Last month, a chance encounter with the CEO of another organization in the hallway set off a chain of events that, three weeks later, found me sitting in a mediation session with two warring colleagues. I work for a charity in a building shared by other charities, surrounded by charitable people for whom alternative dispute resolution is an easy sell. The reasons for this, however, require an uncomfortable acknowledgment of a variety of stereotypes that I don’t feel secure enough to list. The colleagues in question, despite both self-identifying as reasonable people, could not quite reach a resolution on their core disagreement. My strategically placed grapes and custard creams could not de-escalate the palpable tension in the room, with anger and frustration fizzing almost visibly in the air. And yet, despite the thickly oppressive atmosphere blinding my optimism, many smaller, bite-sized agreements were made collaboratively, which, in the moment, gave me hope—and perhaps th...

  Recently, during a training session for an online conflict management course, I noticed a promise that participants would learn how to confidently manage “single-issue conflicts.” While I’m sure the phrase made sense in the context of the training, I found myself reacting strongly against the idea that any conflict can truly be reduced to a single issue. It made me reflect on mediations that, at first glance, appeared quite simple, and I thought I’d share one of those with you today. *Names and key details have been changed to maintain confidentiality. This was a simple mediation, according to the paperwork, focusing on damage to the respondent’s home. The respondent had hired a maintenance company to fix the damage. The company finished in good time and the work was done to a satisfactory standard; however, payment did not come. When the owner of the company (the claimant) reached out to his client (the respondent) to encourage payment, he was told that his workers had damag...

  The following article reflects on my experience as the mediator in a recent case. Both the claimant and respondent have read this article before publication and have kindly given their consent for it to be published. There’s a danger in any repeated endeavour that we become complacent, stop seeking challenge and lose some of our creativity. Whilst I don’t believe my mediation practice has quite fallen prey to this just yet, I’m still relatively young and certainly not bored of it, I have reached a level of confidence where mediation has become my normal. The big moments of learning are becoming less frequent, perhaps making them more noticeable. That’s probably why I was both anxious and excited to take on a recent mediation that required significant changes to my usual process. The claimant, who lives with several inter-connected medical conditions, was keen to engage with mediation but did not have the capacity to communicate by phone, online meeting or face to face. Email ...

  2025 was an extremely busy year for me for several reasons, a house move in the summer being the main culprit. By December, I was limping, exhausted, into some well-earned rest. The end-of-year break is traditionally a time to catch up with friends and family, head out on long solo runs, reflect on the year just gone, and look ahead to the journey to come. It is also a time to watch television in my boxer shorts. Dear reader, I can assure you that the latter occurred with sufficient abandon to allow me to confidently rate and recommend all of 2025’s hottest Hollywood offerings. Stranger Things was good. Pluribus was excellent. Strictly Come Dancing was my daughter’s insufferable choice. I apologise for the mental image of my boxer shorts. Of course, my wonky brain rarely allows me to relax for long. Before long, guilt crept in…I should be doing something more productive, something that contributed to my intellectual or career development. It was in this guilt...

  My last three Simple Procedure mediations did not settle. Which doesn’t feel great. I like to pretend, as mediators often do, that I don’t put much stock in settlement rates, but my emotional brain knows that isn’t true. If life were a video game, my self-esteem health bar would be flashing violently, begging for an extra life before we hit the Game Over screen. Interestingly, while I couldn’t avoid the Game Over screen in these mediations, each of them did continue to the next level. All three seemingly unresolved conflicts came back for another bite of the apple, with claimants and respondents reaching out again to see if we could move things forward. I’m finding this kind of post-mediation negotiation more common in my practice, and I haven’t yet decided whether that says something about the clients, my practice, or, more likely, both. I’m someone who values mediation because it brings people together at times when they are often isolated from one another. That has always ...