The New Partnership Method offers an approach to resolving disagreements and building lasting relationships, including shared parenting. It takes people’s emotional lives and responses to stress into account and combines emotional, communication and practical tools. It can help people planning to parent together, as well as parents who already share responsibility for children.
A neutral space for a sensitive conversation
People often arrive at mediation carrying strong feelings and worries. The mediator works to create a safe, reassuring atmosphere where participants can feel less threatened and release some physical and emotional tension. The mediator’s role is to remain neutral, without favouring one person, so both can explore possible solutions.
Difficult feelings also have a place in the conversation. The aim is a space where both people can express them and receive understanding with the mediator’s support.
Questions that open up thinking
Asking questions is a central tool and a driving force in New Partnership. Questions can help people broaden their perspective, move beyond an impasse, see a situation differently and strengthen trust and confidence.
The mediator uses questions to help participants define their own direction and options, rather than prescribe answers. They can clarify their thoughts and needs, communicate them more precisely to the other person, and make choices themselves. The participants remain responsible for their decisions.
Aligning expectations and defining shared goals
The method looks towards the future. Shared goals provide the starting foundation: what do the prospective or current parents want to build together for their children? Education, health, values, stability and a sense of safety can all become subjects for this discussion.
Within that shared foundation, each person’s individual goals and needs are explored, including career plans, housing, financial prospects and a couple relationship. Practical arrangements follow the definition of shared and personal goals, so that parents can consider how to reach them.
The method seeks common interests even during disagreement. Children’s wellbeing, financial stability and living with security can provide areas to explore together. Parents are encouraged to explain the need behind a request—“why is this important to me?”—as well as the request itself.
Reducing tension and sustaining cooperation over time
New Partnership views conflict as a possible opportunity for growth. Separating the person from the problem can help parents work together while continuing to disagree about a particular issue.
The mediator takes stress responses into account and works to reduce tension so that participants have more room for reflection, rather than reacting automatically. Strengthening the relationship is part of the process: whether or not they are a couple, they will share parenting responsibilities.
Tools for a continuing parenting relationship
The aim extends beyond resolving the immediate dispute. It is to help people learn to work together, build agreements and strengthen a parenting relationship that can continue. The process encourages personal growth, awareness of fears and room for emotions, alongside a focus on a shared future.
Parents can develop a stronger sense of their ability to parent and gain confidence in handling disagreements. The intention is to offer tools for peaceful cooperation and for managing future conflicts more independently, for their benefit and their children’s.
About the author
Nadav Nishri is a mediator and the developer of the New Partnership Method. He holds a bachelor’s degree in law and a master’s degree in conflict resolution, supports couples, families and business partners, and trains mediators. He is the author of Divorcing in Peace, New Partnership and Mediation as a Martial Art.