As accredited mediators we have been supporting sustainable outcomes for complex workplace challenges for over 10 years.
Our approach to workplace mediation is a holistic and humanistic risk management approach firmly focused on identifying human, systemic or environmental factors contributing to conflict. We believe this is critical to ensure the intervention of mediation is not short sighted and takes a broad-gauged, preventative stance. We believe this will addresses related organisational risks and by preventing a recurrence of similar disruptions, achieves sustainable results.
We have also extended the mediation framework to introduce a validated diagnostic tool which is simply unparalleled as a data-source for intrapersonal and interpersonal level insight. Using The Birkman Method (TBM) we can deepen the conversation to enable mediation participants’ to undertake a journey of self-awareness. Self-awareness is only comprehensive when one’s own perspectives are contrasted with others perceptions. The greatest variance that occurs between the participant’s internal perspective and others’ external perception of participant’s actual behaviour is when participants subconsciously display reactive behaviours under stress.
Clearly these behaviours are experienced by others, but because they occur outside the participant’s conscious awareness (being subconscious) they often don’t feature in a participant’s description of their contribution to the situation. So inevitably subjects are sometimes surprised that others’ description of them might be “less than ideal”, but certainly valid. Sharing the information among all mediation participants provides a solid foundation for understanding each other’s interests, needs and potential blind spots. It also provides greater insight into how both unmonitored shifting between conscious and unconscious behaviour might be contributing to volatility in in certain working relationships. Knowing how each person behaves in times of stress and why and then matching that with knowledge of how best to meet each other’s needs, amounts to a net gain in Emotional Intelligence.
Effective conflict resolution styles have been related, through a large body of research, to higher levels of emotional intelligence in individual and teams. Simply being cognisant of one’s own emotions, through self-regulation and empathic displays goes a long way towards demonstrating proactivity in conflict resolution and we now have a strong scientific foundation to explore these dispositions, behaviours and developmental options with our mediation participants.
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