THE ROLE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY OF A MEDIATOR

Abstract

Aim. To provide a theoretical justification for the role of emotional intelligence as a mediator’s professional meta-competence, identify the mechanisms of its functional implementation in the mediation process, analyse its relationship with the legal, ethical, communicative, and conflict-management components of professional activity, and outline directions for developing emotional intelligence within the professional training of mediators.

Methods. The study is theoretical and analytical in nature. Its methodological framework is based on systemic, competence-based, interdisciplinary, and functional approaches. The methods employed included theoretical analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalisation, systematisation, content analysis of contemporary scholarly sources, and functional modelling of a mediator’s professional activity. A comparative analysis was conducted of the ability model developed by P. Salovey, J. Mayer, and D. Caruso, D. Goleman’s mixed model, and R. Bar-On’s emotional-social model with regard to their application in professional mediation practice.

Results. The synthesis of contemporary scholarly approaches substantiated the appropriateness of conceptualising emotional intelligence not as an isolated personality characteristic or merely one of the soft skills, but as a mediator’s professional meta-competence integrating cognitive, self-regulatory, empathic, communicative, ethical, and reflective components. The functional implementation of this meta-competence was found to include diagnosing the emotional dynamics of conflict, maintaining professional neutrality and impartiality, transforming positional confrontation into interest-based dialogue, de-escalating conflict interaction, facilitating the mediation procedure, and preventing professional exhaustion. The study also analysed the risks associated with insufficiently developed emotional intelligence, the boundaries of its professional application, and ways of integrating emotional competence development into basic and specialised mediator training.

Conclusions. Emotional intelligence is a key professional meta-competence of a mediator, enabling the effective integration of legal knowledge, procedural skills, ethical principles, and psychological mechanisms for managing conflict interaction. Its development improves the quality of the mediation procedure, contributes to maintaining neutrality, supports the voluntariness and autonomy of the parties, helps prevent professional burnout, and provides a foundation for improving the effectiveness of mediator training. Further research should focus on the empirical validation of the proposed functional model and the development of valid criteria for assessing the emotional competence of practising mediators.

Keywords: emotional intelligence; mediator; mediation; professional meta-competence; conflict-management competence; emotional self-regulation; neutrality; conflict de-escalation; professional training.