Navigating Multi-Party Mediation
If you’re new to mediation, you’ve probably mastered the basics of facilitating dialogue between two parties. But what happens when a third person enters the room? Whether it’s three colleagues in a workplace dispute, a supervisor and two team members, or any other multi-party configuration,
When Someone Asks You to “Facilitate a Conversation” Rather Than Mediate
You trained as a mediator. You’ve learned about impartiality, confidentiality, and party self-determination. Now a colleague or manager asks if you can “facilitate a difficult conversation” between two people in their team. It sounds like mediation. It feels adjacent to mediation. But before you say
Aspirational Ethics: The Character Required for Conflict Work Today
We are living in a moment where the centre of society feels like it’s cracking. Polarisation is no longer abstract, it’s showing up at dinner tables, in workplaces, and in parliament. Social media rewards outrage, making disputes louder and harder to de-escalate. People feel the
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: Line in the Sand by Dean Yates
Some books inform you. Others transform you. Dean Yates’s memoir Line in the Sand does both, and it does so with a raw honesty that will leave you profoundly changed. Yates spent 26 years as a journalist with Reuters, much of that time in some
CRITICAL REFLECTION: Does a Mediation Process Have Integrity?
I was chatting recently with a mediator about a mediation that was mid-way through. A first joint session had taken place, with another scheduled in the near future. However, in the meantime one of the parties had potentially breached confidentiality of the first session. It
REAL WORLD INSIGHTS: Why We All Say “Self-Determination” But Practice It Differently
Robert Baruch Bush’s recent article in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review tackles something most mediators have noticed: we all agree that party self-determination is fundamental to mediation, yet we practice it very differently. The Gap Between Theory and Practice Bush identifies two distinct approaches: In