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Samantha Hardy

Can a Mediator Provide Advice? Understanding the Boundaries in Australia

By Samantha Hardy and Claire Holland Mediators play a crucial role in helping parties resolve disputes, but can they actually provide advice? The answer is more nuanced than it may initially appear. In Australia, mediation is predominantly a facilitative process, meaning mediators do not make decisions for the parties. However, there are circumstances where a […]

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How We Describe What We Do: A Guide for Mediators

In one of our recent masterclasses at The Conflict Management Academy, we discussed some of our recent learning from Dr Emily Skinner and Professor Elizabeth Stokoe, and workshopped improved ways to describe what we do.  Here’s a summary of what we came up with. Thanks to participants (Debra Farrelly, Deb Black, Peter Hanson, Nurit Zubery,

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The Subtle Art of Impartiality: Lessons from Conversation Analysis

Recently, we had the privilege of hosting Professor Elizabeth Stokoe for a webinar on her research into how intake staff at UK mediation centres communicate with callers seeking information. As a psychologist specializing in conversation analysis, Professor Stokoe examines real interactions rather than those happening in artificial experimental settings. Her work provides valuable insights for

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: The House of Kwa, by Mimi Kwa

This book is a memoir spanning generations of the Kwa family on different continents (including Australia where Mimi Kwa was born and lives).  It’s a book about culture, family and conflict.  At times shocking, at other times heart breaking, and in between sometimes hilarious, the book covers the challenges of conflict across families, generations and

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Exploring the Diversity of Mediation

When someone says they’re a mediator, what image comes to mind? Probably someone who helps people in conflict work through their differences, right? Simple enough. But here’s the thing—mediators are not all the same. In fact, the mediation field is incredibly diverse, even though most practitioners don’t describe themselves beyond the generic label of “mediator.” There are many different

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: Conflict in emergency medicine: A systematic review by Timothy Edward Tjan, Lee Yung Wong, and Andrew Rixon

This is a fascinating article that provides an overview of research into the individual, team and systemic level factors that contribute to conflict between clinicians within emergency departments. The researchers found that conflict often occurred during referrals or admissions from ED to inpatient or admitting units. Individual-level contributors to conflict include a lack of trust

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Embracing Inclusivity in Mediation – A Pathway to Justice for Neurodivergent Individuals

* Thanks to Rebekka Kornmehl, Danielle Hutchinson, and Carol Bowen for their helpful feedback on this content. People in the conflict resolution field typically think of mediation as a client-centered, informal, and flexible approach to managing conflict.  However, as highlighted by participants in the Symposium for Access to Justice for Autistic People in ADR in

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker

Thanks to Rebecca Kornmehl for recommending this book to me! I learnt so much from this book that is essential for my role as parent of an autistic child, and a practitioner who frequently works with neurodivergent clients. Most importantly, the book helped me understand better the distinction between autism as seen through a pathology

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When the Boss Is Exhibiting Challenging Behaviours

I recently had an interesting conversation with someone who started out by describing their boss as a “narcissistic personality” and who was looking for some advice about how to get them to change their behaviours towards staff. Work with behaviours, not labels The first step is to emphasize the importance of avoiding labelling the boss

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: Revenge of the Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, they are always a terrific read, even if he is prone to overstatements and lack of rigorous research.  In this latest book, he reviews his earlier book The Tipping Point and its hypothesis that little things can make a big difference. Twenty-five years later, it’s a very

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