Mediation for Business
Evaluative – Innovative – Pro-active
Phillip has co-owned and run businesses for forty years. The journey to Phillip becoming an accredited mediator arose from his own extensive experiences, being directly involved in mediations and litigation, which were “all consuming, arduous and life influencing”.
The benefits of such hindsight are invaluable, which is why Phillip decided to use those experiences, to help others resolve their disagreements.
Although Mediation is becoming a more prevalent step in the litigation process, it should also be sufficiently detached from the technical legal issues, in order to offer a fresh perspective. Whilst it is important to understand the judicial process, if you want to avoid trial then business problems require business solutions.
Phillip’s background helped him to recognise and develop a three-tier mediation technique.
Tier 1: An informed focus on the specific technical & commercial aspects that lay at the heart of any disagreement.
Tier 2: A visceral understanding of the Parties and their respective positions.
Tier 3: Helping the parties understand what is in their own best interests.
If at all possible you/or your clients should stay in control because the alternative is a legal process where justice, as determined by the rule of law, can often be profoundly different to expectations.
Above all else, a Mediator should have extensive commercial knowledge and enlightened people skills.
Invariably disputes trigger powerful and complex feelings of principle, fairness and justice, causing resentment and belligerence which can distort cognition, cloud judgment and give rise to fundamental misunderstandings in the resolution process.
In Phillip’s experience these misunderstandings become more of an obstacle than the background noise, and it is how the Mediator navigates through all of this that becomes part of the critical pathway to settlement.
This is where years of business experience is invaluable and why at PDR, we really do understand conflict and how to become a pro-active part of the resolution process.
