🕊️ Mediation & conflict resolution
Mediation & alternative dispute resolution (ADR)
Mediation and conflict resolution: C. Moore ("The Mediation Process"), R. A. B. Bush & J. Folger (transformative mediation), H. Zehr (restorative justice), Fisher & Ury.
Full detail in the “Origin & history” section below.
Author of the library
Negotiation lecturer at KEDGE Business School
A rare threefold background serving negotiation: teaching, commercial justice and audit, backed by experience as a company director in Bordeaux.
Circular questioning consists in asking one party about the experience, intentions or point of view of another party, rather than questioning them about themselves. By compelling each person to articulate the perspective of the other, it turns a confrontation of entrenched positions into a shared exploration of the relationships and the chains of interaction. Originating in systemic family therapy, it is today a central tool of mediation and cooperative negotiation, because it generates mutual understanding without requiring any prior concession. Its strength lies in making the interdependence of the actors visible and in untangling the misunderstandings that fuel the conflict.
At a glance
Vigilance: low (2.0/10) · Preparation required: 7/10
Indicative profile: it situates the “Mediation & conflict resolution” family as the Mediation & conflict resolution school practises it, not this technique taken in isolation. Techniques from the same family and school therefore share the same profile. NEGOCOACH editorial rating out of 10, non-experimental · the higher the “relational risk” value, the more costly the technique is to the relationship.
NEGOCOACH assessment
Tactical potential 6.3/10 (effectiveness, impact, discretion) and vigilance low (relational and ethical risk): two distinct readings, deliberately never merged into a single score that would reward risk. NEGOCOACH editorial rating calibrated from the “Mediation & conflict resolution” family and the “Mediation & conflict resolution” school. Each criterion is rated out of 10; click to understand what it measures.
How far the technique can carry the negotiation in the intended direction when it is well executed.
Strength of the effect produced on the counterpart's perceptions, emotions and decisions.
How hard it is for the other party to notice the technique is being used. A high value = very discreet.
The information, analysis and rehearsal required upfront to use it effectively.
Potential cost to the relationship and to trust if the technique is spotted, refused or fails. A high value = riskier.
Moral acceptability: fairness, transparency and respect for the counterpart's autonomy. A high value = more defensible.
Documented school
The school this technique stems from is documented by recognised work and established practice, without experimental consensus. This indicator qualifies the school, not this technique taken in isolation.
Indicative NEGOCOACH editorial rating, for teaching purposes. For “Relational risk”, a high value signals a cost to the relationship, not a quality.
The technique was formalised by the Milan team (Mara Selvini Palazzoli, Luigi Boscolo, Gianfranco Cecchin and Giuliana Prata) in the founding article ‘Hypothesizing, Circularity, Neutrality’ published in Family Process in 1980, extending the systemic approach of the Palo Alto school (Mental Research Institute, 1950s-1960s, around Gregory Bateson and Paul Watzlawick). The concept of ‘circularity’ refers there to the practitioner’s capacity to conduct the interview on the basis of feedback from the family system. Karl Tomm (1987-1988) subsequently proposed an operational typology (linear, circular, strategic and reflexive questions) which spread the technique well beyond the therapeutic field, notably into mediation and negotiation.
Circular questioning is a mode of interviewing in which one asks an interlocutor to describe the situation, emotions, needs or motivations of another interlocutor, or to comment on the relationship between two third parties. Instead of the direct question ‘What do you want?’, one poses a decentring question: ‘In your view, what does the other party expect from this discussion?’ or ‘How do you think your partner perceives this proposal?’. Operationally, it rests on three pillars: circularity (information comes from differences and relationships, not from individual attributes), neutrality (the practitioner remains ‘an ally of everyone and of no one’), and hypothesis (each question tests a reading of the system). The intended effect is twofold: to produce new information and to lead each party actively to represent the other’s perspective.
Application by context
A salesperson asks their client: ‘In your view, what matters most to your finance department when choosing a supplier?’, which leads the client to verbalise internal criteria they would not have disclosed spontaneously and opens ground for a tailored proposal.
The buyer questions the supplier: ‘In your view, what constraints weigh on my production teams when a delivery runs two days late?’, which leads the seller to take on board the buyer’s logic and to adjust their delivery commitments of their own accord.
In collective bargaining, the mediator asks a union representative: ‘How do you think management experiences the threat of a strike?’ and then puts the symmetrical question to management, drawing out the reciprocal fears behind the surface demands.
In a hostage-taking or an acute crisis, the negotiator asks the barricaded person: ‘In your view, what do the people outside believe is happening in here?’, which invites decentring, slows the emotional escalation and re-establishes a channel of rational thought.
In a negotiation between parties, a facilitator asks the representatives of one camp: ‘In your view, what do your opponents need to be able to announce to their base in order to sign an agreement?’, revealing each side’s legitimacy constraints and opening up a zone of compromise that can be presented on both sides.
The agent asks the buyer: ‘In your view, why is this seller so keen on a long moving-out period?’, turning a point of friction over the date into an understanding of the seller’s family situation and into leverage for a trade-off on the price.
Faced with a foreign team, the negotiator asks: ‘How do you think your partners interpret our insistence on a detailed written contract?’, bringing to light a gap in cultural codes (relational trust vs. formalism) before it becomes a stumbling block.
In an inheritance dispute, the mediator asks a brother: ‘What does your sister feel, in your view, when she brings up the family home?’, which shifts the debate from the monetary value of the assets to the real emotional attachments and opens up a calmer sharing.
Counter-techniques
Negotiation is also played on defence. Here is how to recognise this technique when it is used against you, and turn it around.
The signals that give it away
The counters that defuse it
Turn it into an advantage
Name the manoeuvre: said out loud, a technique loses most of its power.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts.
Strengths: a powerful reducer of tension, since it requires no concession in order to be used; it creates cognitive empathy and spontaneously gives rise to integrative solutions; it circulates information that head-on questions block; it is hard to sidestep without revealing part of one’s position. Weaknesses: time-consuming and ill-suited to highly transactional or time-pressured negotiations; it can seem artificial, manipulative or intrusive if applied mechanically; it demands genuine neutrality from the practitioner, failing which the question steers and loses its virtue; it presupposes interlocutors willing to engage in a minimum of introspection, and it can fail against a party acting in bad faith or in a position of dominant power who refuses to decentre.
Particularly effective when the conflict is entrenched in misunderstandings, attributions of hostile intent or symmetrical escalation; when the parties dig into positions without expressing their interests; where a third-party mediator or facilitator is present; in relational and long-term negotiations where preserving the relationship matters as much as the agreement; ahead of the distributive phase, in order to enlarge the pie. Less suited to purely one-off transactions, to ultimatums, to contexts of very strong power asymmetry, or when the available time is extremely constrained.
Diplomatic · Herbert Kelman’s problem-solving workshops, The social psychologist Herbert Kelman (Harvard) ran, over several decades, unofficial dialogue workshops (‘interactive problem-solving workshops’) bringing together influential Israelis and Palestinians. The central principle, documented in his work, consisted in having each group express the way the other perceived the situation, its fears and its fundamental needs for security and recognition. This systematic decentring, a methodological cousin of circular questioning, made it possible to move beyond exclusive narratives of victimhood and to bring out the understanding that the security of one depended on the dignity of the other. Several participants in these workshops went on to play a role in the official negotiation channels.
Business · Unblocking a supplier negotiation through decentring, A representative scenario of business mediation (illustrative, not attributed to a named company): two companies that have been partners for ten years are on the brink of a break-up over a pricing renegotiation, each accusing the other of bad faith. The mediator stops questioning each party about their demands and asks the head of procurement: ‘In your view, what really threatens your supplier’s survival in this matter?’, then asks the supplier: ‘What does your client have to justify to their management committee?’. On hearing each other describe their respective constraints, the parties discover that the real issue was not the unit price but the predictability of volumes; the agreement refocuses on a multi-year commitment of orders, moving away from the tug-of-war over the pennies.
Recognising the technique: your interlocutor stops asking you what YOU want and repeatedly invites you to describe what the other camp thinks, feels or fears. This is not in itself a hostile manoeuvre: decentring is generally cooperative and beneficial. To guard against it without rejecting it, stay aware that your answers reveal your reading of the opponent and therefore part of your strategy; answer sincerely on substance but without disclosing sensitive tactical information. If you sense the question is leading (it already contains the desired answer), rephrase it neutrally before answering it: ‘You’re asking me how I think he perceives that? Honestly, I don’t know, let’s ask him.’ You can also turn the circularity around by posing it in your turn.
Limits: the technique presupposes a capacity and a willingness for introspection and decentring that some people lack (great distress, rigidity, bad faith, very strong power asymmetry). It does not replace work on material interests and does not, on its own, create objective value to be shared. Ethics: the line between decentring to understand and manipulating to make someone talk is thin. Circular questioning must serve mutual understanding, not extract confessions, induce a point of view through falsely neutral questions, or exploit the emotional vulnerability of a party. The neutrality claimed by the Milan school (later reformulated as ‘curiosity’ by Cecchin) is an ethical requirement as much as a technical one: as soon as the questioning becomes leading, it ceases to be circular and becomes a form of concealed influence.
Related and neighbouring techniques: reflexive questions and Karl Tomm’s typology (linear / circular / strategic / reflexive); the systemic reframing of Palo Alto; active listening and empathic reformulation; ‘perspective-taking’ and role reversal drawn from psychodrama and practised in mediation; the ‘what if you were in their shoes’ technique; Socratic questioning (close through maieutics but centred on the interlocutor’s own reasoning, not on a third party); the ‘third story’ of the Harvard approach (Difficult Conversations). Circular questioning dovetails naturally with the search for underlying interests in principled negotiation.
Quick exercise
Answer in your head, then reveal the solution. Memory is built through active recall.
Frequently asked questions
Circular questioning consists in asking one party about the experience, intentions or point of view of another party, rather than questioning them about themselves. By compelling each person to articulate the perspective of the other, it turns a confrontation of entrenched positions into a shared exploration of the relationships and the chains of interaction. Originating in systemic family therapy, it is today a central tool of mediation and cooperative negotiation, because it generates mutual understanding without requiring any prior concession. Its strength lies in making the interdependence of the actors visible and in untangling the misunderstandings that fuel the conflict.
Yes. Used in good faith it stays within a fair negotiation: it structures the exchange without deceiving the other party. Being transparent about your intentions strengthens the long-term relationship.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts. The right reflex: slow down and reformulate.
NEGOCOACH does not assess the experimental validation of this technique in isolation. What we document is the grounding of its source school (Mediation & conflict resolution): documented school. Full detail is in the "At a glance" section of this page.
Practise with AI
Copy, paste into your assistant, replace the [brackets]. Works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, Perplexity.
Build your plan before the meeting
You are an expert negotiation coach. Help me prepare to use the "Circular Questioning" technique in the following situation: [describe your situation]. Give me: the conditions for success, a 3-step script, my counterpart's likely objections and how to answer them.
Rehearse against an AI counterpart
Play the role of my counterpart in a negotiation. I am going to test the "Circular Questioning" technique. React realistically and with resistance, do not give in too quickly, then at the end analyse my performance and suggest 3 concrete improvements.
Analyse a past negotiation
Here is how my negotiation went: [paste the exchanges]. Analyse whether the "Circular Questioning" technique was used well, what worked, the mistakes made, and spell out precisely what I could have done better.
References
Founding works of the 🕊️ Mediation & conflict resolution school this technique belongs to.
The Mediation Process
BookC. W. Moore · 2014
The Promise of Mediation
BookR. A. B. Bush & J. P. Folger · 2005
The Little Book of Restorative Justice
BookH. Zehr · 2002
Getting to Yes
BookR. Fisher & W. Ury · 1981
Mediation and conflict resolution: C. Moore ("The Mediation Process"), R. A. B. Bush & J. Folger (transformative mediation), H. Zehr (restorative justice), Fisher & Ury.
On video
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Technique map
Every technique sits within a network: what it draws on, what it combines with, where it applies, and how to defend against it.
Spot its signals, neutralise it and turn it around with the defensive playbook on this page.
See the counter-techniquesCircular questioning consists in asking one party about the experience, intentions or point of view of another party, rather than questioning them about themselves. By compelling each person to articulate the perspective of the other, it turns a confrontation of entrenched positions into a shared exploration of the relationships and the chains of interaction. Originating in systemic family therapy, it is today a central tool of mediation and cooperative negotiation, because it generates mutual understanding without requiring any prior concession. Its strength lies in making the interdependence of the actors visible and in untangling the misunderstandings that fuel the conflict.
Name the manoeuvre: said out loud, a technique loses most of its power.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts.
Our programmes turn theory into a concrete advantage.