饮水思源 – Chinese proverb meaning “When you drink water, remember its source” Many will remember 25 August 2012 as the day Neil Armstrong passed away. Neil Armstrong was a hero and an inspiration to many. He was of course the first man to walk on the moon and his achievement was symbolic to many of…

To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that mediation is confidential. Go on any training course, listen to any mediator’s opening speech, and the secrecy/privacy of the process will be affirmed and reaffirmed. In the commercial mediation arena, and these days most other practice areas, you will also sign a contractual undertaking…

I recently spent a very pleasant evening chatting to a German colleague over beer and toasted marshmallows. To my surprise, she prefaced much she had to say with the comment, “but sure mediation is much more established and better developed in Ireland than here (Germany)”. I was a bit puzzled by this perception, because as…

One year ago, on the 1 September 2012, The Kluwer Mediation Blog was launched with an inaugural posting by the then Minister for Justice in Slovenia, Ales Zalar. Right from the start, Ales challenged readers by offering fresh thinking about political applications of mediation: “Mediation stands for more democracy, which we all need, because it…

Mediators often talk about the power of framing their own language and reframing the language of parties and others in mediation settings. For example, mediators may frame their comments in neutral, constructive and future-focused language. They may reframe party statements to detoxify offensive or destructive language or to create a shift from the negative to…

The first mediation course is a special moment that each of us holds in our hearts and it represents the foundation of every mediator. The transformational process that we all go through during our training as mediators is materialized by the change in our attitude towards conflict and how to solve them. When we go…

Professions (and hence professionals) are both blessed and cursed with high expectations. The upside is clear: the public expects high standards, expertise and care, and in return is prepared to pay handsomely. The downside typically involves disciplinary sanctions against those not measuring up to those standards, although issues of probity rather than competence tend to…

Part of my June was spent preparing for and being involved in a peer mediation initiative in Singapore called Peacemakers. This project was first run in 2010 and had as its purpose the goal of bringing the ideas of mediation and collaborative problem solving to young people. This initiative saw students (aged between 13 to…

Looking back over my previous blog posts it strikes me that I’ve been throwing the term integration around a fair bit in the context of dispute resolution and mediation, in particular. The term “alternative dispute resolution” has always sat somewhat uneasily with me. While it is of course a correct description, as the procedures it…