From Student to Mediator: Navigating Careers in Dispute Resolution

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, Simon Goode sits down with Neo, a law student curious about the realities and pathways into dispute resolution and mediation. Their conversation covers Simon Goode's unconventional journey into the field, practical insights into mediation processes, and the challenges of handling conflict in both professional and personal contexts. Together, they explore the transferability of conflict skills, ethical dilemmas, and creative ways mediation can be adapted to better serve diverse clients.

Timestamps: 

00:00 "Conflict Skills Podcast: Special Guest"

08:51 Understanding Behavior and Perception

13:43 "Managing Emotions and Self-Regulation"

16:45 Managing Emotions and Responses

26:30 Managing Conflict in Mediation

29:09 Balanced Mediation Process Explained

32:49 Navigating Power Imbalance Mediation

42:02 Conflict Resolution Strategies Overview

45:17 Negotiation Strategies at Work

49:03 "Assertiveness in Mediation Explained"

57:02 Improving Client Scheduling Challenges

01:01:23 The Power of Respectful Listening

01:09:01 "Podcast Thanks and Feedback Request"

Transcript

0:00

Well, hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Goode. And it's a special episode of the podcast today because I'm joined by a guest, Neo. I'll ask you in a moment, Neo, to introduce yourself. But I received an email from Neo recently, like about a week ago or something like that. Right. Neo, asking me some incredibly thought provoking and insightful questions about dispute resolution, some technical aspects about registrations and that kind of thing, and what you might consider as a student who wants to go into dispute resolution down the track. But also some of the questions that you wrote in your emails, Neo, were like, like how has it been in terms of the practice? What does the day to day work look like? How have those skills transferred into other areas like parenting for example, or dealing with mother in laws or difficult siblings or that kind of thing. And even like what the effect is of the work on you as a person, I suppose to some extent as well. So anyway, welcome very much, Neo, thank you for joining me. Could you give us a bit of an overview of what you're studying, what you're focused on and what led you to that and why you ended up emailing me? Definitely. Definitely. Yep. As you said, my name is Neo. I'm a current law student approaching my final year. I could maybe have a year and a half left, depending on, you know, the workload. Yes. And so I got interested in dispute resolution initially because I thought it would help me win arguments. Right. To my disappointment, that's not what it was about. It was more about conflict management. Right. But that was very interesting for me, especially when I came to understand that most legal disputes don't actually reach the courts. Right. So I went down this rabbit hole as I was just trying to understand the area of dispute resolution within law. And I came to realize that it's not just a legal thing. So there's mediators in real estate, there's mediators in so many different industries. And that got me then to go on to YouTube and found out a little bit more about it. Right. And so in finding all these different areas where dispute resolution is used, I still didn't quite relate to the way that the information was packaged. So I continued my search and that's when I came across your podcast. So what I found really useful about your podcast was the way in which you explained dispute resolution. You didn't use a lot of technical jargon. You didn't assume that the person listening already has expertise or understands the area. You made it very easy for me to understand where dispute resolution or conflict management sits. So, like in society or in conflicts themselves, you know, and how it can be useful. Yeah, right. But also, you didn't sort of give this idea that knowing conflict management or having these skills means that you can deal with every conflict. So I continued my search and that's when I came across your podcast. So what I found really useful about your podcast was the way in which you explained dispute resolution. You didn't use a lot of technical jargon. You didn't assume that the person listening already has expertise or understands the area. You made it Very easy for me to understand where dispute resolution or conflict management sits. So, like in society or in conflicts themselves, you know, and how it can be useful. Yeah, right. But also, you didn't sort of give this idea that knowing conflict management or having these skills means that you can deal with every conflict. Like everything becomes a walk in the park. Yeah, absolutely not. Yeah. So it had a very human element to. It would be nice. Yeah, it had a very human element to it, which is what really resonated. And I actually put off sending the email for so long. It was on my to do and I really felt that I. I have to email you and. Yeah, I finally. Yeah, I was just like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'd really like to talk. All the stars have aligned. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think a lot of the questions that you're considering are also ones that would be useful for other people too. So that's why I suggested. Let's record it. Yeah. So if this is useful for people, please put a comment down below and we'll continue to do this kind of format moving forward. And, Nia, you might even end up being a guest, a repeat guest down the track. That'd be awesome. I'd love that. Once you've got your feet under a desk somewhere and you're working in the field, would you like to just go through some of the questions that are on the top of mind to begin? You know, one of the questions that came to mind as I was watching your videos. Right. Was that, are you a lawyer? How did you get into the conflict management space? Because my understanding initially was that, like, only legal practitioners can do this. So. Yeah, perhaps if you could just explain how it is you came into the field, what your background is, and so what drew you to becoming a conflict management professional? Yeah, I mean, a lot of. A lot of people in dispute resolution and conflict resolution, they've taken very meandering paths to get there, if you know what I mean. But you're right, my background isn't in law per se. I actually did psychology at university for my undergraduate degree and I was considering becoming a psychologist. But it's a bit like law. When you finish, you still need to do. Is it the practicing certificate or something like that? So with psychology, you need to do either a supervised sort of like traineeship almost for two years, or you can do a master's level course and become a clinical psychologist or something else. Like. There's various different pathways of accreditation as a counselor, as a psychologist, but I hated psychology. When I was studying at uni, I failed a number of subjects. I'm also reasonably bright academically. I found it very hard to concentrate when things were boring. And I studied at a place at Newcastle. And the course at the time was very rats and stats. It was experiments and science and then statistical analysis and that kind of thing. And that's fine, that's useful. Like I know how to read a research paper now. I can put together, you know, the different sections of the data and the results and the conclusion, et cetera, and you can understand what's shoddy research and what's not. But I didn't feel like I was learning any skills to actually help anyone like humans that I was going to meet as a counselor, as a psychologist. So I started volunteering at a youth crisis center run by the Salvation Army. And I did that for a year or two and then they offered me a job. So I finished my uni and went into youth work. So drug and alcohol work, anger management programs for kids that were like referred by the police because they'd beaten someone up or something. It was pretty full-on kind of work, like the pointy end of the spectrum. And I saw a job come up for a family counselor. So I thought, oh, this sounds a bit more like stable ground that I can be standing on rather than the chaos of youth work, which was very sad. Like we had kids that would kill themselves and this kind of thing at times you wouldn't always have success stories. They were from incredibly disadvantaged backgrounds, so you can imagine a lot of them ended up in jail or whatever. So I thought family counseling, that seems more like my deal. I'll be able to help people. But the program, I got the job luckily. But the program wasn't the kind of counseling that I had in mind, was working in a government funded program called the Parenting Orders program. So back in 2016, the Attorney General introduced these sweeping changes to the Family Law Act, the divorce and separation kind of legislation. And so they introduced much more of a component on dispute resolution. They came up with this new type of professional called family dispute resolution practitioners, FDRPs. So this would kind of be like family mediators, but at least at the time there was some kind of an intention, I think, that they would offer support in a more deep and comprehensive way. And so they rolled out this funding like millions of dollars to all these not for profits in all of the little towns and cities around Australia to have these family dispute resolution practitioners involved there. So there was funding for the early intervention kind of stuff. Like couples just considering separation. There was funding for the couples going through divorce and figuring out what to do with the kids and what to do with the property. And then there was additional funding for the very pointy end of the spectrum. The clients that were at court for two or three years by that stage, and they'd often spent $60,000 each. The kids had just become a bargaining chip that was going between the two of them. They were having changeover at Macca's every second weekend, screaming and yelling at each other. And there's AVOs and intervention orders and accusations of child protection issues and mental health and drug addiction. And like everything under the sun, these are people that have been at court for four years. And that was what I was walking into as a family counselor in this program. I was dealing with these clients that hated each other. And it's, it's so much understating it, like they detested each other, they. They loathed each other, you know, and these poor kids that were going between these parents just were beaten down and really hurt in the most horrible kind of ways. And so we would meet the kids as part of this program, talk to them about how they're going, and then meet the parents and give them some feedback. Like, your kids are really struggling. Like, the two of you need to figure out a way to stop this level of animosity in the conflict. But they couldn't. The program that I was in achieved very, very, very little success. There were all of these different models that they came up with. But I kept thinking at the time, like, but you need to understand why people change their behavior. Like, you need some understanding of that. What's a mind? What's mental health? So I got very frustrated with all of this because nobody actually had definitions of what we were talking about. Like, how does our system of perception work? How does that influence the way that we interpret other people's language? You know what I mean? It's like until you've actually understood that and the fight or flight mechanism, etcetera, there's no point talking to them about how much the kids are struggling. Like they don't have the capacity to do it. They would rev up to 10 and see red the moment that they got an SMS from their ex partner. And you know what I mean? It's like they didn't have the capacity to, to engage in a logical, rational, pragmatic kind of way. And yet, ironically, that was the way that all of the professionals assumed that the clients were going to change, explain things to them. They need education. I'm like, they don't need education about what's going on for the kids. They need breathing techniques about and calm down a little bit, or recognizing the signs that they were escalating and revving up. So that was all a mixed bag. I had some incredibly good people that I was working with and some success stories along the way. But most of it was not success stories. It was people that would exit the program because one or both of them decided not to come anymore, and then we wouldn't hear anything from them. But there was no reason to think that things were going to improve. So I thought there must be a way to get to these people before things get so gross and so yucky. So that's when I thought I might train as a family mediator. Like, instead of working with them after three years of fighting, let me see if I can work with them when they're first separating. So I did that and then I sort of thought, well, these people are so broken and affected by the way that they've been brought up themselves. What we really need is more of an early intervention program, like helping kids understand conflict and self regulation and managing difficult conversations with their friends or whatever else it might be. So that's kind of the pathway that I've gradually gone down in my interests. So most people who practice as a mediator, they come from a background of either social sciences, psychology, social work, something similar, or a legal background kind of thing. So both those people can apply for the family dispute resolution accreditation that I mentioned. And then the other type of mediation accreditation that I did is it's accreditation as a national mediator. So in Australia, there's the national mediation accreditation system now, so that there's like, regulations about who can call themselves a mediator and put up the sign. So you can choose to either just do the FDR component and do the family mediation side of things, or that national mediation accreditation. So there's those two kind of options that you've got for accreditation as a mediator. So I ended up sort of moving to a small town where I live now up in Coffs Harbour in New South Wales. And I did do a few family mediations when we first moved here a few years ago. But then I was running into my clients, like when I'm in the pool with my son at swimming lessons and I've got my shirt off and everything, I'm like, oh, g', day, I'll see you tomorrow morning at the mediation service. And so I really didn't like that. So I haven't been doing as much family mediation for the past few years. These days the mediation I do is more focused on workplaces. So it's like often staff in conflict with one another. It might be a manager or a team member or a group of staff who are in conflict. And so they organize an external mediator to come in, meet the parties that are involved, and then facilitate a bit of a structured meeting. So I do that in addition to sort of training workshops and that kind of thing. But what I'm wanting to do down the track is move more into the working with teens and adolescents or kids or that kind of thing with more of that early intervention, like emotional intelligence, if you know what I mean. Like the kind of stuff probably that you and I wish that we were taught at school. Yeah, yeah. How to manage your concentration and destruction, all those different things. Yeah, yeah. You know what I find interesting about what it is with what you said, especially when you mentioned breathing techniques, is that I remember right after I moved to, to Melbourne and I would always have this idea in my, in my mind that I was a very calm person, calm under pressure. You know, it's not very easy to get me upset or anything like that. Right. However, I wasn't really interacting with a lot of people, so of course. Of course, no one's drawing on the field by yourself. Exactly, exactly. Right. Yeah. I had to reconsider whether or not I was. When I started realizing that, okay, there are certain things that I find very sensitive and, and at first I tried to, you know, look up how do I become more stoic, but that, that wasn't really realistic. Right. ...so it's not just conflict. And then I like to do a mindfulness sort of protocol of just scanning my body, like figuring out if there's a part of my body that's sore or feels stiff or tight or something like that. My hands might be shaking or something similar. So it's just noticing and then paying attention to the external information coming in through my senses. So what can I see, what can I feel, what can I touch, what can I smell and taste? So I just try to focus on that sensory data. Like I wiggle my toes and feel the feeling of my shoes, my socks, in my shoe. It's so funny, when I ask you a question like, what's your tongue doing in your mouth? You can immediately think of it and be aware of it, whereas a moment ago you weren't. So I'm really trying to just anchor my attention in the present moment through those kind of activities. So there's the breathing, which deals with my body, and then there's the just noticing, et cetera, which targets my perception. And then the third thing that I might need to do is be aware of my emotions. Like maybe I'm feeling uncomfortable or embarrassed or self conscious, or maybe I'm actually starting to get pissed off that this person's not listening to me or misunderstanding me. I like to just do a very simple thing where I name the emotion I'm feeling. Like I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling fed up, I'm sick of this or something. And then I ask myself a question like how come? Which inherently helps us to differentiate from that emotion, if you know what I mean. Like we're not swept up and captured in the frustration or the irritation or whatever. The thing is, I'm feeling irritated, but I'm also feeling other things. I'm feeling glad it's not worse. I'm feeling grateful that this didn't happen with other people around watching me make a fool of myself. I'm worried about how I explain this to the rest of my team and the impact on them or whatever. Right so it's dealing with the feelings, the emotions, and then I want to deal with the thoughts. Like, what's the story that I'm telling myself? Is it definitely true what I think is true? Am I sure that it's true? What effect is that having on me? What kind of a person would I be without this feeling, you know, of self consciousness or something similar? And then the last thing I want to do is really focus on my volition. Like, you know, you mentioned earlier, when we're off camera, that impulse to speak and almost interrupt someone and jump in before they're speaking. And the more revved up and angry that we get, or the more worried that we get, the less we have that capacity to self regulate our behavior effectively. So I really deliberately take a pause before I respond. Do you know what I mean? Like when the other person finishes talking, or I might deliberately keep my language simpler than I might normally use, or I might try and lower my tone of voice, I might lower my volume that I'm speaking as well. So I'm kind of taking control, if you know what I mean. Whereas when you get angry and upset, it's like a runaway train and off you go and you're not in control of all of that. So I think about the self like me and self regulation in those five aspects. My physical body, my perception, my emotions, my feelings, my mood, all that, my thoughts, my stories, my assumptions, my interpretations of what the other person's doing and my behavior. Like those five aspects of the self. I find that incredibly helpful when it comes to something like self regulation or even self improvement or something similar, I suppose, if that's what you aspire to. Yeah, yeah. So. So it really then is about how do I manage situations where, where that does happen. Right. Especially if you are the type of person where someone says something and your adrenaline just, you know, starts pumping and fight or flight immediately. Right. So I guess in saying that, I sort of want to understand if you were in a situation where you weren't actually a mediator and someone said something or did something to you, do you snap into a mediator mode in order to sort of de. Escalate or, you know, are you. I guess you're human, so you might be prone to, you know, maybe lashing out or. But. But sort of like what is. Do you have any steps as to what you do when you find yourself in a situation? Yeah. So the first thing that I do is breathing techniques, so focusing on using your nose instead of your mouth and really focusing on the breath out. So at least six seconds. So I Count six breathing in, get six breathing out. So I do that like several times a day. Even the small level types of stress, like when I'm waiting to pick my son up from school and there's all the other parents around and I kind of can't remember this person's name and I don't know if they've seen me or not, so it's a bit awkward. And those kind of moments as well. I'm practicing the same kind of breathing technique, so it's not just conflict. And then I like to do a mindfulness sort of protocol of just scanning my body, like figuring out if there's a part of my body that's sore or feels stiff or tight or something like that. My hands might be shaking or something similar. So it's just noticing and then paying attention to the external information coming in through my senses. So what can I see, what can I feel, what can I touch, what can I smell and taste? So I just try to focus on that sensory data. Like I wiggle my toes and feel the feeling of my shoes, my socks, in my shoe. It's so funny, when I ask you a question like, what's your tongue doing in your mouth? You can immediately think of it and be aware of it, whereas a moment ago you weren't. So I'm really trying to just anchor my attention in the present moment through those kind of activities. So there's the breathing, which deals with my body, and then there's the just noticing, et cetera, which targets my perception. And then the third thing that I might need to do is be aware of my emotions. Like maybe I'm feeling uncomfortable or embarrassed or self conscious, or maybe I'm actually starting to get pissed off that this person's not listening to me or misunderstanding me. I like to just do a very simple thing where I name the emotion I'm feeling. Like I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling fed up, I'm sick of this or something. And then I ask myself a question like how come? Which inherently helps us to differentiate from that emotion, if you know what I mean. Like we're not swept up and captured in the frustration or the irritation or whatever. The thing is, I'm feeling irritated, but I'm also feeling other things. I'm feeling glad it's not worse. I'm feeling grateful that this didn't happen with other people around watching me make a fool of myself. I'm worried about how I explain this to the rest of my team and the impact on them or whatever. Right so it's dealing with the feelings, the emotions, and then I want to deal with the thoughts. Like, what's the story that I'm telling myself? Is it definitely true what I think is true? Am I sure that it's true? What effect is that having on me? What kind of a person would I be without this feeling, you know, of self consciousness or something similar? And then the last thing I want to do is really focus on my volition. Like, you know, you mentioned earlier, when we're off camera, that impulse to speak and almost interrupt someone and jump in before they're speaking. And the more revved up and angry that we get, or the more worried that we get, the less we have that capacity to self regulate our behavior effectively. So I really deliberately take a pause before I respond. Do you know what I mean? Like when the other person finishes talking, or I might deliberately keep my language simpler than I might normally use, or I might try and lower my tone of voice, I might lower my volume that I'm speaking as well. So I'm kind of taking control, if you know what I mean. Whereas when you get angry and upset, it's like a runaway train and off you go and you're not in control of all of that. So I think about the self like me and self regulation in those five aspects. My physical body, my perception, my emotions, my feelings, my mood, all that, my thoughts, my stories, my assumptions, my interpretations of what the other person's doing and my behavior. Like those five aspects of the self. I find that incredibly helpful when it comes to something like self regulation or even self improvement or something similar, I suppose, if that's what you aspire to. Yeah. That sounds very similar to something I watched recently called Polarity, where I don't remember his name, but he was talking about first he was talking about reframing, so looking at the bigger picture. Yeah. But then he was also talking about like whatever event is happening. If you have a look at both sides, sort of like take whatever topic or whatever event, Right. So the positive things about this particular event and then the negative things about this particular event, and then the more things that you start to describe in terms of positive and negative, you'll get to the point where you realize that it's not just one or the other. Yeah, right. And within that space, you, you are able to sort of like remain present and understand that a lot of it is actually how you're perceiving what's happening and not really what is happening. Right. Just being aware of that nuance, it means you focused on that level of detail, right? Yeah. If there's a tiger chasing you or a random enemy comes and appears, it doesn't matter which tribe they're from, you need to get ready to defend yourself. Yeah. What species of tiger it is Escape and get out of here. Yeah. We're programmed for quick reactions in times of crisis. So the more escalated that we get, it's fight or flight mode and off we go. The sympathetic nervous system. I love that one of just maybe thinking about the details, noticing what were the words that they actually said or how did the meeting begin or. Yeah, adding some of that nuance. I totally agree. Yeah. So then tell me as a mediator, right, so what does the work look like? You said that you know, you'd meet some of the clients, you know, at the pool, but what does that actually look like? How did they become your clients? Did you have to look for them? Did they find you in a directory? Like how do you sort of go from, you know, participating or enrolling in the course, graduating and then becoming a family mediator? Yes. So if you wanted to go down the family mediation routes, you could either work in some of those government funded programs, the not for profit that are everywhere, or you could set up a private practice and find your own clients and kind of operate under your own business. But even the people who do that, like they have their own business, they often subcontract to other mediators. So they might work with someone else as a co facilitator or they might be allocated cases and work under them and that kind of thing. So when you first graduate, you kind of need to decide which path you want to go down. The private practice route or the government organization. With the government organizations they have clients busting down their doors, they've usually got a waiting list of three months or something similar. So when they go and see a lawyer, if they don't have a lot of money to fight it in court, the lawyer always says go to the family relationship centre or go and try family dispute resolution. So they just have clients coming through referrals and because they're publicly known. So if you work in one of those kind of organizations as an fdrp, a family dispute resolution practitioner, you would have a number of active cases. So if you're full time, it's probably roughly 30 or 40 or something similar. I worked for a few years as the manager of the Newcastle FRC, so my full time mediators had between 30 and 40 active cases. So the process in that government department was party A would come in the first, you know, usually the mum or the dad, and they would be initiating mediation. So you would meet with them, have a one on one private interview with them for an hour, an hour and a half, go through the assessment checklist that you've got in front of you around safety and willingness and capacity, etc. And then you decide whether or not mediation is appropriate. If you think it's fine, it's worth giving it a go. You write a letter to the other party to party B or an email these days. And then they call and they're usually angry, like bloody Jim, why is he asking you guys to do mediation? So sometimes they will be incredibly. Angry, to say the least. Sometimes they're open to it, but they're suspicious, this kind of thing. So you organize a time for them to come in if they want, and then you meet the other party. So then as a mediator, you need to decide whether or not the case is suitable for mediation, is the way that it's framed. So you could decide that it's not appropriate for the mediation process. And you give them a type of legal certificate that says that they tried, they gave it a go, and that's what they need to apply to court. You need to show that you tried mediation. It's one of the changes from back in 2016. Oh, wow. And then if you do the mediation, it's usually for about three hours or so with just the two people in the room. Typically you've got a whiteboard that you're usually using, come up with an agenda, go through the topics one by one. And then as they get to an agreement, you're either writing it down with a notepad and pen or typing it on a laptop. And then you would send them out a copy of the agreement that they made. So it's not legally binding. Some clients take that to their lawyers and make it into consent orders or some other kind of formal document. So you would get a mediation in. I don't know what the stats are, but it's probably roughly half, I would say, of mediations that go through. It might be 60 or 70% sometimes. But it's a very interesting question, like, what makes mediation a success? If you get to an agreement and they walk out the door having agreed to this bit of paper, is that a success? Do you know what I mean? If they hate each other and one of them is just going to renege on it next weekend anyway, what difference does it kind of make? So there's a real limitation in terms of the Captured data. There's not a lot of longitudinal studies, if you know what I mean, about the efficacy of these different processes. And one of the strange things, as a practitioner in the field that you notice is all of these different, not for profits do it differently. They've got incredibly different models. Some of them have a different person that screens the clients before the mediator sees them. Some of them have multiple shorter sessions. Some of them do it by phone. Some of them would only do it in separate rooms. They never put their clients in the same room. Some of them insist that they have to be in the same room. So you've got a very wide variance in terms of the actual practice, the stage going on day to day. So most organizations have a clinical team or a team of clinical specialists. So they try to standardize the model and implement research and this kind of thing. But it's a bit of a mixed bag, to be honest. Yeah. So I heard you mention a checklist. Now, why would you need a checklist before mediation? What is it that you're actually checking off there? And what happens if you can't check a particular item? So I say checklist, but again, that's something that some mediators literally do it like an interview. Like they go down the page checking and asking each question. Some mediators say it should be more like a therapeutic discussion. So they do it much more like a counseling interview type of thing. But more or less what you're checking for are three things. Safety, capacity, and willingness to do the mediation. You might think about child protection concerns. One or both of them have previous family violence that might have gone on. There might be current intervention orders, involvement with the police. The kids might be worried about seeing parents argue, all that kind of stuff. So the safety is like, you just do your best using your professional discretion. We do try to standardize those kind of things. So some organizations that I've worked with had a checklist that they developed. Like you should ask, have the police been involved? Even if the clients don't bring it up naturally. Whereas other organizations don't always ask that as a matter of course. Willingness is a funny one because all you're really checking is their willingness to participate in the process. So that's going to be different than their willingness to agree to what the other person's asking. Do you know what I mean? So that's an interesting one that again, you use your discretion and then capacity. We try to assess whether or not the clients have the capacity to mediate together. What are we really doing in that sense? If you know what I mean. Like, we're meeting them, we might be pushing them on not getting everything their way. We might be exploring patterns of the communication with their ex partner. What kind of things cause things to blow up. How are you going to manage that in the room when you're there with this person that you don't get along with particularly well? What do you need to do after the mediation session to keep yourself safe, if that's something that you're worried about? Like all of these kind of questions. So it's about an hour, an hour and a half, or something like that that you're talking to these people about, but then it's like you have to make a decision as to whether or not you go ahead. And it's another area where there's a lot of divergence of practice. Some mediators, maybe because they feel a bit more uncomfortable with high levels of emotion, they might say it's not appropriate because they don't want to put these two people in the room where they're going to yell at each other. Someone else might say they're yelling at each other at McDonald's every second weekend. Like, who are we benefiting by not helping these people? So they might put them in the room and then there's a much more volatile conversation that erupts. So there's no right and wrong. I think ultimately there's sort of like an ethical decision that you need to make as a mediator. And for me, it's about making sure that the process of assessment was thorough. So if you're not sure, I was just going to say there's usually a clinical supervisor, like a senior person, that can ask for a second opinion. That's another option that's often used too. Okay. So I guess one of the questions, especially because you said that you work with organizations, is that firstly, how does mediation work when you are dealing with an organization and it's an employee making claims about another employee, say someone in HR. Right. So I guess the first question is, is that maybe because I'm a law student, but even though, you know, mediation and conflict resolution shouldn't be adversarial, but I tend to look at it as this person versus the other person. Right. So would it be the employee and HR, or is it the employee and the organization? Right. When a mediator steps in. And then the second question is, in that, in that type of space, I imagine that the asymmetrical power dynamics will be felt. Right. Because you have HR and you have an employee or a team leader or a team leader. Yep. So how do you, as a mediator, assess whether or not the employee is simply agreeing because they feel the pressure to agree on the spot because of the presence of HR or a team leader? Yeah. I suppose that depends on how simple you think that our behavior can be explained as humans. Like, because this, that's why we do this. I'm like, there's no way we're logical. There's just so many factors that influence why we do anything. Yeah, yeah. So at the beginning of the mediation, I'll usually ask both parties for an opening statement. Can you just give me a few sentences about. I usually say, like, what you think it's important to talk about today, or something similar like that. If it's a very contentious couple of people and they just hate each other, you might be better off asking a very structured question, like, can you give me a list of the topics that you'd like to talk about in the mediation? But either way, I ask people to speak and then I summarize it as much as I can, word for word. So I'm giving them that immediate impression of this being a balanced process. You're both having a chance to speak. I'm acknowledging both of your input relatively equally. And then we go to developing the agenda, which again, I keep asking both of them, have I got the wording right there? Is that something that you're comfortable with? Do you understand what they're talking about when they're talking about lateness or when they're talking about this kind of thing? Are there other points that you would like to add to that? So as much as possible, you're trying to give them, what would you say? It's like control over the process, if you know what I mean, even though they can't have control over the decisions or the outcomes. And then I think it's just acknowledging that that's the reality of it. And even with the manager saying to them, what do you need to do? What do you need to keep in mind so that this isn't the experience of the staff member, that they feel bullied and pushed around and this kind of thing. But there's a deeper question I think that you're getting at, which is, who is the client? Like, if I get called and I come in as the mediator, whose interest am I serving, if you know what I mean? Because I've got usually the HR manager or someone's called me and they're paying my bill, and then I've got the team leader who's got their own vested interests, and then I've got the staff member. It's not even as simple as, do I take sides in one or the other here. I've also got the HR manager in the background and they're going to call me again next time if I do a good job. So there's a real, I think, sometimes inherent conflict of interest that you also need to deal with there. Oh, wow. I never actually considered that. So. So hang on, then. Wouldn't you then be. If you were driven by financial incentive, wouldn't you then be incentivized to just tip the scales a particular way, you know, to make HR happy or whoever gave you a call? Well, the other path that we didn't talk about in family mediation was the private practice kind of approach, if you want to set up your own business. So most people who do that, a lot of their referrals come in through other lawyers in their network, if you know what I mean. So they'll go and attend a mediation supervision event in the evening. You'll have some glasses of wine, you'll often put on food and that kind of thing, and you're building your network. So then you're referring to one another. And it's a very similar kind of ethical conundrum, isn't it? Like, if I want you to keep referring to me, then I'm going to do things that are good for your client, which is one of the parties in the mediation process. So who pays the bill? What is the incentives? Which behaviors are being incentivized? I think they're just really important factors to consider. And then the way that I tend to approach is that I just try and make it transparent. You know, we've got this imbalance of power that we're working with. Ultimately, mediation is voluntary, so it's up to you whether or not you're willing to participate. If you do, what would you need in terms of interventions or support mechanisms or that kind of thing? And then even as the HR manager sitting on my shoulder, you know, I'm thinking about them. I might say to the manager and the staff member, look, we've got a bit of a challenging situation that we're working in because the two of you are at different levels. You're literally responsible for some of the decisions that they need to follow. And then at the same time, you've also got the agenda or the interests of the organization to consider. So I just put it on the table. I'm like, this is a tough spot to be. What needs to happen moving forward? How can we manage this? How can we mitigate some of those elements? I think so in sort of going down the rabbit hole around mediation, conflict management, I sort of wanted to test myself, I guess, you know, with real life cases, things that are happening in my life. And there was a, there is a dispute between my family and a particular organization. Right. So I asked my parents if I could, if I could assist with this particular matter. Right. I sort of just wanted practice now. Like advocating for them. Yeah. Advocating for them. Yeah. Obviously I'm not a professional. Right. Still a student. Right. But I thought this would give me really great practice. Right, right. And so one of the things is that not obviously, but the communication was asynchronous. So is email. I think so in sort of going down the rabbit hole around mediation, conflict management, I sort of wanted to test myself, I guess, you know, with real life cases, things that are happening in my life. And there was a, there is a dispute between my family and a particular organization. Right. So I asked my parents if I could, if I could assist with this particular matter. Right. I sort of just wanted practice now. Which unfortunately a lot of nuance is, you know, not considered. Right. It's text. So. And so what happened was I escalated the matter to, to pretty much to the CEO and he responded, he gave me a call. So look, I'll get someone to assist you. Yeah, right. With this matter. And as it proceeded via email, the person that was assisting was very adversarial in their approach, started quoting the law, started, you know, and my response was to basically a rebuttal. Right. It was very absurd. Right. And then what I started doing is negotiating. Right. This was a mistake on my part because I came to realize that if I am going to negotiate with someone, the other party has to know that this is a negotiation. Right. So they were probably wondering, why is this guy making concessions, right? Like out of the blue, like, why are you giving us all this information? Right. It's information that I didn't have to give. Right. But I did have some other information that I wasn't willing to give if they were. But, but it was done out of good faith. But regardless of it being good faith, there was nothing to suggest that they wanted to negotiate at all. Okay, right. What were they saying? Just too bad, too sad. Go. Opposition hasn't changed. Tough luck. I was like, well, I just gave you all this. I thought you'd be, you know, expected reciprocity. I did, I did, I did. And. But then it got me thinking about, like, so if I was a professional, Right, let's say mediator, legal practitioner with skills in this area. Right. Are those skills transferable to other areas of my life? Right. So, for example, with yourself, with personal relationships, are they transferable? Right. And with power dynamics, sort of in family, are you still able to manage conflicts appropriately, or are there some areas where you feel that, like, this is. This is not your strong point or you'd rather have someone else handle it? For me personally, I'm a very neurotic kind of person, like in the big five personality factors. So I overthink everything. I take things personally. I'm constantly reflecting and contemplating, if you know what I mean. So I'm. I'm someone who started from -10 in my conflict ability. I was very volatile. I ended up pissing off most of my friends at high school. Like, I just was very moody and, yeah, not very well managed, to be honest. So I'd say that I've got to a solid 6 out of 10 now in my conflict performance in my personal life. But even just a week ago, like, I was having a massive argument with my wife that just came out of the blue. I don't know why, even looking back, I got so upset about it, but I was furious. That was this dumb thing. Like, she wasn't listening to my opinion about the not for profit organization I worked with years ago. I'm like, what on earth was I thinking? You know? Yeah, so that, that prefrontal cortex, the logical rational section of our brain, it just goes offline when we go into fight or flight mode. So that was after we'd gone out for dinner. I hadn't had much sleep two nights in a row. And I said to her that morning, I don't think I really want to go. I think honestly, I just need to rest. But it was our anniversary and, you know, it was a special night. I should make the effort. So I ended up. And then the waiter was kind of a jerk to me and the food sucked and it was so expensive. I'm like, oh, what was the point of this? So it was probably fighting about all of that stuff in the background, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I have my ups and downs in terms of self regulation like everybody else. I've still, even this year had that. That blow up when I had an argument with my wife. And then I also completely lost it. Earlier in the year, I was trying to hire a marketing person to help me with the online course that I'm launching. Still putting it off. Launching it, but hopefully literally this week. And I met them and then they took a deposit from me, like 350 bucks or something, because I was going to do a marketing planning session with them. And then I thought, I don't really want to do this. Like, I have an mba. I'm kind of smarter than them, some of these aspects anyway. So I said, look, I'm not going to. Go ahead. You don't know how to use Squarespace, which is what I use for my website. Yeah. And they said, no worries, but that deposit's not refundable. I was like, excuse me, what do you mean the deposit's not refundable? Like, I live in Coffs Harbor. It's this tiny little town where we treat each other as mates, you know? Yeah. And I'm someone who works with hundreds of organizations in this local area. Why would you want to upset me? So I got. I took it so personally. I wrote to them, have I done something to upset you? Why are you not giving me a refund? Like, who treats people like this? I guess that's just the corporate culture that they grew up in. They probably came from Sydney or something similar. Angry. Like, I lost weeks of sleep. Like, yeah. Oh, wow. So I'm still prone to it. I figured out how to get off that negative spiral. When it happens, it's usually managing my physical body, my perception, my thoughts, feelings and my behavior. But it's like all things, you have your ups and downs and there's something that will catch you off guard, isn't there? Yeah. At times when you lose it, it's almost hard to figure out what happened. Yeah. You know, although I just met. You know, what I really like about you, Right. Is that in this social media space where, you know, we have all these platforms and everyone just wants to be perfect and put this image of I have it all under control and even people who are professionals, right. You ask them questions and the answer is very structured, very rigid, very perfect. Yeah. Almost like they're trying to impress that. You seem very genuine. You seem very honest, earnest, you know, and. And that's probably why I found it easy to connect with you, even though I just, you know, heard you over. Over the podcast. Right. But it's really refreshing to have this conversation with a Professional. Right. Because it feels like, it feels like you're sitting right beside me and we're just having a conversation. Right. It is really, really relatable. Right. So. So I really appreciate that. I really do. I don't know if anyone has ever told you that, but that, that is a very great quality of yours, you know, the relatability. Yeah. And even, you know, just sharing that like you have your moment as, as well, we sort of like spiral, you know, it will give people a realistic understanding of what it's like to be a professional in the space. Right. So as an example, what I, what I said at the start was that I thought. Right, but even if it was right, let's say if conflict resolution was about winning arguments, that doesn't mean you'll win every single argument. Yeah. Right. So you know, it's about being realistic about what it looks like on Day to Day. So. Yeah. Have you come across the thing called Conflict Modes by Thomas and Kilmann? No. What is that? I'll see if I can do a quick screen share. I'll show you a slide from a workshop that I was running yesterday. Okay. It's, it's one that I do with construction companies and we look at. Was that working? Yeah, yeah. So this, it's based on a model developed by a couple of psychologists, Thomas and Kilman. So they sort of studied people in workplace contexts and others and came to the conclusion that we kind of used these five different options when it comes to dealing with conflict. So what you're talking about, about me versus you and I'm going to beat you down and win. They would put that in what they call competing. I think a better term is directing. It's like you need to do this and you need to do this. We are going to agree to that, but we're not going to agree to that. It's the very assertive end of the spectrum. And then we've got on the other end accommodating, which is where we just say yes and back down to what the other person's asking us to do. We could avoid the conflict altogether, not write back to them, just cut your losses, which is what I ended up doing with this marketing person after months of self inflicted torment. And then we've got the options of compromise that's kind of meeting in the middle. Like maybe the approach that you took with that organization, like you'll make some concessions and then expect them to come to the party, but nobody's 100% happy. With that, it's good because you get to a quick decision, but it sucks because you're giving away something that you might have won if you fought hard or, you know, to some extent you might be incentivizing bad behavior. It might create an unhelpful precedent, there's a whole bunch of problems. And then you've got the final option of collaborating, which is where you sit down and go through options for a win win kind of approach. I think as a mediator, I've gotten a little bit better at all five of those options. Like when I'm more firm, I'm better. When I'm accommodating, I'm a little bit more gracious than I used to be. But sometimes I still find it difficult. I really need to decide which battles do I fight and which battles do I engage with. This collaborative mindset of there must be some solution, there must be some option, and when is it better just to cut your losses and compromise or avoid their model. They had the hypothesis that we almost drift into a default way of dealing with conflict when we're at our worst, when you haven't had much sleep or you're under the pump at uni, or you jerk that you're working with in a group assignment or something similar. But that has been incredibly helpful for me in my own life at almost choosing which fights are worth fighting. And then if I'm not going to go full on me versus you, I'm not necessarily going to have to just fully back down. It also gives me those other options to consider of compromise, like meet in the middle or collaborate. Let's organize a time to talk it through. Maybe we can come up with something that's going to work for all of us. I'm not sure. Does that make any sense in the way that I've. So this, it's based on a model developed by a couple of psychologists, Thomas and Kilman. So they sort of studied people in workplace contexts and others and came to the conclusion that we kind of used these five different options when it comes for dealing with conflict. So what you're talking about, about me versus you and I'm going to beat you down and win. They would put that in what they call competing. I think a better term is directing. It's like you need to do this and you need to do this. We are going to agree to that, but we're not going to agree to that. It's the very assertive end of the spectrum. And then we've got on the other end accommodating, which is where we just say yes and back down to what the other person's asking us to do. We could avoid the conflict altogether, not right back to them, just cut your losses, which is what I ended up doing with this marketing person after months of self inflicted torment. And then we've got the options of compromise that's kind of meeting in the middle. Like maybe the approach that you took with that organization, like you'll make some concessions and then expect them to come to the party, but nobody's 100% happy. With that, it's good because you get to a quick decision, but it sucks because you're giving away something that you might have won if you fought hard or, you know, to some extent you might be incentivizing bad behavior. It might create an unhelpful precedent, there's a whole bunch of problems. And then you've got the final option of collaborating, which is where you sit down and go through options for a win win kind of approach. I think as a mediator, I've gotten a little bit better at all five of those options. Like when I'm more firm, I'm better. When I'm accommodating, I'm a little bit more gracious than I used to be. But sometimes I still find it difficult. I really need to decide which battles do I fight and which battles do I engage with. This collaborative mindset of there must be some solution, there must be some option, and when is it better just to cut your losses and compromise or avoid their model. They had the hypothesis that we almost drift into a default way of dealing with conflict when we're at our worst, when you haven't had much sleep or you're under the pump at uni, or you jerk that you're working with in a group assignment or something similar. But that has been incredibly helpful for me in my own life at almost choosing which fights are worth fighting. And then if I'm not going to go full on me versus you, I'm not necessarily going to have to just fully back down. It also gives me those other options to consider of compromise, like meet in the middle or collaborate. Let's organize a time to talk it through. Maybe we can come up with something that's going to work for all of us. I'm not sure. Does that make any sense in the way that I've. It does actually make a lot of sense because in preparing for my exam, sort of was going through the different negotiation styles and the first one, zero sum is the more positional, you know, the, the legal threats, the anchoring, the refusal to remove position, you know, to shift positions, that, that type of thing. So yeah, so no, this, this make. I've never seen it like that. It's always good to see a picture. So, yeah, that, that makes, that makes quite a lot of sense actually. It's a lovely course that I do. I really like working with these construction guys because you imagine they haven't thought about emotional intelligence or these kind of areas very much. Yeah, no, no, no. There's another slide you might find helpful Neo. This is from Ray Fels, who was. He taught my negotiation unit when I did my MBA. He does a lot of negotiations with big unions and enterprise bargaining agreements or their minds when they're negotiating safety regulations, etc. So, you know, there's that power layer on the outside, which is like, I'm your boss and you're my staff member. Or you mentioned, if you were talking to me, maybe I've got some level of power just because of my expert knowledge or my credentials or something similar. So we've got that layer. But he also talks about these inner layers of rights and interests. So you can kind of choose which layer to negotiate on, which layer of conflict you're going to fight them on, if you know what I mean. If you can't beat them because they're your boss, maybe there's rights that you can refer to and so there's job descriptions and staff code of conducts and all those kind of formal things. But some of those, others, like you mentioned, reciprocity. Look, we've helped you out. Can you help us out now? We were willing to share some information. Is there anything that you can share on your end or precedent? Last time we were dealing with this kind of an issue, this is what was agreed to. How does that sit with you? Or equality? Like we're 20 grand out of pocket. Can you help us out with this next layer of additional costs or seniority? Like we've been here before for you? It's the first time going through it. Can you take my word for it? Can you trust me, at least for now and then we've got the interest. That's what I can threaten them with, that's what I can reward them with or promise them kind of thing. So I found that really helpful again in my personal life as well as professional, because if I'm not going to win a fight with my boss because they're my boss, maybe I can go down to the rights layer and talk to them about precedent last time round. Or maybe my boss really wants something from me, so I can agree to that if they'll give me something else that's important. Sure. That might be useful in one of your assignments. Yeah, definitely, definitely useful. But I was just thinking that there was an incident that I was involved with with HR at a previous workplace. Right. And what, what happened was they, they were explicit in, in, in letting me know that I didn't have a particular entitlement that was given to me under fair work. Right. That was given to me under Fair work, Right, yeah. They wouldn't back down. But that's that, that's it. They're just arguing on the rights layer. And that's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and they also gave me their, their policy, you know, the workplace policies that were not budging. Right. And I, it was again, unfortunately, email. We're going back and forth and I was, you know, I kindly urge you to please reassess this right. To them, though, me saying that it was perceived as weakness. And I know that because of the language that was used in, in the emails. Right. So I guess what I'm trying to ascertain or trying to understand is that how can a person like so, or how would you help if you were a mediator, right. To not come across as too weak or, you know, like, obviously ego may come, you know, may play a part. Right. But how do you ensure that you still. There'S still a level of dignity with the things that you give up. Right. But, but, but also you don't hold so much back that it doesn't look like a genuine concession. Yeah, right. And that's both. Face to face or maybe even through digital asynchronous communication. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. The different. I mean, it's a very hard one. Like how do we develop that capacity to, to be assertive kind of thing? There's some. Tools that can be useful. Like there's a book called, by Barbara Pachter called Positive Confrontations. So she talks about the, what, ask check model of delivering a message instead of that stupid sandwich technique, like a good thing followed by another good thing on the other end. And as soon as you do that to people, they're just like, what are you doing? Like transparent. So she says, what? Ask check? So this is what you've done. This is why it's a problem. And then the ask is, can you please do this? And then the check would be, let me know if there's any issues on your end kind of thing. Those kind of framework can be helpful for structuring your message, if you know what I mean. But I think ultimately assertiveness often comes down to the, the level of confidence that you're feeling. You know what I mean? It's like your own security just oozes out of you. And I think as a mediator, you're in the room with two people who are very upset and the emotions are running very high. So I learned different levels of escalating my assertiveness, even in the room as a mediator, like I would first say, well, first I should say we explain ground rules at the beginning of the mediation session. And if I'm worried that they're not going to listen to me, I really hammer home the ground rules. I might need to stop this mediation. If we're in a pattern where you're interrupting each other, that's something that's not helpful for the conversation. So if I notice that happening, I'm going to ask you to stop. If it doesn't stop, what I'm going to suggest is that we go to separate rooms. And if you're not able to discuss the topics at hand, you might need to think about other options, like engaging your lawyers, etc. Like, I'm trying to say to them, you need to be on your best behavior. Yeah. You could also get them to sign an agreement before the mediation. Like, we agree to not interrupt each other to avoid from making derogatory comments or whatever you'd like to do as well. And then when they start not listening to me or I'm losing control, I usually hold a whiteboard marker down and I put it down very dramatically on the. On the table, and I pause and just allow some silence. And I look at them both and then I'll say to them something very simple like, what's going on here? I don't think it's working, or it seems like we're stuck. You know what I mean? I'll say something quiet and allow some silence. Well, it's because they're not listening to me, or they're lying about this and this. Then I'll stand up. Do you know what I mean? I'm taking a bit more focus. Then I might, like again, put the whiteboard marker down and look at them both and say, well, look, we've reached the time where we need to decide whether or not the mediation is going to continue. If we do continue, this is what I need from both of you. You need to stop interrupting. You need to stop making those comments, whatever. If that's not something that you're prepared to do, then we're going to need to stop. Now, I'll give you both a few minutes to take a break, and then I'll talk with you separately and see where your heads are at. Something similar. Right? Yeah. For me, it's like standing up, lowering my voice, allowing silence, putting the whiteboard marker down, referring back to the rules that we agreed to, having the contract in place beforehand. But sometimes you just have to stop. You're still dealing with humans. And sometimes it's so sad, or they're so emotional or you're worried that they're not going to be able to contain themselves, so you just decide to stop. But you have to find a way to get the clients to listen to you. And there's just different techniques that are going to work for different people. I often found using the structure would be helpful when I didn't have the personal characteristics that I needed, like when I was younger. These days, like, I'm in my mid-40s and there's just a noticeable way that people respect you differently as you get older, which has been nice. And maybe I seem a bit more secure, like I'm not as rattled and nervous. So that comes across in some way too. Yeah, yeah. It's a tricky one. It's hard. I've had mediation where I look back and think, I should have stopped that way earlier. I should have stopped interrupting. And the worst ones are when you've got a colleague that calls you in as the co mediator. Like I did one when I first set up my own business. My colleague Helen invited me in to do a co mediation. There were four parties, adults that. That were negotiating about property, splitting up properties from a will. And they were so aggro. They were all from a Greek background, I guess, and they never listened to us from the word go. And I got a bit hysterical trying to get them to stop by the end of. You need to stop. You need to stop. Nope. Nope. We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to talk about it. And in hindsight, I wish that I'd been more firm early on and kept my calm a bit better, but, you know, you're not going to be perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Just one question about that. Is it customary to have, like, someone from the same heritage or cultural background. In the room to assist sometimes, like, I suppose, where possible? That would be ideal in some ways. But again, that's an interesting question as to who's suited to work with which kind of cases. Yeah. Particularly with Aboriginal families. I set up a partnership with the local, like a community hub type of thing, like a neighborhood center. So they. They found that the Aboriginal clients just didn't want to come into our office, like it was a government building and they often had negative experiences with government. So we had Aboriginal staff members there for support. But we also did the mediation in that setting as well, which was where they felt a lot more comfortable. So, yeah, that was when I was manager of Newcastle FRC as well. It was a really nice partnership that we set up. But then you'd have other cultural backgrounds, like people from different countries or limited English ability and all that kind of stuff. And it's one of the factors, I guess, that you need to decide as to whether or not the mediation is appropriate. Yeah. The mediator is not supposed to be an expert on the subject matter, if you know what I mean. Yeah. Like, it shouldn't technically matter if the media is not familiar, but then it's difficult to know how to interpret things that people are saying and what's meaningful to people and what's not. So. Yeah, that cultural difference is one of the really challenging aspects, I think, even as lawyers, I think working with people across culture of different norms and expectations is going to be very challenging. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. So, one, one final question about sort of careers. Right. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to get into the mediation space and sort of wanted to. I know it sounds very cliche, but wanted to feel like, you know, every day going to work is enjoyable. Firstly, that's the first question. And secondly, what area of conflict resolution or dispute resolution would you advise someone to get into if they wanted to make just a lot of money? Money, yeah. If they were driven by financial mediation, I'll do those. Try and get in with the union ones and those kind of deals or the big corporate takeovers and negotiating those kind of areas. So I suppose if you wanted to go down that path, it would be looking at the big. Like KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers and all of those graduate and cadet kind of programs. So they might be the kind of ones that help organizations when they're trying to negotiate the corporate restructure or whatever else it might be. Sorry, can I. Can I just ask. So. So could A. So I'm talking, like, in general. So could a. Could someone who has, like, the mediation background, but not necessarily, like a law background, could they also work with like, a KPMG or. I think so. It would depend on which role and which section and that kind of thing. But, yeah, they hire graduates from all different kinds of programs. Right. Okay. Okay. I don't know, though, what the shortcut is to making a lot of money if you. And I don't even know what the shortcut is to having a job that you like walking into every day. I think, honestly, what you need to choose instead is what kind of pain you can tolerate. Yeah. Because if you're in private practice, there's a level of uncertainty that feels really scary. Like, me, I'm in my own business. I don't have a boss that's going to pay me if I'm going to sick leave. And when Covid happened like a few years ago, all of my mediations immediately dried up. Like no one was doing workplace mediations for that first few months of COVID. It was just other priorities that they were managing. So that sucks. You don't have a regular paycheck coming in. Whereas everyone who worked in the government funded services, they still had regular payments. But if you do want to work in the government funded services, you have to toe the line to some extent and follow the model that they use. Their, their ideas of what's best and what's best practice, etc. You're going to be working with people at times who are quite inspired and awesome, but you're also going to be working with people who are very complacent. Like all those not for profits at every level have a low level of accountability in my experience. So there's a lot of complacency that creeps in and I found that very, very frustrating. Like thinking about clients waiting. Three months on the waiting list. Wow. One of the things I did was just change the way that we organized our diaries so that we had regular appointments available for those first clients coming. It was just such a no brainer. But then all of a sudden we could get through the clients that were on the waiting list. But I was furious about the people not agreeing with me on that, like the CEO and I'm like, how can you justify making a decision that is just easier, but it negatively impacts on our clients. So even back then I was probably going too over the top and this kind of thing. But the inefficiency, the complacency, the standardization and then you're not going to make heaps and heaps of money in those not for profits either. I don't really know what the current salary is, but I'm guessing it would be like 80 grand or something similar like that as an FDRP might be 90. And then they've all got different pathways you can go down in terms of your career of moving into management and leadership roles. You could move into the clinical specialist kind of areas. They're not for profits. It's not a huge amount of money and you have to toe the line. But it's a pretty good way to get a good base of experience under your belt. So I think I'd probably recommend doing that for people who wanted to do family mediation. I would work in an FRC for a while as a male by the way you're incredibly in demand. It's 90 percent women, by far the majority women. So as a. They often like to have a guy on the team because then they can do a co mediation and have a man and a woman in both the mediation. Because you're working with a male and female client. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And then even with someone with a different cultural background, like having moved to Australia. Yeah. You might worry that that might put you at a disadvantage, but that's something that they really want. They want diverse range of backgrounds, etc. Wow. If you go down the private practice route for family mediation, the best way to get a high amount of income is probably just getting the referrals from your local lawyers. Right? Yeah. Or maybe there's a specialist type of client that you work with. Like I'm good at working with flying fly out stuff or I'm working with same sex relationships or okay. I have a specialization with blended families, you know, and multiple kids from different partners. Yeah. That might be another thing that you can use to differentiate yourself a little bit. And that's a bit of an excuse to have a coffee with them as well....talk about cross referring clients. And they were always thinking, yeah, yeah, let's see mate, you want me to send you my clients? Like let's see what you can send me kind of thing....what you're touching on is a bit of what I felt from that very early role in the parenting orders program at. There needs to be a. It's almost like a therapeutic process in the way that I think about it. So I think people really value the opportunity to be listened to. A lot of people don't get listened to very well. Their friends and parents and family might not be very good listeners at times, particularly to different topics. So that experience of being listened to, and then you use that word, dignity, it's like we do genuinely convey a sense of respect. It's like we assume the dignity of the people that we're working with at a very high level to some extent, including things like their autonomy, like they have the right to make decisions about things that affect them and even their thought processes and their perception and their understanding of a situation. Like, that's all treated as very valuable. And I think that's one of the things that makes mediation very unique as opposed to some of the other, you know, a disciplinary process that you work, for example, where it's just performance management and you've done this wrong and now this is what you're in trouble for. Whereas mediation is like you have some unique....and this kind of thing because you've kind of rewritten the underlying story, including some of those interpretations and assumptions that you might have been building in. So they have really good books, the narrative mediation books, if that was something that you're interested in. But yeah, for me, I. I always think about the people that I meet in mediation as whether you believe in fate or not. It does make a lot of sense. And by the way, thank you very much for your time. This was a sneaky way for me to revise for my exam. Just one more thing. I was just thinking, would there be anything wrong with designing a room or a space for mediation where, because I don't actually know what it looks like, but where the parties weren't actually facing each other but they were sitting. Sort of like. You know how people sit at the movies, like in a line? Oh yeah. Yeah. Sort of facing, but not one behind the other. Just sort of like just in one line. Maybe you in the middle and then just them just. Just talking. But would there be anything wrong with redesigning a space like that? No, I really like that idea. So we do use round tables where possible so you're not sitting directly across, staring each other in the eye. But it's one of the reasons why I liked using a laptop and a data projector. At times it's like the focus becomes on the thing that's up on the screen there. Yeah, it kind of achieved what you're talking about. Everyone was looking up at the same thing instead of across the table at each teaching. Yeah. So, yeah, I think you could easily look at interventions of arranging the room or making something the focus or. Yeah, yeah, that's a really clever point, I think. And even maybe why some people want to put people in separate rooms. They might argue that it helps them to stay calm so they're thinking more logically or something similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's lots of different creative options that you could consider. There's some mediations where lawyers are present and they participate in the discussion. There's been different types of mediation where they invite counselors and social workers in or a child development expert to talk about the child development needs or something similar. There's lots of different creative ways. I think that that mediation process could be adapted. And if it is a path that you go down, don't forget that you've got all those options under your belt as well. Sometimes it's just you slip into the default way of doing things. Yeah, yeah, no, it's all good, it's all good. But yeah, Simon, thank you so much. No worries. I'll end the recording anyway. Just give me a moment. Well, I'd just like to say a massive thank you to Neo for agreeing to let me record the conversation and for asking such, I think, really quite well articulated but also very insightful kind of questions. I don't know about yourselves as the viewer, but I really enjoyed that conversation. Thank you very much for listening as well. If these interview conversation, type of podcast episodes or something that you're interested in me doing more of, please let me know if you would consider leaving a positive review or making a comment. That's the kind of thing that gives a little podcast like this a real boost in the algorithm. And if you'd like some additional tools when it comes to dealing with conflict at work or outside of work, please consider pressing subscribe. Otherwise, all the best managing the conflict communication and difficult conversations that you might encounter over the next week or two. And I'll hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. Bye for now.