Consensus Mediation

Do you find there are people in your life that irritate or annoy you and while you have a vague idea as to why that is, you haven’t ever really thought about it?
Do you tend to spend more time ‘giving out’ about the list of things they do/have done that bug you rather than thinking about what exactly or why it is this bothers you?
Do you sometimes react outwardly to someone but wonder afterwards what it was that annoyed you so much?
If you do, then you are like most of us, we tend to focus our energy on that other person and find reasons to support the ‘grrr’ feeling we have about them rather than to reflect on ourselves. But one of the ways that can help us cope better both internally (how it affects us) and externally in how we react to them is to become aware of what it is exactly about their behaviours or attitude that bothers us and the reasons that underpin this.

In terms of research in this area, the Centre for Conflict Dynamics in Florida, U.S. has found that there are 9 behaviours/attitudes or ‘hot buttons’ that are found to be particularly triggering for people in the workplace. These are: unreliablity, overly analytical, unappreciative, aloof, micro-managing, self-centred, abrasive, untrustworthy and hostile You can take a free test to help you identify what your particular ‘hot button’ is here.

Your hot button may of course be none of these or perhaps even a few of them (none of them are particularly appealing characteristics anyhow!) although it’s worth thinking further to identify which one would lead you into reacting back as opposed to just being mildly irritating.

So the first step in what I’ve termed ‘owning your hot buttons’ is to clearly identify what the exact behaviour or attitude is that bothers you. But knowing ‘aloofness’ bugs you is not enough. Next, it’s important to try and figure out why exactly that particular behaviour bothers you – what is it that’s important to you that this behaviour gets at or challenges. Getting underneath the hot button for yourself is a key part of having ‘ownership’ on it and being better able to manage when it gets pushed. One way to help you figure out why it’s important to you is to ask yourself: “what comes up for me when I meet this behaviour?” and then take note of the thoughts, feelings – both physical and emotional, interpretations etc. that you make about that person doing this. So let’s take for example someone whose behaviour I would term ‘aloof’. For me, reflecting on what this attitude brings up for me, I would say that aloofness would give me a sense that the person doesn’t want to connect with me and isn’t interested in me personally. So by considering this I now have more information about myself – that connection with others is important to me and that this person is violating a value I hold dear as opposed to just being someone I complain about. I also realise that I have made a couple of assumptions, neither of which might be correct – they don’t want to connect with me, they aren’t interested in me. The process of doing this exercise has however taken me out of my stream of negative and blame-focused thinking about this person and brought me to a better understanding of my own values and a realisation that perhaps I should check out my assumptions rather than just believe them all. I feel calmer and more objective about how I view them and myself, rather than being caught up in the irritation or annoyance that the behaviour provoked. I am therefore in a better place to manage any potential reaction I might have the next time I meet their aloofness. I also have a slightly softer attitude towards it, now that I’ve thought it through and see that it’s about my values being different to theirs perhaps rather than them being a ‘person who annoys me’.
The other interesting thing to reflect on from the list of unwelcome traits and behaviours above is which, if any of them, do you think that you might possess and might trigger others?

Try out the hot buttons exercise and let me know how you get on. I’d also like to hear your opinion of the ‘hot buttons’ list that the research identified…does it ring true for you, when you think about the kind of behaviours in your workplace that seem to upset people?

6 Compelling Reasons to Start a Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness or mindful awareness is about becoming aware by intentional focussing of your attention, on what you are experiencing – your thoughts, feelings, sensations – in any particular ‘present’ moment. There are a huge variety of practices from formal meditation, yoga, tai chi or simply 10 minutes of breath awareness every morning. In this article I want to give you a short overview of some of the emerging research on mindfulness. This identifies some very compelling reasons why it can significantly improve your life – professionally as well as personally and most importantly your relationships with others. 
So first a little brain science for which I am drawing on the work of Daniel Siegel, author of ‘The Mindful Brain’. Our brain consists of three main areas: the brain stem and the limbic areas which go from the top of the spinal chord up into the centre of our brains and work together to regulate basic bodily functions, the fight/flight response to danger, emotions and memories; and then the  cortex, the higher part of the brain that allows us to think and reason.

At the front part of the cortex, just behind the forehead, lies the middle pre-frontal cortex which plays an important role in regulating and balancing the brain stem and limbic areas. This means that when we feel tired or triggered by something that annoys us we are able to respond in a balanced and flexible way rather than ‘losing it’.
When the circuits of the middle pre-frontal cortex aren’t working very well, then we are more likely to allow the emotions and impulses that arise from the lower and mid brain to dominate our behaviour. How well these connections work is influenced to an extent by our experience growing up where the initial ‘wiring’ of the brain circuitry takes place. One of the ways we can improve these connections or ’rewire’ our brain is by developing a regular mindfulness practice. Research from a number of neuroscientists is demonstrating that developing a regular mindfulness practices actually changes and rewires the  brain. These changes can be seen on fMRI brain scans and occur even after a short time of regular practice. Siegel refers to this process as ‘neural integration’.
So let me list out some of the benefits for you: 

1. You will manage stress and negative emotions more effectively in your life. Regardless of how harmonious and supportive our workplace or family environments are, we inevitably encounter events and people that provoke the usual gamut of unwlecome emotions such as irritation, annoyance, fear, hurt etc. Mindful awareness practice helps you to regulate your body’s energy levels and emotional states more effectively. So you are less likely to ‘flip your lid’ or become overly anxious in a way that causes you to be less effective in how you make decisions and deal with situations or difficult people in your life.

 
2. You will have greater flexibility in how you respond to your external environment, be less impulsive and more given to pausing before you act. So when someone does something that upsets or annoys you, you will be less likely to respond reactively e.g. get angry, withdraw and foster an ability to have a more thought-through response. 

 
3. You will get to know and understand what Daniel Siegel terms the ‘architecture’ of your own mind and be better able to relate to and understand other people’s less-connected brain circuitry. You are better equipped therefore as a coach, mediator, counsellor, teacher or even manager to support other people’s ‘neural integration’. Not only that but research in the area of ‘mirror neurons’ is demonstrating that when we interact with others, there is a constant resonation between the internal states each of us is experiencing. Bonnie Badenock tells us that connection with others is another way the brain gets rewired so your mindful state of mind in itself has a beneficial impact on the people you work with. 

 
4. You will develop a more non-judgemental approach to other people. Our brains are actually hard-wired to make judgements all of the time. According to Bonnie Badenock, the single most important factor in therapeutic (and I would include in this term many interventions such as mediation, coaching, counselling, informal support sessions) efficacy is non-judgemental acceptance. She defines this as being able to hold someone with a non-judging mind and heart. Think of how much more effective all of your interactions would be if you could ‘hold’ people  in a calm and mindful way in how you are present to them. 

5. You will be more resilient in meeting new challenges that arise. The work of Jon Kabat Zinn has demonstrated that following a number of weeks of mindfulness practice a “left-shift” in the brain activity of participants was noted, in which the left frontal activity of the brain is enhanced. This electrical change in brain function is thought to reflect the cultivation of an “approach state,” in which we move toward, rather than away from, a challenging external situation or internal mental function such as a thought, feeling, or memory.

 6. ….It’s free! There is no VAT, no levies…it costs nothing but your time and committment. Why not read some of the research yourself or even better, try it out. You can find some introductory exercises right here. Let me know you you get on!

1. First off, get into the right ‘mindset’. This is one where we consciously decide to give time and attention to this person and set an intention to connect with them. So we need to bring a sense of mindfulness to the discussion we are having. It can be helpful even to do some deep breathing to empty our own minds and to slow us down because true connection takes time. One of the things I find useful to do is rather than think about ‘what should I say next’ or in fact to ‘think’ about anything, is to have an image of my own heart centre or intuition centre attempting to connect with theirs. So I’m attempting to listen at deeper levels than just the content’ of what they are communicating.

2. Next, tune into yourself – what are you feeling/sensing here and what’s your own intuition telling you about this person and what might be going on for them ‘beneath’ their words. What sort of energy – which is a kind of catch all word for feeling, sense, aura or mood – are you picking up from their tone and body language.

3. Go for simple open questions. For example ‘What’s going on for you with regards to…’ and even simpler ‘Tell me more’. At a recent NLP training I attended, Trevor Horne talked about the power of the ‘Tell me more’ question followed by ‘And can you be more specific about that’ to take people down to deeper and deeper levels of what’s important to them or at the core of what they are trying to say.

4. Slow down – effective communication takes time. This gives you the space to pick up the unstated and use an acknowledging statement to help draw this out. So when your team member says ‘This presentation is such a pain and I really don’t see the point of it at all’ and they are sighing or a bit uptight you can say ‘it sounds like you aren’t feeling very positive about the presentation next week, tell me more about what’s going on for you’.

5. Keep the question in the back of your mind all of the time ‘What might be going on for this person that they are reacting like this’  and allow this to guide your questions. You might even name this, for example ‘I’m picking up that you are very keen to get this piece of work done but see a lot of barriers…can you say more about what’s getting in your way’

These are just some of my ideas – do you have any to add on how you think you can connect and communicate more authentically and effectively with people’? I’d love to hear your comments below.

A research report just released this week on ‘Absence Management’ from the Charterted Institute of Personnel and Development & Simply Health cited workplace stress as the leading cause of long-term stress in the workplace and cites one of the main causes of this being ‘management style’.
According to Dr Thomas Gordon (Leadership Effectiveness Training, 2001, p.5)  feedback from over twenty peers and direct reports in the case of a single plant manager following completion of leadership training identified him as having the following ‘desirable characteristics’:
- “Listens with understanding; willing to discuss problems; open to ideas; gives time to listen
- Supports and helps; backs you up; is on your side; remembers your problems;
- Uses team approach; helps group reach better decisions, facilitates co-operation
- Avoids close supervision; does not overboss; does not dictate – Communicates openly and honestly, tells you what he thinks, you can trust what he says”

You might think ‘all very nice but do we have the time and what about the bottom line??’ – however it appears there were also organisation-wide improvements in co-operation between departments, efficiency and cost reduction, profits and productivity.

The reality is that most managers get promoted because of their expertise and experience in their field of training. But management of a team requires not just skills as an engineer, nurse, IT specialist but also skills in effectively managing and bringing the best out in people. Expecting managers to be able to do this without adequate support and training is setting them up for failure and leaving them exposed to being seen as a source of stress. 

If you are finding some of the people management aspects of your role  challenging, then get in touch – we can provide you with training, consultancy or coaching in key skills around communication, preventing and resolving conflict.

The last post focused on how organisations can make the benefits of mediation more available and accessible by establishing an internal panel of mediators. Let us look now at some key considerations in this process.

1. Initial needs assessment – carrying out a conflict audit of the organisation in order to assess how conflict currently impacts people, productivity and profits. This gives a clear benchmark to do a costs/benefits analysis as to whether such a panel is in the first place warranted. It also provides a basis for future evaluation of an internal mediation service.

2. Ensuring there is a good understanding of, and openness to, the process of mediation and the benefits of having an internal mediation service, from key stakeholders – senior management, unions/employee representatives, human resources department, health and safety representatives etc.in championing and promoting such a service.

3. Mediator Selection Process: There are a number of options here for example, candidates can be nominated by key stakeholders or the role can be advertised internally – ideally there would be some awareness raising about mediation and conflict management prior to this to help potential candidates make an informed choice as to whether this role would fit for them.

4. Training of Mediators: Ensure that mediators’ training conforms to recognised accreditation standards such as the Certified Mediation level with the Mediators’ Insititute of Ireland

5. Access to the Mediation service: Develop clear procedures around how staff and managers can avail of this service, information leaflets, protocols around key mediation principles such as confidentiality, impartiality of mediator.

6. Underpinned by policies and procedures: Ensuring that there are supportive and complementary policies and procedures in place underpinning the use of mediation to resolve disputes. A policy document around terms of reference for the in-house mediation programme would also need to be developed.

7. Designated champion: Consideration of the need for a designated co-ordinator and steering committee to champion and drive the programme within the organisation

8. Adequate resourcing: Ensuring that the organisation is prepared to resource the programme, which in addition to set-up costs will involve ongoing costs in relation making the Mediators available to conduct mediations during their working week as well as time for ongoing support and training for the team

9. Promotion of the mediation service: Consideration of how the mediation service will be promoted – the development of information booklets and guidance and dissemination of this throughout all levels of the organisation

10. Supportive Continuing Professional Development: Setting up a framework that would ensure mediators have access to supervision/mentoring as structured further training opportunities

11. Evaluation: Establishing in advance the framework for evaluation of the mediation service.

If you would like to know more about establishing an internal mediation programme in your organisation, please email us at mary@consensusmediation.ie

There are numerous statistics on the high costs of workplace conflict to organisations, due in no small part to the significant costs of what one could term ‘formal’ interventions being used. By this we mean rights-based interventions such as investigations and other litigious processes such as the Employment Appeals Tribunal. In an absence of procedures which take a more interest-based approach, conflicts end up getting channelled down this expensive, time-consuming and not often very helpful route.

An interest-based approach is one where the parties are facilitated to focus on how best they can have their concerns and needs mutually satisfied as opposed to defending positional stances. Mediation is one such process and nowadays more and more organisations are starting to make this available as a means of resolving disputes. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development cite the strong business case for mediation as well as other benefits such as improved relationships between employees and reduced levels of workplace stress. A recent CIPD report highlighted a level of 82.8% of public sector employers reporting that they use mediation.

So how might organisations go about making mediation more mainstream and increase the level of understanding and use of this very effective tool? Establishing a panel of internal mediators to resolve disputes as they arise is an increasing recent trend in this area. For example, the Health Services Executive has a very well developed internal mediation panel here in Ireland and in terms of the private sector, the well-known high street retailer Topshop cite savings of £80,000 with an internal mediation programme. Advantages of having an internal mediation service are that it can be more immediate and certainly more cost effective than bringing in an external mediation provider.

But aside from this, establishing an internal mediation programme also has the potential to set in motion a culture change in how an organisation deals with disputes. It introduces to the organisation in a very concrete way a ‘mediation mind-set’ which can have positive consequences far beyond getting Mary and Tom’s dispute resolved. It means in a core cadre of staff understand, practice and champion an approach that promotes and models constructive listening and problem-solving. This can only have positive ripple effects for both the formal and informal culture in the organisation.

Please get in touch if you would like to hear more about how to go about establishing an internal mediation programme in your organisation or check out upcoming blog posts.

While I have no solid research to support this assertion, my experience over the last six years seems to show a positive correlation between a person’s ability or interest in self-reflection and better outcomes for the conflict situation they are involved in.

An obvious indicator of a person having taken time to reflect on themselves is if they attend some form of one-to-one intervention such as counselling or conflict coaching. A couple of recent mediation cases illustrated this. The first was a situation following an investigation of a bullying complaint that was put in by two people against one person. Mediation was proposed as a means of rebuilding the working relationship. At the pre-mediation meetings with both of the complainants, they both spoke about their fear of the person and there was also lot of anger towards her. At the time, I had suggested that they consider attending the company’s Employee Assistance Counselling service. One of them did and the other ‘couldn’t find the time’. Notwithstanding the fact that both had different issues, personalities etc. there was a clear difference in how each of them presented and dealt with the mediation meetings that they then had with the person they complained about. The person who had attended counselling was much calmer, accepting and although still somewhat fearful, was able to see the situation from a broader viewpoint, not just one of ‘victim’ and ‘offender’. They reached an agreement about how to restart working together. The other person was still palpably angry and predictably, the mediation was more about how little contact they would want from each other and how best to manage that, in the future working relationship.

A second interesting case was one where an organisational glitch in moving people and departments resulted in one employee being quite hurt and traumatised. The organisation recognised and acknowledged their faults and her line manager actually met with her in a facilitated meeting and apologised profusely for what had happened. Yet almost a year later, the employee requested an independent mediator to facilitate a meeting with her and her manager, telling me in pre-mediation that the manager had never actually apologised to her! She had in the meantime attended counselling and the mediation worked well, her manager reiterated the apology. The client said later that she had been so angry and upset she hadn’t actually heard the apology that had come in the first meeting!

In my view and experience, mediation will only work to the extent that parties are willing and able to engage in some sort of process (and it might just be taking the time to think it through themselves) that causes them to work on themselves internally rather as simply turning up on the day and hoping that the other person has done all the changing!   

I’ve had a few mediation cases recently that didn’t reach agreement. In trying to analyse what ‘went wrong’, as it were, one conclusion I came to is that the parties weren’t really on board for mediation. They were on board yes, to have a dialogue with the other person with me present but really they weren’t in a place of being able to move forward. In my current pre-mediation questionnaire I have a question ‘on a scale of 1- 10, to what extent would you like to get this matter resolved’. All of them gave either 9 or 10 out of 10 – yet my gut instinct, on reflection was that they hadn’t a clear understanding of the type of challenge that mediation presents.

Mediation yes, is a great process and has many advantages over its more adversarial cousins such as investigation or litigation. However, it’s not without its challenges. In order for mediation to be able to work, people need to be in some sort of mindset that fosters collaboration and compromise and be able to think in terms of needs rather than wants. Yet, it can be hard to help people clarify this for themselves in advance of the process and to get clear on the type of challenge they need to rise to if the process is to be successful.

I have drawn up a short questionnaire here that people can take in order to help assess whether they are in such a mindset. I’d welcome any thoughts or feedback you might have as to whether this would be useful or not. Maybe consider a conflict situation you are in yourself and how well this questionnaire would help you identify where you were at in terms of willingness to move forward in the situation.

I heard a statistic recently that that over 90% of our current reaction to a situation has got very little to do with that situation. Now there’s a statistic that one can easily get very defensive about “Are you saying that my irritation at Ann’s unco-operative behaviour at work is nothing to do with Ann?” Well the answer is yes, to an extent (that’s the 10%!) but the challenge is to take the focus off  Ann and start to look at what’s happening inside oneself, when faced by behaviours such as Ann’s in the workplace. One of the most useful definitions of what happens for us when we are upset or annoyed by something is that framed by Cinnie Noble, that the triggering behavioiur of the other leads us to perceive our needs, values or identity are in some way undermined or challenged. So if we take the situation with Ann, the imaginary staff member, what might this challenge or undermine for you?

It will probably touch for starters, on values – work ethic perhaps or the importance of being collaborative and team work. You would draw on memories from childhood of hearing from parents or other respected teachers about the importance of people pulling their weight and observing the scorn they had for people who didn’t conform to this way of being. Needs are also involved – the need to get the job done effectively and efficiently – maybe you have a need to look good perhaps with the  boss or maybe you just need to get it done so as to get home to family and freetime. The third piece, identity is often a  juicy kernel to unpack. More than likely, at some level, we might feel perhaps undervalued or disrespected if our colleague Ann doesn’t want to co- operate. Here, this can touch on the universal habit many of us develop of wanting or expecting our identity to be reinforced and positively endorsed by  others around us and feeling hurt/angry where this is lacking. So now, Ann’s behaviour is actually just a key that’s unlocking a doorway to our own  storage cupboard of beliefs about ourselves, needs in other areas of our lives, learned values about how people should behave.
But you might ask, why would I bother doing this – why should I spend time exploring what’s happening for me when it’s Ann that’s causing the problems in the first place…we are back to focusing on Ann again of course -  but if you can bear with me, the reason is very simple. When you can own your reaction and take responsiblitity for it, your ability to deal with the situation involving Ann will be greatly enhanced. For starters, imagine that you could be in a place where Ann’s unco-operative behaviour would no longer be experienced by you as anything other than a mild challenge that you have to deal with? Think of how much more relaxed you would feel? In turn, you would have greater resourcefulness and skill in how you deal Ann because when we are less stressed, our ability to think creatively and problem-solve increases.

Most important of all, you would be coming across differently to Ann – non-reactive and calm rather than having an undercurrent of resistance and irritation in your energy around her and any action you would take would be so much more effective than if it was laden down with your own emotional responses to her behaviour.
Call to action: Think about a recent time when you were annoyed or upset by something someone said to you. Now, take a pen and see if you can find 5 other factors that might be influencing how you are reacting to this person and take responsibility for dealing with those first before you deal with the person supposedly causing them!

I had the wonderful privilege of going to see the Dalai Lama speak on ‘The Power of Forgiveness’ in the University of Limerick a couple of weeks ago. He spoke about anger and it’s effect on us and one of the points he made was that if you are angry and you put all your energy into focusing this anger onto one target or one person, then it can be very destructive. On the other hand, if you try and break it down and see the bigger picture, as it were and how many factors might have led towards a situation that made you being angry, it can dissipate and cause less damage – to oneself also.

A recent Conflict Coaching session that I was doing with a client really illustrated this for me. Ann, my client, was going to a new department but had some misgivings about her new manager Jean, based on some negative and recent experiences she had had with her, in particular, a meeting where Ann met with her to discuss her start date etc. Without going into all of the history, Ann was feeling very upset and very angry with Jean and very negative about having to work with her as her manager. In fact, what she really wanted to do was to give Jean a piece of her mind, as it were and hand in her resignation – not at all practical though for her family and financial circumstances. She had also become very anxious and worried about the impending return to work.

In the coaching session we looked first of all at the situation from Ann’s viewpoint and explored how it was she had been upset by Jean, the emotional impact it had on her and also the assumptions that she had started to make about Jean. We then spent some time talking through the situation but looking at it from Jean’s point of view. This is one of the key features of conflict coaching – it challenges the client to explore and start to view the situation from the other person’s point of view. In doing this, the client is being asked to take a ‘bigger picture’ view – what the Dalai Lama referred to as a more ‘holistic’ approach. Some people find it difficult to do this but this is where the real nuggets of learning and developing how one deals with conflict, lie. The better the client can engage in this piece of the coaching work, the more they will gain in terms of real insights and ways forward for dealing with the other person. Ann was completely open to doing this and took a very honest and authentic look at how Jean might have viewed her. She realised that her behaviours might have been triggers for Jean and saw how they might have upset her or caused her to be somewhat negative. She saw how both of them as well as some other circumstances beyond them, had contributed to the difficulties.

At the end of the session, she said she  she felt greatly relieved and much less angry when she thought now about Jean – she commented ‘I had created a demon and now I realise that I only have to deal with another human being’. It’s so much easier when we realise that we are just dealing with someone like ourselves – the same fears, needs, concerns – and of course the same hopes and dreams too!