terms before we go. Feel free to pause and look at them a little bit closer. Thanks for taking the time out, and I can't wait to catch you again, next time.