How Do You Prepare For Mediation?
How do you prepare for a mediation? If a valuation is involved in a mediation, there is actually some significant preparation involved. We will give you a document request for usually three to five years of tax returns, financials of any companies, as well as shareholder agreements, operating agreements, buy/sell agreements, various asset listings and others. You’re presenting several documents to the valuation expert prior to the mediation, and they're doing their own due diligence and maybe even asking questions before the mediation. Then when you're going into mediation, they have a background in the valuation; they're bringing a lot of your financials, maybe even a summary of the assets and debts. A lot of times you just have to ask the mediator, “what are the documents that I need?” Usually they have a list of things to get you prepared.
Then to mentally prepare, you should ask yourself: “What are my priorities? What do I really want? What am I willing to give up? What is satisfactory? What would be my best case scenario? What's my worst case scenario? What are the things that I just can't possibly move past?” It’s good to understand those things before entering mediation. Then when you understand what you really want, you need to dial it back one notch. Then you can say “Okay, I really want this item, this asset, the house, or maybe just the business - I don’t want to sell to the other partner.” Maybe you're figuring out who's gonna keep the business. In that capacity, you're figuring out what you want from the situation. How do you step back and say, “What I really want is income. What I really want is security. What I really want is to be comfortable into the future and know that I have the capability to survive.” When you go back to those kind of emotions, you begin to realize there are multiple scenarios that would make you feel comfortable. Before, you may have felt like you needed to keep the company. Now, you may realize both parties could remain partners. Maybe there are certain other ideas that the mediator has to make it so that you still feel comfortable, know that there's income, and know that your future is secure. It just means that you have to be open to different possibilities.
How can you really get prepared for mediation? Be open and be prepared to compromise. Have some ideas of what that looks like to you. Think about the places where you can’t compromise - can you at least talk about those things with less emotion and stick to facts? Try and enunciate to the other party things you need to feel better about your future in an open and honest way.
