Is it time to call in mediation? Advice from the field
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Any organization can find itself facing a conflict so entrenched, so ugly, that a key person is paralyzing the productivity of an entire group, a department is chronically unable to come up with a new idea, or leadership is in such disarray that partners aren’t speaking to each other and some are ready to walk.
Negative conflicts like these can literally bring a company to its knees. I’ve witnessed too many conflicts that have become entrenched for so long that the team or partners can’t move forward. The partnership breaks up, contentious separation agreements or lawsuits follow, and hundreds if not thousands of employees are left without jobs.
Conflict is serious business. Mediation is the tool that can help people come to the table, get clear on the issues, sort out their conflicts, and put the company back on track — before it’s too late.
Why call a mediator?
Mediators are trained conflict advisors who facilitate communication and negotiation, and promote voluntary decision-making by the parties to resolve a dispute. Besides their expert training and experience, the mediator can provide what a company cannot — an outside, impartial, objective and confidential presence. The beauty is to bring fresh (trained) eyes to the situation which increases the chances of reaching resolution. According to the American Arbitration Association, over 85% of all mediations result in a settlement.
Elephants squeezed into a room — all trying to run in different directions
When I come into a team conflict situation, it often feels to me like there are so many elephants in the room it is hard to move! So many factors are at play, and it’s my job and expertise (and passion) to uncover those factors and work with them. The roots of the conflict may include past relationships, bad business decisions, blame, different working styles, personality types, conflict styles, strategic needs — you get the idea. For myself and my mediation team, our relationship with a team includes “shooting” some elephants and riding some others.
At Resologics, our process begins by holding interviews with all the key players to gather their knowledge and perspectives on the situation. We also test for trust every step of the way, because “loss of trust” is a key indicator of how hard it will be to recover the relationships and resolve the conflict in a way that is productive for everyone.
Then we convene inside that crowded room full of elephants.
Questions are asked, emotions are teased out. There can be painful moments, as when a key founding member quits, taking his equity, knowledge and dedication with him. There can be screaming; mediation textbooks call this kind of interaction “venting” — I call it a darn shame that it’s gone this far. But there are times when deeply-festering emotions need to surface if a team has any chance of surviving.
In fact, in a recent experience the team of partners never reached that point and it’s likely the company won’t survive (leaving thousands of employees stranded). They had avoided and glossed over the interpersonal conflicts between them for so long, ignoring those festering emotions for more than a year, that we just couldn’t get past it. This is a rare case, and sad for me because I saw the possibilities. They waited too long and tamped down those conflicts until they became too toxic to even uncover let alone overcome.
On the flip side, breakthroughs happen often and sometimes from surprising places — one of the great satisfactions of this work. The “venting” wakes up a person who happens to hold the keys to change. The oppressive energy in the room shifts, and a glimmer of hope emerges. People begin to see the reality of their situations and the real conversation they need to have in order to alter that reality.
We help them build a new story they can all hitch their wagons to. The first steps to a new trust are taken.
The brass ring: Embracing constructive conflict!
Groups who call us in when in crisis mode have taken years to get to the stage they find themselves in. After mediation, course corrections will take time. We often continue our work with teams to help them nurture that trust in each other, make hard and necessary choices, and build momentum toward their new story.
The team gets better not only at seeing the elephants, but at dealing with them before they ever make it into the room.
The ultimate goal in our work as mediators/conflict advisors is to teach teams conflict competency, how to embrace constructive conflict and its benefits, which in almost every case eliminates the need for outside mediation.
How is your organization dealing with conflict? Do you see the warning signs of destructive conflict which, unaddressed, could lead to a dispute situation that requires outside intervention? If so, schedule a conversation with us here.
When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.
What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.