Author: Aubrey Jackson

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Mediation 101 for Business

Many of my business colleagues have stereotypes and misunderstandings about mediation applications in the business arena. Alternative Dispute Resolution, or mediation, is a proven and cost-effective means to resolve a wide variety of conflicts in business. For the cost of a letter or consultation from an attorney, you can typically buy one or two hours of mediation. Clients are often surprised what is accomplished in a short period of time through mediation.

A primary difference between mediation and litigation is your control through the process. First, mediation is client led. That means you are always in charge. Mediators can be guides, coaches, facilitators, and even an agent of reality, yet they remain neutral with you as a driver.

Second, mediation is voluntary. You can always move to arbitration or litigation. The voluntary nature of mediation often assists success. Once people are at the table, dialog and negotiations usually lead to resolution.

Third, mediation is confidential. What happens in mediation, stays in mediation. The confidential nature is critical for the possibility of apology and forgiveness, which can be a wonderful byproduct and outcome from mediation.

Finally, in most cases, mediation is less expensive than litigation or arbitration. I have resolved cases for thousands of dollars less than the cost of one attorney, let alone two or more usually retained.

Mediation can successfully resolve conflict within partnerships, family business, workplace conflict, non-profit boards, vendor/customer disputes, succession planning and buy/sale agreements. Unlike mediation practiced by most attorneys, I typically keep parties together at the table with breaks, as needed. This increases the dynamics between parties, aids productivity, and often resolves personal conflicts along with the business conflicts. Not all mediation is successful in the form of keeping parties united. Sometimes a successful mediation is a peaceful dissolution of a partnership or business.

If you give us a call, the first step is submitting a Scope of Work for your approval. Depending upon the situation, we may need to reach out to the other party to gain approval for mediation.
Once all parties are agreed, we conduct Case Development. In most cases, we seek brief narratives describing the conflict with any potential ideas of resolution. Each party will have his or her own perspective. Gathering these perspectives with follow up interviews allows us to discern the vortex of conflict, parties most affected, and next steps. In some situations, a mediation with two parties must proceed the multi-party mediation. This often results in success at both levels. We assist your attorney(s) to complete any needed legal documents resulting from mediation and work hard to create and implement sustainable agreements.

Give us a call. You don’t need to live with unresolved conflict keeping you up at night and eating your bottom line.

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Sticky Resolutions – Seven Ways to Keep Your Goals for the New Year

Many people make resolutions for the New Year. In fact, 45% of the population does.  What do people resolve to do as their number one goal?  Losing weight. Of course, others include getting organized, saving money, exercising, quit smoking, and spending more time with the family.

However, within one week, 25% fall off from the goal.  In another month, 46% will throw in the towel, and by six months, 54% have given up.  The good news?  Flip the number and 46% of those who made a resolution were still going after six months.

Want to know the difference between success and failure? If you made a resolution, this is how you can make it stick.

1. Accountability. Tell others your goal and ask them to help you. I should preface by saying your marriage partner or significant other should NOT be an accountability partner (VERY BAD IDEA). Enlist some friends or co-workers to check in on your progress. With social media, some programs allow you to report progress or even compete against each other. You can find an app for that, like MyFitnessPal or Fitbit.

2. Planning. What gets planned gets done. If you do not incorporate your resolution into a weekly schedule, the chances of success plummet. Many people are successful in planning out a day, but only a small percentage of the population actually plan an entire week. The real secret of success in productivity is planning and executing weekly goals and tasks.

3. Picture your goal. What gets pictured gets done. Create a dream board; or at least keep a picture of your goal in front of you on a daily basis. There are few forces on the face of the earth more powerful than a visualized dream.

4. Speak your goal. What gets spoken gets done. I know it sounds funny, but there is tremendous power in the spoken word. Studies continually reinforce the importance of positive and confident speech. I say affirmations everyday, sometimes more than once a day. I would rather be successful than worry about feeling foolish.

5. Know yourself and be realistic. If your resolution is to lose weight, then make a sensible schedule of exercise and nutrition. Don’t force yourself to eat food you do not like and will not continue eating. Find alternatives that you enjoy, even if the food is not “perfect.” You don’t have to set up a daily exercise program. Do what you can sustain. There is great value in exercising three days a week. Regardless of your goal, steady progress beats no progress.

6. The slight edge. Jeff Olson promotes a simple concept of making right choices in the slightest of moments. Our lives are nothing more than moments strung together that create habits and results. Change the choices in the moments that create sustainable habits for a lifetime. An airliner makes a thousand slight changes throughout a flight in order to arrive at a destination. Without the slight adjustments, a very different destination would be the result. We all make hundreds of micro decisions daily. The compilation of the decisions will decide where we end up. Make your decisions align with your goals and that will equal success.

7. Do the worst, first. Your resolution may include something difficult, something you do NOT want to do. Anything worthwhile in life has some hard work, discomfort, or down right nastiness to it. Do it first. Get it out of the way. Don’t leave it, procrastinate around it, or avoid it. JUST DO IT (I think someone thought of that motto)!

I hope these seven tips will help you sustain your new resolutions.

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Creating a Drama-Free Workplace

Seems like an oxymoron, right, a drama-free workplace?  I created Genesis Human Resources because there is way too much drama in the workplace.  The drama takes time of management and other employees.  And, because it takes time away from production, it costs money.  In fact, conflict in the workplace is a multi-billion dollar problem.  I am not so optimistic to believe Genesis Human Resources can alleviate all conflict at work.  I do believe we can create far more peace than most companies presently experience.  The question comes, “How do we do that?”

First, peace begins with listening.  We start with an HR Audit that includes an interview along with a brief narrative from every employee.  We are serious about hearing from all, management to the janitor.  Our goal is threefold: establish relationships, create a baseline of employee satisfaction, and assist you in hearing valuable feedback about processes, personnel and systems.

Second, peace begins with training.  We offer training/consulting to your management team on a monthly basis.  You can scan the many training topics we offer to help create better managers.  When managers know and understand healthy conflict management techniques, they push conflict down to the employee level allowing upper management to manage, not become arbitrators in disputes.  But we don’t just help managers understand conflict, we help them grow in all levels of management skills.  Healthy managers create peaceful workplaces.

Third, a new level of peace is achieved working directly with employees. No other HR firm comes close to this level of assistance. We attach a Client Manager with an advanced degree and mediation training to your company.  He or she will be on campus monthly for the sole purpose of employee appointments.  Employees can schedule 30 minute sessions to assist in areas causing disruption in their performance.  We will help employees to resolve disputes at the employee level.  We can aid with personal matters that bleed into workplace absenteeism such as family or eldercare issues.  We will refer employees to competent professionals for further assistance as needed and monitor progress.

Lastly, we are a neutral third party your employees can trust.  Many managers and employees will not speak their minds to company officials.  The feedback we obtain is critical in leveraging and advancing the strengths of employees for greater efficiency and production to the company.  Employees are happy.  Production increases.  Companies grow.  Peace at work will increase your bottom line.  Let us show you how.