The Positive Side of Conflict

Managing conflict effectively is one of the keys to getting people to work together effectively. We offer mediation services to resolve well-developed conflicts and training services to help people learn how to get more of the benefits conflict has to offer, with less of the costs it creates.

We do not propose to eliminate or to avoid conflict. On the contrary, we advise businesses to encourage conflict, to resolve it quickly, and to embrace the outcome.

Conflict fuels innovation. Eliminating or avoiding conflict would stifle innovation.

Mediating High-Stakes Conflicts

Mediation is often used to resolve disputes in the business world, especially when the stakes are high and power cannot resolve the dispute without creating a loser. It's not a surprise to most of us to read in the newspaper that mediators have been called in to resolve a contract dispute between businesses or between labor and management as an alternative to using the legal system.

That said, it is surprising to see so many businesses spending far more on legal services than on mediation services. Using the legal system is by far the most expensive way to resolve disputes; it generates losers and destroys business relationships.

Mediation creates winners and binds former adversaries together around solutions they have created together. When used normally in business organizations, we see differences resolved well before they grow into disputes. People work together toward common goals. Productivity soars.

Managing Internal Conflicts

We seldom see mediation used to resolve disputes among individuals and entities within a business organization where issues like innovation, productivity, and winning customers are at stake. Managers handle internal disputes.

Unfortunately, most managers handle disputes using their status and power. We often find processes similar to the legal system, but without the thoroughness. The outcome most often enhances the deciding manager's sense of power and status, at least one of the parties often feels unheard, and the at least one loser is created in the process.

Like most people, managers must be trained in the skills and processes of dispute resolution in order to resolve disputes effectively, creating winners, not losers.

Conflict Management Services

We offer mediation services to help clients resolve high-stakes, well-developed disputes. Dr. Carene Davis-Stitt designs and delivers our mediation services. Download Carene's Bio here.

Carene is a trained, experienced mediator - and a social psychologist. She offers far more than mediators trained to faithfully run processes designed by someone else. As a social psychologist she understands the fundamental forces of human behavior that are fueling the dispute, and how to either mitigate or make use those forces to help resolve it.

Carene also delivers our Mediation Workshops. She has designed this workshop to accomplish two vital purposes: to train people down to the lowest level in the hierarchy to resolve disputes when they are small, and to train managers to resolve disputes without creating losers.

If you want to learn more about our Mediation Services, please download our Mediation Services Brochure. (500 KB PDF)