What Is Omni-Partiality?

Legendary mediator Ken Cloke invented the terms omni-partial and omni-partiality to “upgrade” the notion of neutrality.

Imagine there’s a conflict and you’re called in to help, either as a professional meditator or a member of The Third Side (which we all are).

The conventional 20th century wisdom is to enter as a neutral party.

The benefit of neutrality is that neither party feels you have “sided” with the other, and you can therefore maintain my credibility in the eyes of all.

The limitation of neutrality is that it doesn’t exist. We are not soulless machines and we have feelings and biases, whether we wish to or not.

Ken Cloke’s concept of omni-partiality attempts to preserve the credibility of the mediator while engaging deeply with both parties and the mediator’s own experience of the moment.

The idea is to demonstrate understanding of the narrative, the needs, and the rationale behind each party’s actions, without agreeing with them or condoning their actions.

In doing so, the mediator models the difference between understanding and condoning and helps each party witness the reality of the other party’s experience.

Another way of looking at it is that each party in a conflict is sensitive to bias against them, but welcomes bias for them.

The mediator’s first responsibility is not to show bias against any party.

Neutrality achieves this by removing all bias (positive and negative).

Omnipartiality restores positive bias towards one party in a way the other party cannot perceive as negative against them. This is done through accurate reflection and reframing of the first party’s experience, without judging it either positively or negatively.

A quote from Mediating Dangerously (Ken Cloke, 2001):

I suggest we shift our thinking from being neutral to being omni-partial, first, because there is no such thing as genuine neutrality when it comes to conflict; second, because the language of neutrality creates an expectation that fairness means suppressing our past experiences and insights.

But real fairness comes from using the past to gain an open, honest, humble perspective on the present. Worse, neutral language is bland, consistent, predictable, and homogenous, and used to control what cannot be controlled….

Yet because neutrality implies objectivity and distance from the source of the conflict, it cannot countenance empathy, or give the mediator room to acknowledge or experience grief, compassion, love, anger, fear, or hope. Neutrality can paralyze emotional honesty, intimate communication, vulnerability, and self-criticism. It can undermine shared responsibility, prevention, creative problem solving, and organizational learning. It can ignore the larger systems in which conflict occurs. It can fail to comprehend spirit, forgiveness, transformation, or healing, which are essential in mediation.

As a result, it can become a straitjacket, a check on our ability to unlock the sources of conflict.