What Makes a Mediator Effective?

I recently came accross this interesting blog post by U.S. based mediator Jennifer Shack titled What Makes a Mediator Effective? The Need for Empirical Evidence.

Also a researcher, Shack acknowledges that while she's been trained to believe that certain actions in mediation will produce positive outcomes, there is no empirical research on measuring the extent to which those actions actually produce those outcomes. 

Shack references a paper by Gary Weiner, a mediator and administrator for an appellate mediation program in the U.S., in which he propsoes to examine this evidentiary gap. Weiner has organized a mini-conference on research for the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Spring Conference, taking place in Washington April 18-21, 2012.  Weiner hopes to get participants discussing the possibilities for researching the effectiveness of mediator behaviors. 

In his article, Weiner suggests that in Court connected ADR programs the cases that wind up in mediation arrive there because the lawyers involved view settlement as the primary objective. Weiner goes on to state that given this reality and, given the relative ease of defining this result in some objective way (e.g., dismissal of litigation), he believes  it makes sense to try answering a simple yet perplexing question: what mediator behaviors are more likely to lead to the settlement of disputes?

I invite you to read Shack's blog and Weiner's paper, and comment.