Dispute Resolution
Most situations that arrive here have been running for months. It is usually the cost that finally prompts the call: the management time, the sick leave, the good people quietly deciding to leave. If you are reading this with a file of your own open, here is what I would want you to know. Almost none of these are beyond repair. The parties have stopped being able to hear each other, which is not the same as having nothing left to agree on, and in my experience the workable outcome is closer than either of them believes. Most of the time it takes one well-run conversation to find it.
The foundation behind this practice
I am a Qualified Mediator with the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada and on the ADRIC national mediation roster. My training in the craft comes from the Harvard Program on Negotiation, where I studied mediation and dispute resolution and, separately, negotiation itself, with further study in negotiation at Carleton University. I sit as a roster mediator with the Nunavut Human Rights Tribunal, am a member of Mediators Beyond Borders International and I keep a weekly practice in relational and community mediation which keeps the craft sharp between larger files.
01Mediation
Civil, human rights, peace building and workplace matters, between two parties or a small number of them. The work includes convening, the agreement to mediate, confidential pre-mediation meetings with each side, the mediation itself, and drafting support on whatever the parties reach, because an agreement that is clear on the day and ambiguous in writing has not really settled anything.
Mediations run virtually by default.
WHAT WE BUILD TOGETHERYou get convening and the agreement to mediate, confidential pre-mediation meetings, the mediation session, and support drafting minutes of settlement or a memorandum of understanding. Where a tribunal supplies its own agreement to mediate, that instrument is used.
WHERE THIS HELPSThis helps when a human rights complaint has reached the mediation stage, when a civil matter would cost more to litigate than it is worth to either side, when conflict has become violent, when two employees or an employee and a manager cannot work together, or when a relationship is deteriorating and neither party wants what comes next.
HOW THE WORK UNFOLDSMost matters take at least a full day together, with confidential pre-mediation meetings in the week beforehand.
02Conflict Coaching
This is one-to-one work with a person who is inside a conflict they have to keep living in. It is not therapy and it is not legal advice; it is a structured process for working out what the conflict is actually about, what you want out of it, what you might be doing that is making it worse, and how to have the conversation you have been avoiding. Most people arrive believing the other party has to change first, and leave with something they can do on Monday regardless of whether that happens.
WHAT WE BUILD TOGETHERYou get an intake session followed by a series of coaching sessions, run virtually and held in confidence. Where an employer is paying, the employer is told that the coaching occurred and nothing at all about its content.
WHERE THIS HELPSThis helps when a manager and a direct report are stuck, when you are heading into a difficult conversation, a grievance or a mediation and want to be ready for it, when you keep having the same conflict with different people, or when the other party has declined mediation and you still need to move.
Sessions run 60 to 90 minutes, and most people find a short series is enough. A single session is a perfectly reasonable place to begin.
HOW THE WORK UNFOLDS