The Importance Of Peer Mediation

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Conflicts are an inevitable part of every organization, no matter if it is the United States Air Force or Minot Elementary School. Conflicts cause civic unrest and cost organizations time and money. A well-designed and well-trained peer mediation program can help solve conflicts when they occur, thus bringing those individual back to work or learning.
Peer mediation is more commonly used in school environments. Many people grew up with a peer mediation program as a part of their school. The basic idea behind peer mediation is to first develop a force of trained peer mediators. Once this group of individuals has received the training the peer mediator can now mediate conflicts between two or more people or groups.
My current organization does not utilize a peer mediation program. In the United States Air Force the use of peer mediation is nearly non-existent and the only formal mediation process is between civilians contractors and the military, mainly in contract negotiations. The implementation of a peer mediation program would be a great start to help resolve conflicts between people.
I found myself in a conflict last week and thought to myself, that it would be nice to have a third party help mediate a conversation I was about to have with my business partner. Since this wasn’t an option available to me, I had the conversation on my own. I do not believe that this talk was successful and if I had had a trained third party mediating our conflict I believe that the conversation and outcome would have been much different. Instead of me talking sternly to the individual and him not admitting to his faults, maybe we could have shared our frustrations and found a conflict free agreement on how to handle a certain si...

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... narrative style involves the mediator to get the parties to write thee conflict down as they see it as a story. Once the story is completed the parties work with the mediator to write a new story (Foster 3003).
In conclusion, a peer mediation program has benefits that could help any organization. Important to an effective peer mediation program is and effective and thorough training plan. The development of this plan should be comprehensive and deliberate. In addition, to the training aspect of this program, developing and recognizing the strengths’ and weakness’ of the mediators is important. Other factors such as the environment and personalities have impactful bearings on the direction of the mediation. Lastly, choosing the correct style of mediation for the situation is necessary. Some styles will work better than other and they are all scenario driven.

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