When Apologies Don’t Come: Understanding and Managing Refusal to Apologise in Mediation
By Dr Samantha Hardy and Dr Judith Rafferty Apologies can be transformative. A brief “I’m sorry” has the potential to mend trust, restore dignity, and signal a willingness to move forward. Yet in practice, many mediators have sat through sessions where one party waits, sometimes
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: Conflict Resilience, by Robert C. Bordone
This new book by Robert C. Bordone (negotiation professor) and Joel Salinas (behavioural neurologist) is essential reading for everyone! It asks the question “Have we lost the capacity to engage constructively in conflict?”, exploring what this might look like, potential causes, and most importantly, strategies
Navigating the Grey Zones: A Practical Guide to Ethical Decision-Making for Mediators
The Conflict Management Academy has been running “The Mediator’s Dilemma Series” events this year, in which mediators explore a challenging hypothetical and discuss how they would deal with the dilemmas at various stages of the process. These events have been well attended and the discussions
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Richard Susskind
I’ve been able to avoid much of the controversy around AI, just playing around with it for fun when I’ve had some spare time, until recently. However, two things really piqued my interest. One was working with iResolve on an AI Conflict Coach (which despite
What Do Students Think Mediation Is?
Insights from a Classroom Conversation on Defining Mediation A definition can be a doorway or a dead end. When we ask students training to become mediators to choose the definition of mediation they most align with, we’re not just testing their understanding of theory. We’re
Mediating Underwater: Rethinking Mediation to Make It Inclusive for Neurodivergent Clients.
This blog post is based on a presentation I gave at the Australian Dispute Centre conference in Sydney in May this year. Navigating a Sea of Conflict Put your hand up if: You can swim. You’ve ever been caught in a rip. You’ve ever been