Facilitated Conversations
Structured, impartial support to help teams move through conflict and reach workable outcomes
How I Can Help
A referral for facilitated mediation makes sense when interpersonal tensions start affecting performance, morale, or team cohesion. As an independent, experienced facilitator, my role is to create a safe environment where honest, constructive dialogue can happen.
Mediation offers a confidential, structured, and impartial process to rebuild working relationships that helps your team members move forward, personally, professionally and constructively.
Mediation works best when both parties are willing to engage, and when the goal is a sustainable working relationship, not just resolution of a complaint.
As a referring manager, you don’t need to have all the answers. Your role is to create the conditions for a different kind of conversation to happen.
What happens, step by step
Mediation follows a clear, confidential structure. Each participant has the chance to be heard, to understand the other perspectives, and to work toward shared, practical agreements.
- Preliminary meetings: Each person meets privately with the mediator to prepare goals, discuss concerns, and clarify the process.
- Joint facilitated session: Both parties meet with the mediator present. Each person shares their perspective, communication guidelines are set, and areas of common ground are explored.
- Agreements & Next Steps: The session concludes with clear, practical agreements — what each person will do, when, and how progress will be reviewed.
Preparing Participants
When you refer someone to mediation, the pre-conversations can make a real difference. Here’s what to encourage staff to think about beforehand.
- What outcome would genuinely benefit everyone involved?
- What do you most need to say — and how can you say it clearly?
- What might be the other person’s perspectives and experiences?
- How can this situation be improved for the team as a whole?
- What communication style will give this conversation the best chance?
What participants can expect
- Respect: Communication guidelines are established at the outset to keep discussion productive and respectful. Each participant’s perspective is given equal weight. The mediator does not take sides or judge.
- Confidential: What is said in mediation stays in mediation, giving participants the freedom to speak openly.
- Focus on what can work: Clarifying different perspectives on problems is the start. The process also identifies strengths, common ground, and what can be built on.
- Emotionally supportive: The mediator can meet separately with either party to help manage difficult moments.
- Forward-looking: The goal is to agree on how things can work going forward and understand how to ensure what contributed to misunderstanding or mistrust does not reoccur
Ready to make a referral?
Contact me to discuss the situation confidentially and explore next steps.