How Transformative Mediation Works in Complaints of Workplace Harassment

Transformative mediation has two main objectives (Bush and Folger (2005) The Promise of Mediation):

1.         Empowerment – enabling the parties to define their own issues and to seek solutions on their own

2.         Recognition- enabling the parties to see and understand the other person’s point of view

This approach:

• is a progressive rather than a prescriptive one
• centred on process rather than outcomes
• by which the mediator responds to what the participants are saying moment to moment
• by highlighting and amplifying opportunities as they arise
• to help both parties strengthen their capacity to make informed decisions (Empowerment)
• while at the same time encouraging them to take into account the other party’s point of view (Recognition)

• Valuing not just one but both of these objectives is essential
• just fostering Empowerment could lead to abusing power
• just encouraging Recognition could lead to abdicating power
• While reinforcing one aspect, the other aspect cannot be neglected
• Approached in synergy, each aspect tends to reinforce the other.

• This approach situates contested events
• not as isolated problems to be solved one by one
• but as part of a broader context
• about which the parties will gain a deeper understanding
• through their exchange of views in mediation.

• Thanks to this broadened understanding of the situation
• gained through acknowledgements, insights and new interpretations,
• the parties can make and consider proposals and undertakings
• which reflect their free will and informed consent.

• Paradoxically, the less the mediator pushes the parties towards settlement
• the more an agreement is likely to emerge when the time is ripe
• from the transformation of the quality of the parties’ interaction
• both in mediation and in their future relations.

Exerpted from Mediating Complaints of Workplace Harassment: a Transformative Approach © John Peter Weldon 2009.