Download the FREE special report from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Mediation Secrets for Better Business Negotiations: Top Techniques from Mediation Training Experts, and you will discover mediation techniques for selecting the right mediator, understand the mediation process and learn how to engage the mediator to ensure a good outcome.

mediation techniques

What are Mediation Techniques?

Mediation techniques can help us manage conflicts and resolve disputes in both business and personal situations. 

As parents, friends, coworkers, and managers, we often need to manage disputes. It could be an argument between friends, frustrated employees, or even organizational disputes. Mediation techniques can help us come to an agreeable solution between parties. 

Skilled mediators can lower the emotional temperature in a negotiation, foster more effective communication, help uncover less obvious interests, offer face-saving possibilities for movement, and suggest solutions that the parties might have overlooked. Rather than imposing a decision, mediation techniques such as communication skills, objectivity, and creativity can help disputants reach their own voluntary solution to the conflict.  

When you enlist employees to work together to find a solution, they tend to become more invested in a decision than when you dictate it from above. And because mediation is collaborative in nature, it is likely to generate more creative solutions than arbitration would. 

What makes a good mediator? Of course, serious mediation training and substantive expertise are critical, as is keen analytic skill. But according to a survey by Northwestern University law professor Stephen Goldberg, veteran mediators believe that establishing rapport is more important to effective mediation than employing specific mediation techniques and tactics.

To learn more, download this free special report, Mediation Secrets for Better Business Negotiations: Top Techniques from Mediation Training Experts from the editors of Negotiation. This report will provide you with insights into why mediation is the preferred method of dispute resolution for most managers. Throughout the report, you will discover how to select the right mediator, come to understand the mediation process, and learn how to engage the mediator to ensure a good outcome.

We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new advice and information on how to improve your business negotiation skills to our website.

The following items are tagged mediation techniques:

Undecided on Your Dispute Resolution Process? Combine Mediation and Arbitration, Known as Med-Arb

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

The choice: arbitration vs. mediation. You’re not sure which of two common dispute resolution processes, mediation or arbitration, to use to resolve your conflict. Mediation is appealing because it would allow you to reach a collaborative settlement, but you’re worried it could end in impasse. You know that arbitration would wrap up your dispute resolution … Read More

Types of Mediation: Choose the Type Best Suited to Your Conflict

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

When parties involved in a serious conflict want to avoid a court battle, there are types of mediation can be an effective alternative. In mediation, a trained mediator tries to help the parties find common ground using principles of collaborative, mutual-gains negotiation. We tend to think mediation processes are all alike, but in fact, mediators … Read More

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Training: Mediation Curriculum

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

In 2009, we collected many types of curriculum materials from teachers and trainers who attended the Mediation Pedagogy Conference. We received general materials about classes on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as well as highly specific and idiosyncratic units like Conflict Resolution through Literature: Romeo and Juliet and a negotiating training package for female managers … Read More

Conflict Management: Intervening in Workplace Conflict

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

Question: I’m aware of lots of unresolved personnel issues that seem to be festering in my department, such as complaints about someone who is not doing his share of the work, another person whose griping is causing a drop in morale, and two coworkers who can’t seem to get along. I’m comfortable negotiating with customers, … Read More

Dealing with Difficult Employees

Posted by & filed under Dealing with Difficult People.

When dealing with difficult employees, leaders often feel overwhelmed and frustrated by a task that can seem like a distraction from broader organizational goals. But managing personnel issues, including conflict among employees, is a pivotal leadership task—and one that can be improved with knowledge and practice. The following solutions for dealing with difficult employees will … Read Dealing with Difficult Employees

Negotiating with Millennials – How to Overcome Cultural Differences in Communication

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Negotiation training often focuses on bridging gaps between negotiators with different styles, backgrounds, or objectives, but what about overcoming generational barriers in negotiation? Generational differences need not stymie efforts at the bargaining table. In this segment from “Dear Negotiation Coach,” we explore how to overcome cultural differences in communication with members of the Millennial generation. … Read More

How Your Organization Can Benefit from Mediation Techniques

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

If you manage people, disputes will show up at your door. The marketing VP protests that the budget cap you and your new finance VP proposed is hindering a research initiative you supported. Two young sales representatives are embroiled in a turf war. Your administrative assistant is upset because the HR director won’t approve the … Read More

Mediating disputes on the job

Posted by & filed under Daily, Mediation.

Adapted from “Resolve Employee Conflicts with Mediation Techniques,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

If you manage people, disputes will show up at your door. The marketing VP protests that the budget cap you and your new finance VP proposed is hindering a research initiative you supported. Two young sales representatives are embroiled in a … Read Mediating disputes on the job

Mediation Pedagogy Conference

Posted by & filed under Daily, Events, Pedagogy at PON, Webcasts.

Registration is now closed for the NP@PON Mediation Pedagogy Conference. Professors Lawrence Susskind (MIT) and Michael Wheeler (Harvard Business School) are pleased to announce a Mediation Pedagogy Conference to be held by Negotiation Pedagogy at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (NP@PON). This two-day Conference will be held Friday, May 15 and Saturday, May … Read Mediation Pedagogy Conference