In this episode, mediator and Cardozo Mediation Clinic alum Maurice Q. Robinson ’09 tells the story of a workplace mediation that changed the way he thinks about neutrality, reframing, and what it really means to listen. An employee, frustrated by years of feeling unheard and labeled “difficult,” tells Maurice that she doesn't need him to clean up her words, she needs the room to hear them. As the mediation unfolds, one word in particular changes everything: “dangerous.” Maurice watches as the parties move from defending themselves to actually hearing one another, ultimately creating a “listening agreement” alongside their settlement agreement. The story raises a deceptively difficult question for mediators: When does reframing help people hear each other, and when does it silence the very truth they need to hear?
In a workplace mediation, an employee tells mediator Maurice Q. Robinson: “I want to be heard without being cleaned up.” When Maurice realizes that his carefully chosen reframe has softened her experience, he changes course—and the entire conversation shifts.
This is a powerful story about reframing, neutrality, bias, anger, and the difference between helping someone find their voice and actually helping others hear it.
Lela Love
Welcome to season two of Stories Mediators Tell. This is Lela Love, and I am here with Robyn Weinstein. Robyn and I are mediators and professors, and we train people to be mediators.
Robyn Weinstein
At this point, most people know about mediation in the context of divorce, but mediation is happening in many contexts. It's happening between nation states, with countries like Qatar and Pakistan, mediating conflict between Israel and Iran or the U.S. It's happening in international businesses or inside a workplace, on construction sites or among school boards, it really can happen in any litigated case. The mediator's job is to work to increase understanding and to help guide the parties towards an outcome that is better than any result achieved through continued conflict.
Lela Love
And why stories? Well, we think stories are the number one educator and connector between human beings, taking us into other cultures, introducing us to new people, and offering religious insights and wisdom of the ages. Stories take us into other worlds altogether, with once upon a time, or in the beginning, or it was a dark and stormy night. How exciting are stories, and we want to travel with you into new ones. You may recall famous court stories because there are cameras and reporters in courts. Brown v. Board of Education, when separate but equal was on trial, the Scopes Monkey Trial, when evolution and science was on trial, but mediation happens behind closed doors. It's confidential. It's private, and we think a light should be shined on what happens behind those doors, so we can all better understand how mediators promote understanding and resolution, particularly in this era of polarized and often bitter and vicious disputes and conflicts. We're here to shine that light.
Robyn Weinstein
And please note confidentiality. Lela mentioned it, and it's an important part of mediation. For this podcast, the storytellers have either changed the identity of the parties or obtained their permission to tell these stories.
We are so thrilled to welcome Maurice Robinson to the Stories Mediators Tell podcast. Maurice is an alumni of the Cardozo Mediation Clinic, just like I am, and I feel forever bonded with Maurice because we both had the opportunity to learn from Leela, and we both just love this work. So, Leela, I'm going to turn it over to you to introduce Maurice.
Lela Love
First, Maurice, so great to be with you here. For everyone else, Maurice is currently an assistant director of workforce diversity and equal opportunity compliance at Port Authority of New Jersey, an organization of nearly 8,000 employees. Prior to that position, he served as an administrative law judge, a Queens County mediation manager, and a housing court program supervising pro bono attorney. Maurice was awarded a New Jersey legislative proclamation for pro bono and skills-based service-oriented legal pedagogy. He was a recipient of a mediation award from FamilyKind. He teaches various ADR-based practicums and courses, including a practicum in the Southern District of New York Federal Board. One of my disappointments–I don't know if I should say in life or professionally–is not having the chance to co-mediate with Maurice. We were appointed to co-mediate a difficult case, and I was really looking forward to that opportunity. But now, at least, I'm going to hear about one, which is at least a sort of substitute. Maurice, you should know, is regularly invited to speak on diversity and alternative dispute resolution, and we all, every one of us, is liking to have him to tell a story to you.
Maurice Q. Robinson
Thanks, Leela. Thanks for having me on this show. I'm really grateful to be a part of a series that's centered on stories, because I think these stories really reveal something about mediation that theory alone cannot always reach. We teach the models, we practice the reframing and caucusing and reality testing and managing impasse, and all of that really does matter. But I think the real education of most mediators happens in those small moments in the room and in the actual practice. It's that one sentence, that one pause, or that one word that refuses to be replaced in the room–that we really learned something. And my story really centers around that one word that refused to be replaced for me in a mediation when someone told me, "You softened it.”
This was said to me in a workplace mediation, and I've never forgotten it since that day. The case that came to me looked ordinary on paper. It was a workplace complaint. We had a supervisor, an employee. The department had started choosing sides between the two. Human resources came to me and they wanted closure. Our legal team wanted the risk containment, and overall, leadership just wanted the temperature down that was going on within this department. So, everyone wanted this matter resolved, but what I learned that day in that workplace conflict is that often workplace conflict can be a public conflict in miniature. It may not make the news, but inside the organization, it can really divide a department, shape people's reputations, and affect their careers. And it really does teach everyone what kind of truth is safe to tell in that environment. So, the employee, I'll call her Elena, wanted something no one had put in the case summary when the case came to me. She wanted to be heard without being cleaned up. That was her phrase. She said, "I want to be heard without being cleaned up.”
We know people will often say mediation really helps people find their voice, and I believe that's true. This mediation taught me something a little bit different. Sometimes people already have their voice, and they've been using it. Elena had been sending emails. She had been requesting meetings. She had been raising concerns. She had documented the pattern, followed all the policy in the proper channels. The problem wasn't that she got a lack of voice. The problem was sometimes the room has been trained not to hear that voice. So, we were about 40 minutes into the session. I had welcomed everyone, explained my confidentiality and impartiality, set expectations, and talked about what respect and listening would look like in the session. I turned it over to Elena, and she began telling her story.
She talked about how she feltleft out of meetings where decisions were made about her work. She talked about questioning uneven assignments and being described as difficult. She talked about how her tone was often the issue, but never the workload concerns that she was raising. And she talked about how quickly the word unprofessional appeared once she started asking people for what she perceived as fairness. I did what most mediators would do in this situation, and what I thought was helpful. I refrained. I said something along the lines of, "So it sounds like there has been a communication breakdown, and you're looking for a more consistent process going forward.”
Elena looked at me. She wasn't angry. She wasn't dramatic. She just looked really tired, and she said, "That's not what I said.”
I said, "Okay, so tell me what I missed.”
So, she looked up at me dead in the eye again, and she said, "You didn't miss anything. You softened it.”
And I think that sentence landed harder than any legal argument that was made that day, and then she said, "I've had to translate myself for years so people can be comfortable. I came here today hoping I wouldn't have to do that again,” and that hit me again. That was a turning point. Because in that moment I realized that the neutral language that I was using, that we teach mediators to use, was really helpful. But for her, it was, here's another filter. Here's another layer in the suppression of me. I had taken all of her lived experience and I made it administratively digestible. I feel erased into that communication breakdown.
I was punished for speaking up into there's a process concern here. I turned all of her pain into this policy language for the agency, and I think sometimes we have to benchmark it that policy language is necessary. It creates the clarity for all sides. It helps people move from accusation to problem solving, and it really can protect the process overall. That's what the mediator is supposed to do, right? Protect the process, not the outcome. But what I found there is sometimes that policy language becomes a blanket we throw over the fire, so that nobody has to feel the heat in the room.
So I stopped. I put my pen down. I looked at her. I owned it. I said, "You're right. I softened it. But tell me exactly what you need me to hear as you said it, so that the room can hear it.”
She had this small notebook where she again, had her voice and had been writing down everything that went to her. It was worn, folded in certain pages. She had dates and comments and assignments and names and small notes in the margins to herself. And she said, "I don't need him to agree with everything that I'm going to say, but what I do need is for him to stop acting like I'm inventing all of this stuff.”
The supervisor, I'll call him David. He shifted in his chair at that moment, and until then, you could tell David had been listening, like most people do in mediation. He was listening to prepare his rebuttal. He had his own documents, he had his own emails, his own examples, and more importantly, he had his own hurt. He felt that he was accused of bias in this situation, and that his own reputation was on trial, so he believed he had done all he could to be fair in the situation. And to be honest, he had some facts on his side, but I think that's one of the hardest truths in employment mediation. Most of those conflicts that come to us aren't these clean morality plays where one side's right and the other side is wrong. I think people have legitimate concerns and can still cause harm. I think employees can be hurt and still misread some of the facts or intentions of people. Managers are always well intentioned but still participate in some inequitable patterns that we see. And you know, institutions are forcing us to comply with their policies, and these policies may still fail the people that it's supposed to protect. I turned to David, and I hadn't planned on doing this. And I asked him a question.
I said, "Before you respond to her facts, can you tell her in one sentence what you think she needs you to understand?” And he looked confused, like he didn't know what I was talking about. So, I repeated it. I said, "Not the sentence you agree with, not the sentence that you can prove, the sentence she most needs for you to understand right now.” And he looked down, he thought about it for a minute, and he said, "I think she thinks that I labeled her difficult because she challenged me.”
And Elena immediately sighed, looked up, and said, "Nope, that's not it,” she said. "I need you to understand that you called me dangerous after I challenged you.” And that was another turning point for me because difficult and dangerous are not the same word. They don't have the same impact. Difficult's an attitude problem. We can fix that, but dangerous is this threat label that had been put on her, and I think in workplaces labels do a lot of institutional work. They travel, they attach to people, they justify exclusion that you may have, or increase surveillance that you'll put on an employee, and they can really take a person's concern away and convert it into this character flaw that they may have. So, understanding that and making sure we wanted to be clear in the room, I asked David try again, again not to agree, not to apologize before you're ready, but just to use her word. He paused, looked down, and he slowly said, "You felt that after you challenged me, I treated you like you were dangerous.”
Elena didn't smile, she didn't cry, she didn't forgive him in that moment. She just exhaled, and at that same time, I think the whole room exhaled. And not because this conflict was over; it certainly was not. And not because everyone certainly agreed. They absolutely did not. But the room changed because finally we all heard the disputed word without reframing or replacing it. We knew what we were really dealing with in that moment, and a few minutes after that, David said, "Well, I have something I need to say to you.” He said, "I really came in here thinking that my job was to defend myself from being accused of bias, and I still don't agree with everything that's being said. But I can see that I was listening to your complaints and accusations as real accusations against my character, instead of information about how you were experiencing the workplace.”
I thought this is the mediator's doorway here. Right when we move people from self-defense to self-reflection, I think this changes the species of the dispute. We really get to dig into it, and not because it becomes easier now, or becomes possible, but because we're really looking at it from a practical way now, we can approach it. And so, one of the things we did there is we built what I now think of as a listening agreement for them before we actually got to the settlement agreement. And what that listening agreement did is, before there were any performance concerns that they had documented, there would be this clarifying conversation between the two of them before an assignment is changed. Expectations would be clearly explained, and they'd make sure they understood each other. Before either side used labels against each other, like hostile or difficult or unprofessional or disrespectful, they would identify the specific behavior that was going on, what impact it had on them. He had leadership agreed to review the workload distribution that was her concern. Human resources agreed to follow up and monitor with follow through to make sure everyone was following through with this listening agreement. And Elena agreed that she'd raise her concerns through a defined channel we had now created. David had agreed in that one not to treat her raising concerns as some type of insubordination, but I think the most important term was not written in the legal settlement agreement that we had. It was a question that they had agreed that they were going to ask each other, and that David was going to follow up after their next three check-ins, and he would ask Elena, "What am I not hearing yet?”
That question really became a hinge for them. It's not what do you want. It's not what is your complaint. It's not how can we move on, but really what am I not hearing yet? And at the end of the mediation after that, Elena gathers her notebook, and she says something I haven't forgotten to this day. She says, "I didn't get everything I wanted out of this, but I didn't have to disappear to be understood, and that was important for me.”
And that line stuck with me as a mediator, because in mediation we often measure our success, especially in house, by our resolution. Right? Did we get the signed agreement? Did we reduce exposure? Did we restore the working relationship? Did we close this complaint that was there, and those things certainly matter. But I think a deeper measure for good mediators is: did the process require people to shrink themselves in order to reach sub? And I'm not sure that we achieved complete repair there, but that day it did change me as a mediator. I still believe in reframing. I think reframing is one of the most important tools we have in mediation. But I learned that reframing has a shadow side to it, and we have to be very careful with that. A mediator can reframe so quickly that the person never really gets to hear their own truth land in the room and sit with everyone. And a mediator sure can be so committed to neutrality that that neutrality kind of turns into emotional anesthesia. We can be confusing calm sometimes with safety in the room and mistake settlement for actual repair that needs to happen between them, and that's what it means when I say a mediation really helps people find their ears as well as their voice.
So, for me, the question is not whether or not someone always found their voice. The question is who trained that room not to hear the voice, and how do we break down that system? And if the room has been trained not to hear it, then our work is not simply to do shuttle diplomacy and carry those messages back and forth and sanitize them in a certain kind of way, but it's really to help prepare that room to hear the truth that the sides want to share, and it's not to take sides or become an advocate in the room or abandon the impartiality that's central to the role that we're doing. In that day, I didn't give Elena her voice. What she needed from me was to not take the edge off the one that she'd already had, she needed David to hear the word that she actually used to feel the impacts that she actually experienced, and from there, I needed to learn that a good mediator does help people speak. I think a better mediator helps people hear, and I think a really transformative mediator helps prepare the room for the truth that is about to be spoken in it. And so, when I think about Stories Mediators Tell, and I think about this story, I always return to it. And again, not because it ended perfectly; it did not. We went through some things. Not because everyone completely agreed they will not. I return to it because it reminded me of why this work really matters. Mediation is not just about resolving conflict and getting the problem solved. It really is about creating space where people don't have to disappear to be understood. And sometimes I think the most important thing a mediator can say is not the perfect reframe of the conflict, but it's simply, "You're right. I softened it. Tell me again, and this time I'll actually listen.” So that's my story.
Lela Love
I do have a question. I was part of a kind of debate about reframing, and so there was, I think it was transformative mediator listening on the one hand, and more traditional softening mediators on the other hand, and the specific question was somebody calls the other person really angrily, "You are an effing—but they said the real word—idiot. You're an effing idiot.” And on the one hand there was a group of mediators who said, "Use the words, Lela. You just said that said he was a fucking idiot, and the other thought you reframe that a little bit, Lela. You're very angry. I hear you're very angry at Robyn or whomever.” How do you feel about that incident? Just because I was privy to this debate, and honestly, it was hard to think of saying you just called this person a “fucking idiot.” Anyway, you comment on that.
Maurice Q. Robinson
So I think there's two levels to this, right? So some of the reframing can go too far. So I think when you reframe to say it sounds like you're angry, that was acknowledging the “fucking idiot” comment. There was real anger there. I think sometimes we can soften it to say it seems like we have a relationship problem here, and that you're not okay. That's where it's not sitting in the room. This is beyond a relationship problem here. This is true anger, and I think that's where you've got to be careful. And again, that shadow side of reframing is making sure we're not sanitizing it too far, that we're not addressing the real elephant in the room, the real problem there, and really acknowledging the real emotions or feelings that people bring into all of these conflicts.
I'm not sad. I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I'm to the point where I'm using language that I may not have used before, that elevates this conflict to another level, and we have to acknowledge that you are not at this “We're just at a disagreement phase.” You are at a level where you're about to top over, and we've got to see that and help walk you back down.
Lela Love
Right. Just one quick follow-up. Seems to me these days, so many attorneys do not want joint sessions because they don't want to deal with the anger, the emotions, the mess, really, that has evolved in terms of a relationship, and I'm always thinking, yeah, you should know about that mess. You should experience that mess because unless you realize the depth of feeling, or height of feeling that's here, you can't address it, and it's always moving to experience that. So, to me, it's an argument for joint sessions. Could you just comment on that?
Maurice Q. Robinson
So again, depending on the situation, I think joint sessions are usually my go-to. There, again, we need to experience it. People need to feel seen, heard, appreciated, and validated. A lot of times, that's the reason where we're in this conflict in the first place. Some of the cases we get, especially in employment discrimination, sexual harassment, those kind of cases, there is a reason to keep people separated. They're not ready, and we again, we have to prepare the room for the truth that's really going to come out, but I agree with you. You got to call a thing a thing, and we can't fix a thing until we name it and call it and really acknowledge what it is. So, in those scenarios, let's put the people there and see how they're really talking and engaging with each other, and really find what the root cause analysis is of the problems. Everyone's going to put their best face on andshuttle diplomacy, and say, "Hey, here's my best story and my best version of it.”
But when they're in that raw moment, we get to see the real conflict and how it would play out when no one else is in the room, and it's just the two or three people that are engaged there.
Robyn Weinstein
Maurice, I love this story, and I think one of the things that is coming through to me is the participants in mediation and their desire for an authentic conversation and authenticity in the process, and I think as mediators sometimes we want to, we have a tendency to want to resolve or even suppress conflict, and I think what you modeled in your humility by recognizing when she told you, "Don't clean up what I'm saying,” to show the David character in your story what it looks like to hear it—the authentic, dirty, unfiltered version-and receive it. How do you train mediators to feel comfortable, or what are your thoughts when you're working with students to manage that authenticity and to be comfortable with that? What do you think helps mediators get there and use the real language?
Maurice Q. Robinson
So I'll say for students and for all the employees and leaders that I change remember that you are dealing with humans. Remember your humanity, and that's so important. Sometimes we make it so clinical, and we make it so business that we forget that there are humans with emotions and levels of evolution that needs to happen in a mediation with a person. They're going to come in angry and go through a myriad of different emotions in that process, and you cannot run from them. That's what makes this human experience, and that's what makes communication work. It's a given exchange, going through different communication channels and filters. That, as a good mediator, and as even a culturally competent mediator, you're going to recognize that all of this is at play. All of the unspoken things that we are looking at is at play, and you have to understand that in order to get to the real work of saying what resolution we come up with is going to be impacted by all the emotions, the voices, the secret things that are not being said, the unwritten rules that people don't verbalize. They're going to make sure whether or not this resolution is actually going to be durable in the end. So let's put them on the table and let's call them out so that we know we're working with everything, and that is the humanity of the people. Especially in law school, we try to frame, leave the emotions out. Let's focus just on the facts and the issues. But when you're doing this kind of work, this human-based work and people-first kind of work, you have to remember that it is people you're dealing with, which is emotions and complexity and all of these things. You cannot be afraid of it.
Robyn Weinstein
The other thing it makes me think of is there's a school of mediation from Maryland called inclusive mediation, and it sort of it critiques the idea of reframes and encourages mediators to really just be fully accepting, and only when they're doing restatements, restating values, feelings, and emotions and issues, but not sanitizing the statements. And particularly, it's applied in to reduce bias and mediator behavior, and that's another thing that you're sort of identifying is the way you were trained, what you were trained to do, mediators, and thinking of as mediator, and thinking about that impact on participants that present in all kinds of ways.
Maurice Q. Robinson
And it's got to be a fine balance. You can't let everything go in the room because if that communication was working, then they wouldn't need me, and it would be resolved. So we need some type of change or filter, so that the other side can process it and hear it at times. That's the real work of reframing: is to disrupt the communication channel as it's been established, because clearly it didn't work, and to try to get each other to hear the other side. But again, you don't want to become emotional anesthesia for that. You don't want to really sanitize it to the point where neither side is now recognizing what the real conflict is. That's not what I said. That's not what I experienced. Then we're not really addressing the real problem. So it's hard for mediators. You've got to find that fine balance, and understanding that we are in the room, we are now including our own bias and filters into that room. So checking yourself and taking that pause and checking in with your clients. There, did I get it right? That was one of the things. What did I miss? She educated me. You didn't miss anything. You softened it, right? So the immediate response is: if I ask you if I reframe and then you say that's not it. It's that I missed something. That was my bias. That clearly, you know, I got it right. I just missed something. She's like, “No, you didn't miss it. You got everything I said. You just softened it,” and that was the self-mediator check there. Okay, okay, I'm softening what you're saying, and that has an impact on you. Now I need to pivot and you know go in my toolbox and find the next thing.
Robyn Weinstein
Amazing. Thank you so much, Maurice, for coming on and sharing the story, and just highlighting this beautiful example of the shifts that we have to make as mediators in the space and recognizing how we're being received and the impact on the parties.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories Mediators Tell.
Lela Love
Whether you are listening as someone involved in a conflict, or as a mediator, or an advocate, or just because you're curious, we hope you will take away from this story and others featured on this podcast, that great things are possible in mediation, and when people sit down to talk and work things out.
Robyn Weinstein
If you'd like to hear more stories and conversations like this one, be sure to follow the podcast and explore additional stories in the Stories Mediators Tell books.
Lela Love
I'm Lela Love
Robyn Weinstein
and I'm Robin Weinstein. Thanks for listening, and we look forward to being with you next time on Stories Mediators Tell.
Lela Love
Opening a window into the magic of mediation.