Dismantling the “facilitative” “evaluative” dichotomy: Reflecting on Riskin’s grid and predicting the future

Leonard Riskin’s foundational article Understanding Mediators’ Orientations, Strategies, and Techniques, in which he presented a new model of mediator approaches, commonly known as Riskin’s Grid, has survived the test of time. More specifically, Riskin’s use of the terms “facilitative” and “evaluative” to describe the role of the mediator has endured multiple critiques and attempts at revision. Today, nearly twenty-five years later, practitioners, educators, service providers, and users of mediation still rely on these terms to describe and analyze a mediator’s approach to her craft. This response piece describes how the terminology has evolved and predicts that in the face of new and renewed challenges, the terminology may finally lose its false dichotomous relationship….