MANAGING THE MEDIATION CONVERSATION

The last of the 7 kinds of Coaching Conversations is the Mediation Conversation. This one differs from all of the other ones in that it involves coaching two or more persons rather than a single client. Here your role as a Meta-Coach is to facilitate a conversation where two or more persons can talk through, think through, and work through the differences over which they are in conflict. This may involve a board in a corporation or a small business, it may involve a couple, friends, people within a department, members of a work team, etc. In fact, given that whenever people gather, there will be differences, and with differences come conflicts. We conflict over the differences.

Now if you have persons in your coaching room (or wherever the encounter occurs) who are calm, collected, mature, with high levels of emotional intelligence, you can probably simply use your basic coaching skills of supporting and listening, repeating back and clarifying, testing understanding, asking for individual and collective outcomes, inducing state, receiving and giving feedback. If so, you are in The Discussion Stage of conflict management and this is where the work is that of facilitating understanding and clarity.