For those who have experienced mediation, did you wonder how the successful outcomes achieved, were reached by your mediator? What skills or methods were used by the mediator, that helped your communications and the negotiations at mediation?

In our experience, many conflicts arise, pure and simple, from a breakdown in communication. Once effective communication has stalled, the positions of the parties harden and the point may be reached where they give up on attempting to restore communications and find other ways of dealing with the situation.

In the workplace, effective communication is critical to the success of every business. Building and maintaining high-performance teams are only possible through good, timely and effective communication: manager to manager, manager to team members and team members to team members.

It is, therefore, key to equip, empower and train your managers on developing their communication and interpersonal skills, to allow them to give clear direction to their teams.

A good communicator uses the following:

• active listening
• the ability to build rapport with the other party quickly
• the ability to look at the situation from the other party’s viewpoint
• strong questioning skills
• good use of body language
• learned patience and the need to keep an open mind at all times.

These are also key skills of the mediator.

Six reasons, therefore, to train and empower your managers in these key areas are:

1. They are better equipped to deal with interactions more effectively and confidently;
2. They trust more and are trusted more in return by their colleagues;
3. Their communication skills, both direct and indirect, develop, to allow them to deal more effectively, with the situations they encounter;
4. They manage their teams more efficiently and effectively;
5. Unhealthy conflict reduces;
6. They grow as leaders as a result.

Contact us for more information and to learn how our training courses may help your managers to develop further.

Michael Farrier

Hexagon Mediation