Future Proofing Your Business with the Skills and Tools of Mediation

By Jane Gunn
Could the skills, tools and mindset of mediation help businesses to manage change, challenge and crisis and the disruptive times that lay ahead?
“The key skill that differentiates survivors from the rest in times of change, challenge and crisis is the ability to acknowledge, understand and manage conflict”

The stakes couldn’t be higher right now with economic collapse, climate change, rising costs and global tension as some of the threats on the horizon, following on from a pandemic crisis. There is certainly no getting “back to normal” but rather an acceptance that we must adapt and be ready to deal with a cycle of crises and that this instability is causing an external and internal sense of conflict, constant fear and uncertainty.

In the boardroom this is leading to difficult decisions and disagreements around future proofing the business. And in the workplace, there is an increase in employee – employer disputes, tension in teams and challenging communications, difficulties adapting to hybrid working and burnout leading to sickness and the loss of critical staff.

This fear-based approach means that we humans often revert to ineffective responses guided by patterns of behaviour from past experiences and situations that can cloud our thinking. We then lack the ability to see things in perspective and think carefully and critically about the consequences of different decisions on the path ahead.

Mediation and the use of mediation skills and tools offer the opportunity to avoid and manage conflict and disputes at the earliest opportunity.

The following skills and tools form the basis of the mediation process and all leaders whether at board, executive or team level would benefit from incorporating them into their business processes:

Bringing the right people together and creating the best process for dynamic dialogue

Discerning and agreeing what concerns need to be addressed and identifying possible outcomes

Using questioning to elicit background, context and reasoning

Building successful relationships that recognize and respect difference and diversity

Knowing how to work with uncertainty and lack of clarity

Expanding thinking to discover new ideas and solutions

Having the tenacity to work with challenges and set-backs

Despite advances in technology including the recent introduction of ChatGPT, we humans remain at heart hunter gatherers with fight or flight instincts at the ready.

Two further things will distinguish the winners from the losers in future proofing their company:

1. The inclusive approach to stakeholders – listening to, understanding and responding to the needs, interests, fears and concerns of all the organisations stakeholders including: board members, partners, employees, investors, suppliers, customers or clients

2. Understanding that the adversarial approach to relationships is one of the key things holding companies back from achieving their potential

To accept, acknowledge and actively manage conflict at the earliest opportunity and to see the opportunity in doing so will be a key differentiating factor.

Taking steps to train staff from the boardroom down to the shop floor so that everyone is equipped and confident to deal with change, challenge and crisis without resorting to adversarial behaviour and processes is a win-win approach.

There are three simple steps to this approach. We need to encourage:

• Listen - To learn the skills and to be open to hear and respond to the message others are trying to get across to us.

• To be willing to learn from others even when we fundamentally disagree with them.

• Love - We must be prepared to show love and respect to all, no matter what their beliefs, race, creed or colour.

Simple but not easy!

To quote American lawyer Gerry Spence who wrote How to Argue and Win Every Time (1996):

As a business leader commented this week, what we really face is a crisis of governance and culture and mediation is the skill set that could avert that crisis.

As a global community of business leaders, thought leaders and individuals we have a unique opportunity, at pivotal point in history, to promote the essence and the principles of dispute resolution and conflict management to create a more harmonious and peaceful world.

Using and promoting the various skills, tools, mindsets and methods of mediation and conflict management and recognising the opportunities to take them beyond the parameters of litigation and formal dispute resolution to future proof our businesses at a time of great disruption.