The first trap of mediation is believing that "not taking sides" means having no influence. It is what Leonard Boulle calls "the most pervasive and misleading myth about mediation." The mediator chooses who speaks first, where eye contact lands, which feeling gets named — every one of those is power. Pretending you don't have influence doesn't make you neutral. It makes you a hidden actor.
The research
The field has been wrestling with this for forty years. Three lines of work converge on the same conclusion: a mediator's neutrality is not a stance you adopt — it is a story you tell.
"Neither possible nor, at times, preferable."
Bernard Mayer's Beyond Neutrality (2004) opened a twenty-year conversation in the field by arguing that the equation of conflict resolution with neutral mediation has led practitioners to underplay power, values, and the inequalities at the heart of every dispute. Mayer's claim is direct: mediator neutrality is not a baseline truth. It is, at best, a procedural choice — and often a fiction.
Source
Beyond Intractability — summary of Bernard Mayer's Beyond Neutrality (2004).
"The most pervasive and misleading myth about mediation."
The phrase comes from Leonard Boulle, quoted widely across the field. The reasoning: almost every move a mediator makes — who is invited to speak first, where eye contact lands, which feeling gets named, which question gets asked — is an exercise of power. The trap is not that you have influence. It is pretending you don't.
Source
Wolters Kluwer Mediation Blog — "Is mediator neutrality holding us back in conflict resolution?"
Even when striving for neutrality, mediators shape outcomes.
Empirical work cited by Becker and others shows that mediators "guide conversations, steer outcomes, or unwittingly favour one party — even when striving for neutrality." Mayer made the same point as early as 1987: the quiet mechanics of who-speaks-when and which-feeling-gets-named are themselves the substance of mediation power.
Sources
Empirical synthesis at Wolters Kluwer Mediation Blog.
Mayer (1987) on the day-to-day power dynamics of mediation, summarized at Barney Jordaan.
The healthier frame
Refusing the neutrality myth does not mean abandoning the mediator role. It means being honest about what the role is and what it isn't. Two practices from the literature do the work the myth was supposed to do — without the pretense.
Practice 01
The frame from Shawn Patey: relay accurately, test only when invited, never adopt one party's case as your own. Impartiality is procedural — about how you treat each party — not a claim that you have no views.
Practice 02
Mulcahy's contribution to the conversation: openly acknowledging the values and biases you bring to the room, rather than performing a neutrality you don't have. Naming what you carry takes it out of the unspoken — where it does the most damage.
The clarifying distinction
The cleanest way out of the trap is to separate two things the neutrality myth conflates.
The position you take as a mediator is procedural, not substantive. Procedurally, you are committed to both parties being fully heard. That is the position. It is not the same as having no view about the outcome — it is having no business with the outcome.
Once that distinction is clear, much of the confusion the myth produces falls away. You can hold strong views about what should happen and still mediate well, as long as you do not put those views into the room as substance. The discipline is in keeping them out of the substance, not in pretending you don't have them.
Why this trap matters
The neutrality myth survives because it sounds like fairness. It isn't. Fairness in mediation is the discipline of giving both parties full standing — which requires being honest about the influence you already have, not hiding it behind a stance you can't actually hold.
The trap, named
Every move a mediator makes is a choice. Who speaks first. Which feeling gets named. What gets tested and what gets passed. The choices add up to a kind of power that operates whether or not the mediator admits to it.
Refusing the neutrality myth is not about taking sides. It is about being honest enough — with yourself, and with the parties — that the influence you have can be seen, tested, and held accountable. A mediator whose influence is visible can be challenged. A mediator who hides their influence cannot.