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Investigate the ways we are caught in old paradigms and how to free ourselves to do deeper and more radiaclly helpful work.

We continue to work at the edges, gradually being added to organizations and their existing adjudication processes with coaching, mediation, workplace interventions, and preliminary investigations; tinkering with the issues and solutions by attaching more parts to the old machinery. The difficulty: old processes and adjudicative mechanisms are still the dominant influence on dispute management; the spectre of subsequent adjudication co-opts mediation and other non-adjudicative processes. The alternative processes become ossified, and systems tend towards rules and adjudication. We need to break away from these tendencies and preserve opportunities to transform the paradigm of conflict resolution, to preserve ADR’s promise and its capacity to change our future.

Looking substantively at a recent high profile situation, the sexual harassment accusation against Mark McNicholls and the David Jones company by Kirsty Fraser-Kirk, we can see old paradigms at work dominating the situation, resulting in a fundamentally unsatisfactory outcome, even though the resolution of the dispute seems to have been generated by a conciliation process. And from a process perspective we can look at the pre-conditions and structures we are creating that limit our capacity to participate effectively as neutrals and to help others.

Let’s investigate together the ways we remain caught in these old paradigms, and consider how we can free ourselves to do deeper and more radically helpful work with those in disputes.

Presentation of quotes, comments and information from a variety of sources for reaction and comment from participants and facilitated discussion of various perspectives.

Podcast: Listen to Frank talk about this session pre-kon gres (7 mins) >>

Frank spent many years working in Canada, the UK, the US, and Australia from a base in Toronto, Canada. At the beginning of 2011 he moved to Melbourne to be with his partner, Leta Chen, who is also a mediator. Frank has been adopted by the two teenage boys and two dogs who make up the rest of Leta’s family.