When we discuss seven strategies for resolving conflict, two of them involved getting help from a third party, mediation and arbitration. And in this video, I'd like to say a little about each. So what is mediation? mediation is what the word seems to suggest. It's one person getting in the middle of two conflicting people, or three or four conflicting people. The role of a mediator is to make sure that each person is properly listened to and understood, and their point of view properly relate to the other parties.

Mediators often work by starting with one to one meetings with each of the conflicting parties, understanding their positions, understanding their outcomes, understanding their way of thinking And then they will plan a route through, which often involves sitting with two other parties in a room discussing. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, there's literally a shuttle diplomacy as the mediator, talks to one person understands their message, relays it to the next person and takes the response. And this works if you remember our model of how communication works, by making sure that the interpretation is as reliable as possible. It forces the parties to confront their filters. It makes sure that distortion deletion and generalization don't happen in appropriately because the mediator takes responsibility for checking the interpretation back with each party.

And because they are trusted by each party, then the interpretations they take to the other party can be trusted. So mediation is a valuable technique. And it's particularly of use in high stakes workplace disputes. Indeed, mediation is sometimes used as an alternative to go into law. So you should be thinking about using mediation if you have a really important conflict where the outcome matters to both of you, and you can't find a way of resolving it for yourself. In larger organizations, there are often trained mediators either within the organization or available to it.

But if there aren't, then you should be able to find trained mediators locally by looking for local registers. Arbitration is different to mediation, in mediation, the mediators role is not to form an opinion about who is right and who is wrong and what the right resolution is. In arbitration, it is the arbitrators role to not only understand the situation from everybody's point of view, but also to create an informed point of view about what the right resolution should be. And in signing up for arbitration, you are also signing up to abide by the judgment of the arbitrator who makes their arbitration and chooses a resolution and requests and requires the parties to sign up to that arbitrators solution. And then to shake hands and recognize that this dispute is resolved. However, they have to be conflicts where the parties are prepared to abide by the resolution of the arbiter and therefore, they're only suitable where the parties agree that getting a resolution is more important to them.

Then actually seeing their point of view win out over The other party. Often arbitration comes at the point of despair, when other routes like mediation are failed. And of course, we understand that because if you go to a professional arbiter, you know, that the only recourse beyond them is the law. Judges are the final arbiter. And of course, because of their nature in law, they can impose a judgement. So go to arbitration, when you know that the only remaining alternative other than arbitration is a legal dispute, arbitration and mediation in the hands of trained experts, they will help you to resolve conflict.

But with a little bit of careful thought and planning. Even an untrained person can deliver successful mediation and arbitration in certain circumstances. So amongst your team, mediating the perpetrating conflict