Merging Ethiopian Wise-Counsel Mediation and Facilitative ...

III.3.6 Exercise: The Ladder 28To enhance participants' skills in formulating and asking grounding questions,and to deepen their understanding of the importance of groundingquestions.30 minutes.Moderation cards of different colours and sizes, markers.Step 1: Prepare a "ladder" using cards on the floor (see picture). At one endof the ladder, place a picture/card of the Mediation Tree House. At theother end, place a picture/card of the "common ground".Step 2: Allow the participants five minutes to "come up the Mediation TreeHouse", meaning to remember situations of escalated conflict that theyknow of or were involved in, when the parties were trapped on the top.Step 3: Ask participants to share their stories. The volunteer presents theconflict and the conflict parties'’positions while standing at the top of thetree house on one end of the ladder in the room.Step 4: Ask participants to act as mediators and ask grounding questions tothe case-giver.Step 5: Whenever the case-giver feels that the question leads to the identificationof real interests (towards the ground) and away from his position(the top of the tree house), he/she will take one step down the ladder. If aquestion makes him/her fall back to a position (top of the tree house) he/she has to climb up. Continue until the case-giver reaches the “"ground".Step 6: Evaluate the exercise by asking the participants about their experiencesduring the exercise, note their answers on a flipchart.Step 7: Refer back to the flipchart with the grounding questions and let theparticipants repeat what is characteristic about these types of questions(they are open questions, they address feelings and emotions, etc.) Askparticipants if they have ever used these kind of questions in conflictsituations before and what their experiences are.28 This exercise was developed by Atkilt Daniel (Date?).42 Mediation Trainer’s Manual