About Me
In the same year as graduating with a degree in law from University of East Anglia 2001, I went on to train as a mediator with Mediation UK (2001). I worked for a pro-bono law service and developed and delivered their mediation service in Norwich and Norfolk across many different areas of conflict before becoming a freelance mediator. I have practiced mediation in education disputes (parent and Local Authority), boundary disputes, workplace disputes, tutor and student disputes, family disputes, and, (through the court referrals) between the victims of crime and the person who has been convicted of the offence. My observations and skills as a mediator led me to train as a conflict coach in 2009. I have been delivering coaching to clients who find themselves in an unresolved conflict, over the last 13 years.
Outside of alternative conflict resolution practice, I have worked for many years’ in disability law compliance in the public sector, and Head of Operations in Fitness to Practise tribunal hearings for a health sector regulatory body.
As a freelance coach and mediator, I attend regular reflective practice supervision with other conflict coaches and mediators on a bimonthly basis, hosted by CAOS Conflict Management. In these sessions, all participants reflect on how they ensure they work to the principles enshrined in the code of practice for participating coaches and mediators.
As part of my ongoing reflective practice, I contact the people I have coached or mediated with for client feedback, either at the end of the sessions or after a few weeks of the last session finishing – whichever the client feels is most appropriate. I use the details in the feedback to inform and influence all my future practice, alongside coach and mediator reflective practice sessions.
The influence of mediation in conflict coaching:
Over a period of eight years from qualifying as a mediator, I found that participants would frequently feed back to me that this first meeting with the mediator, the conversation in itself, would transform the conflict situation, often without the need for a joint meeting. Something about the neutrality of the mediator enabled a new type conversation where the person had a chance to explore all the components in the conflict, which revealed new information.
I saw many occasions where this happened, and it led me to examine in more detail what influenced that to occur.
I embarked on a post graduate programme in Conflict Resolution and Mediation (2009). This gave me an invaluable chance to research models of mediation and conflict resolution as well as theories of conflict, that have underpinned my work.
I spent some time looking more closely at what it is about the process involved during a meeting with an independent mediator that often leads to a transformation, without the other participants to a conflict needing to be involved. The feedback I received often identified that the mediator’s impartial approach had created an opportunity to explore a person’s situation in far more detail than is possible without this type of support. The neutral responses from the mediator helped to organise an understanding of those thoughts and created new insights into the situation that led to new options being generated. It got me thinking what few opportunities there are to have someone hear an account of an experience without their biases coming in, or their evaluations, which doesn’t allow for a much greater exploration.
The specific components that mediators are skilled in, along with the principles of neutrality, when meeting with one participant, forms a distinct conflict coaching process, in effect, creating a new opportunity to make informed decisions and choices.
As a result, in 2009, I trained as a one to one Conflict Coach and have been delivering coaching ever since.