Mediation for Managers: Resolving conflict and rebuilding relationships at work.  By John Crawley and Katherine Graham, 2002.

This book doesn’t seem to have drawn much attention, but it’s worth having on your shelf. The authors give sensible and clear advice throughout, using lots of bullet point lists and sample scenarios.  The advantage of a book by Brits is that a plain Jane how-to handbook still has felicitous turns of phrase.

“Disputes often form an anchor for people’s emotions and their perceptions of themselves and others. Take the conflict away and life loses a defining shadow. “

Throughout their book,  attention to impartiality is particularly thoughtful:

“It is this consistency of approach, and the removal of the notion of victim and perpetrator, protagonist and respondent, that gives mediation its transparently impartial quality.”

The first half of the book outlines how a manager or in-house person can mediate individual and group conflicts. This is a vital skill set because, as they note,  organizations rarely bring in outside intervenors until much too late. And that someone “parachuting in” can’t have the depth of knowledge or possibilities for follow-through.

The second half of the book muddies the concept of mediation by presenting  ways managers can use mediator’s attitudes and tools when  they are a party to the dispute  (organizational, customer).   The chapter topics hit the hot buttons: dealing with isms,  dialogue under pressure,  investigating sensitive issues, and building internal CR capacity.

A few familiar words and phrases here and there suggest that they’ve incorporated some of  our Mediator’s Handbook ideas.  Now I plan to return the favor and use some of theirs!

Some tidbits:

• Process:  Their process involves extensive one-on-one meetings  before joint sessions occur.   This may be particularly helpful in organizational conflicts.
• Structure: Reflect, exchange, move on
• How people use anger:  1) appropriate expression of feeling, 2) displaced onto another person/topic,  3) covering up other emotions, 4) habitual tack (control, playing victim, revenge), and 5) strategic (to intimidate, get attention, deflect blame).
• Don’t reassure. Acknowledge anxieties instead.
• Impartiality:   notice your body — it will tell you if your thoughts are not congruent with what you’re doing as mediator.  Parties WILL pick up on those dissonances.
• Practical:  Call the parties the morning of the mediation to make sure they aren’t ducking out.  Have them wait outside the room until everyone has arrived.
• Formality:  in setting up a mediation room and in your tone etc., try to match the level of formality that the parties seem comfortable with.

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This book is  now available as a free PDF download. To uncompress you’ll need a RAR extract program:  Extract Frog is free & cute. Or if you want to look at it right now, Google books has (fuzzy) major excerpts.

Their company website.