At Mediation for Managers we feel that it is high time that we pulled mediation down out of the clouds and made the skills available to as broad an audience as possible. The vast majority of intractable or difficult workplace conflict starts small and we firmly believe that most conflicts can be nipped in the bud if some simple managerial mediation skills were applied at the right time.
No we are not saying that any one can be a mediator tomorrow. What we are encouraging companies and managers to do is raise the level of conflict competency within their organisations. This is not just about improved communications skills but about managers embracing an opportunity to firstly understand their own approach to conflict, learn how to deal with conflict in a constructive way and help employees to effectively resolve workplace conflict.
We ask Managers to start firstly with them selves and understand their own approach ton conflict. Our online Conflict Style Profile is a 24 page conflict style inventory that gives you a score for each of five conflict styles. Each style has several pages outlining strengths of that style and dangers of over-using it, plus hot tips for working with people who favor this style.
We also provide Mediation Skills for Managers: Training Courses where managers can learn to
- Determine WHEN problems can best be solved by Managerial Mediation
- Prepare the best CONTEXT for a mediated solution
- Perform the three PRIMARY TASKS of the manager-as-mediator
- Negotiate agreements to PREVENT RECURRENCE
It takes formal training and a lot of experience to be a good mediator, but if you have conflict boiling up its best to get in there fast and take measures to try and reduce the problems, e.g. separating the employees as much as possible.