Be careful when an organizational structure advocates co-anything as a leadership construct.
Some divorce support groups favor co-facilitated discussions, typically led by one man and one woman (unaffiliated), out of a perception that this supports a better balance in participation and improvements via same-gender connect-ability.
I’ve also seen divorce mediations similarly managed. In fact, all the better if the co-mediators have little if any prior experience in even working together before-hand.
The argument is that this provides for a purity of direction, solutions more driven from the bottom up. Potential bias is minimized.
But at what cost?
Everything has a trade-off, risks to be considered, a sacrifice of this for that.
In practice, the co-facilitation, co-mediation approaches are cures more harmful than the diseases. The naïve falacy here is that that no imposed control results in collaborative control. Untrue. As negotiators Ronald M. Shapiro and Mark A. Jankowski have written, “If you don’t control the encounter, it (or the other side) controls you.” This, by the way, comes from their book titled, Bullies, Tyrants & Impossible People. [1]
Efficacy of any divorce mediation or divorce support group facilitation process depends on participants’ willing surrender to an experience professional who can be trusted to control opposing interests. One consents to this because it is preferable to negotiating one-on-one with your spouse, yet portends more control than litigation; you process your divorce issues in a group, but with more structure than a venting among not-impartial friends.
Sound judgment regarding when and how to be more or less directive is why you go to the professional. It’s a trust they must earn.
There simply is no way to escape the requirement that you as a person in the process of divorce must exercise due diligence in selecting someone to whom you must then surrender process control.
In the absence of such prudence, some random person will take control. Care to make a guess who that might be?
Off-Site References
“Someone always controls an interpersonal dynamic” / August 19, 2019 / Michigan Divorce Negotiation (accessed August 12, 2024)
- Bullies, Tyrants, and Impossible People: How to Beat Them without Joining Them / 2007 / James M Dale, Mark A Jankowski, and Ronald M Shapiro (via Amazon, accessed August 12, 2024)