Liz Tippett (Oregon) has posted a short abstract outlining her new project, Mediation a la Carte: Improving the Transparency and Diversity of Mediator Styles. It is a must-read for those of us interested in the implications of the various approaches available to mediators and disputants. You can review her abstract here.
This is an interesting area for study, but makes me a little uneasy at the same time. I think it will be very interesting to see what sorts of techniques and styles are valued most in mediation, but I am concerned that you may not truly be able to separate the mediation style from the mediator. I think it is highly possible that the most heavily favored styles will not be so due to a pure preference for the style, but maybe instead that a particularly effective mediator employed that style. So then the real preference is not for the style as much as it is for that specific mediator. I think it will be very interesting to see.