Figure: 9.1.
CREDIT: O’SULLIVAN SOLUTIONS
AN S4: SHIFT QUESTION helps introduce new information and insight to the parties and seeks to create a paradigm shift in their thinking and understanding. While an S3: Seeking Information question is a simple linear question that directly seeks information, an S4: Shift Question is a circular question and introduces deeper insight to the parties.
While S4 questions are presented in the S Questions Model in a certain order, this order is not rigid; each question can stand alone. But the general order of the questions moves from hearing what happened and how a party interpreted it and acted upon it, to distilling and exploring the information presented, to making connections with other experiences or events, to identifying any inner conflict or inconsistencies, to safely teasing out alternative perspectives, and finally to identifying the core of the problem and facilitating the creation of a future without the problems of the past. This is the journey through which parties may need to be facilitated. Each S4 category of question may be linked with each of the other seven categories of questions to achieve a specific outcome.
While the terms perspective, paradigm and paradigm shift have already been explained in Chapter 1, it is important to briefly review them again in the context of the introduction of S4: Shift Questions.
A paradigm is how we see, interpret and understand our world and our role in it, and how we understand the roles of others. It is our view of the world and how it should be, and our model or template from which we make sense of our world. Our paradigm has been uniquely customized in line with our past experiences and the beliefs we have formed about ourselves, others and our world.
Our individual and unique paradigm is our reference point for interpreting information and giving meaning to what happens in it. It is a way of organizing, classifying and condensing sensory information to help us to understand our world.
Our paradigm influences our perspectives which, in turn, filter incoming information, so that we see and experience our world in the way we expect to see and experience it, according to our paradigm. Our filters are conditioned by our experiences as we learn about our surroundings throughout our lives. Paradigms often limit and color our perceptions and awareness, resulting in us finding it hard to see something that does not conform to our basic assumptions.
It is important to note that stored memories are memories of our perceptions or subjective realities, not memories of reality.
When parties present at mediation their positions are often quite entrenched. This can be due to their conflicting perspectives. A paradigm shift occurs when parties hear each other and change their understanding, thinking and perspective about each other and about their conflict.
The questions asked during mediation aim to enable the parties to readjust their perspectives or subjective realities. The assumption here is that since subjective realities shape behaviors, then a readjustment of subjective realities might lead to a paradigm shift in thinking, and therefore, the readjustment of behaviors.
As stated in Chapter 1, it is important to reiterate that our stored memories are memories of our perceptions or subjective realities, not memories of reality. When we react to a memory, we are reacting to the way we stored that memory. Supporting a party to think clearly and to make distinctions or connections in their thinking helps them to change the way they are storing that memory.
To create a paradigm shift in parties who are in conflict, mediators need to ask specific questions that explore and focus their thinking as well as connecting and expanding it.
These questions focus, narrow and explore the thinking of the parties so that they can distinguish differences, distil information, analyze their conflict clearly and identify their issues, needs and underlying interests.
These questions facilitate parties to generate connections in their brain with their existing experience and knowledge. They support a party to reflect on their conflict, as if from an external paradigm, and to generate connections with a possible future by expanding their thinking and teasing through future options.
The following chapters 10–17 will introduce the eight individual types of S4: Shift Thinking Dimension of questions. Each type of question has its own specific purpose but contributes to the overall purpose of these questions, which is to facilitate a party to gain new insight and to bring about a paradigm shift in their thinking and understanding.
1. S4: Journey of Inference questions
2. S4: Neuro-linguistic Programming-based questions
3. S4: Cognitive Elements-based questions
4. S4: Distinction and Difference questions
5. S4: Reflective Connecting questions
6. S4: Other People questions
7. S4: Underlying Interests questions
8. S4: Future Focus questions
Each type of question is designed to focus attention on the subject under discussion and to ask questions that facilitate reflection, create insight and support action. While there are eight types of S4 questions and they are presented in the model in a certain order, each type is a stand-alone question with its own unique purpose. Each category may also be linked with any of the other seven categories of questions to achieve a specific outcome. It can also be interlinked with any of the other seven categories of questions to develop a combined S4 question, if required.
The rest of this section will introduce the eight types of S4: Shift Thinking questions, in eight consecutive chapters, under the following subheadings:
✓ What is this question?
✓ How do these questions work?
✓ When to ask these questions
✓ Methodology
✓ How do you build and ask this type of question? (with examples)
