Move towards the fire. This has become one of my mantras as a mediator and facilitator. 

In the courageous conversations that I facilitate, I support people to move towards the things they are most fearful of. The things that feel most risky, most vulnerable, perhaps explosive. The things that they are avoiding, wanting to run a mile from.

I had my own little lesson in vulnerability this week…

I am often called in as a mediator because of ‘ineffective and unproductive behaviour’ (to put it mildly).

Organisations often address problems at a behaviour level, perhaps because it feels more comfortable to do this. We often have policies and procedures to deal with ‘problem behaviour’. But these behaviours are symptoms. They can only be meaningfully and sustainably addressed through uncovering the root causes. Problem behaviours stem from difficult feelings that have not been acknowledged…

Most of the conflicts I mediate have escalated due to distance. The parties have been fearful of speaking to each other because of layer upon layer of assumptions they have made about the other. So they have stayed in their trenches, firing emails, whatsapp messages and formal complaints at each other. And this firing from a distance provokes counter-fire or avoidance, which confirms their worst fears and suspicions and causes them to dig deeper into their trenches…

Many of the teams and individuals I am working with at the moment have a similar dilemma. On the surface they are in a fairly healthy place, but there is a big, unacknowledged elephant in the room.

Some of the elephants I’ve seen include unresolved tension between two team members that plays out in team meetings, financial threats to an organisation that make the future feel uncertain…

Just before lockdown, Dr Rachel Morris interviewed me for her brilliant 'You are not a frog' podcast about how to manage difficult conversations that arise during change, crisis and conflict. The recording is now live and our conversation is even more relevant today, as leaders navigate perpetual uncertainty and as teams figure out how to work together in our changed world…

A few weeks into lockdown, I started to realise that one of the things I was finding hard was that I had no team to help through the Covid-19 crisis. […] This longing to help people was painful at first as I felt powerless. Stuck at home, self employed, team-less. It was as if my wings had been clipped. And on top of that, my planned team facilitation and mediation projects were put on hold due to Covid-19…