Time Limited Mediation

“It is pointless to do with more what can be done with fewer.” William of Ockham A colleague recently asked me to present a workshop to employment mediators on ‘Time Limited Mediation.’ Until that moment, like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman realising he’s been speaking prose all his life, it hadn’t occurred to me that this was…

James Bond enters a casino where a beautiful girl is sitting at the bar. He approaches her, buys her a drink and makes his obligatory introduction: “Bond, James Bond…” After brief chatting, she asks him about his profession. Then, the usually reckless hero comes up with a cover story: “I am a mediator… Traveling to…

Whether two employees are fighting or a disgruntled client is on the verge of leaving, you—yes, you—can step in and help solve the problem. Here are some tricks of the trade. Conflict happens. It happens in all areas of business. When your employees spend 40 plus hours together each week, they are bound to run…

A human resources manager recently asked me for a general list of reasons why a mediation might not settle. While part of me wanted to question the idea of settlement as the goal of mediation (see Alan Gross’s excellent piece ‘Agreement Not the Gold Standard for Mediation – http://www.mediate.com/articles/GrossA3.cfm ) most of me thought this…

Mediating complex employment cases is like rehearsing for a concerto. The conductor spends a substantial amount of time reviewing the score, while the musicians practice the piece both individually and collectively. Hours and hours of practice result in one concert. Malcolm Gladwell, in his recent book ‘Outliers,’ describes the phenomenon of hugely successful people and…

This week in Glasgow, Strathclyde University hosted the first seminar in a series entitled ‘Reframing Resolution – Managing Individual Workplace Conflict’. The six seminars will take place across the UK over the next 12 months and the opener was ambitiously called ‘Understanding Individual Employment Disputes.’ The day contained elements that were encouraging and others that…