What you’ve said seems self-evident. So why do we know it only in retrospect? Humans (and certain gods, speaking for myself) learn more from their own experience than that of others. Therefore the success that is synonymous with delivering value – in this case, a good mediation experience – is achievable by those appointors with a commitment to client service that gives them the courage to appoint mediators whose style is different to their own, or at least to the style stereotypically associated with the legal profession. Maybe the ideal appointors are those not just with courage, but with the humanity and optimism that they seek in the mediators they appoint!

[Pauses; thinks.]

Still, one could have success in a mediation despite a certain lack of insight in the appointors. After all, even a blind squirrel finds a few acorns. A few.