The other may have interest in taking whatever time is necessary to talk about relational issues and to ensure that they do not make any foolish decisions. The goal for the mediator is to seek to maximimally assist each participant in the way that they want to be assisted. It is not for the mediator to impose the qualities to be maximized, but, rather, for the mediator to elicit from the participants, through questionnaire devices and otherwise, the qualities that they would respectively like maximized in their mediation. The mediator's duty is to then seek to identify ways of working with each participant and with both or all of them to achieve as much satisfaction of their respective personal, process and substantive interests as possible. One of the implications of the concept of maximized mediation is that mediation becomes a passionate endeavor.
Mediators are no longer neutral nor removed from what the participants want to accomplish.
We are passionate about assisting participants to get as much of what they want as possible. Adjudication is not focused on maximization but upon determining truth and fairly applying the law. Sadly, adjudicatory assumptions may also rob negotiating and mediating participants of the opportunity to resolve their dispute in a maximizing way. It is asking a lot for disputants to self-maximize. Disputants are distracted and incapacitated by their emotion and righteousness.