A case of Business Mediation

This time I would like to share with you a mediation case in which I assisted, remotely, Marisa, HR manager of her company, to mediate between two workers. It was a successful case that could be replicated in other organisations thanks to the mediation assistance to apply Motivational Attractors.

Marisa contacted me to mediate between Ana, commercial director, and Miguel, operations manager and partner of the company. The company, with almost 100 employees, manufactures footwear and is going through a good period. However, during the pandemic they weathered a crisis and Ana was the general manager at the time. Miguel, who was on personal leave at the time, had returned to work full time several months earlier.

The spark of conflict broke out shortly after Miguel’s reinstatement and Ana was relieved of her post. Another partner, Francisco, took his place. Ana felt that her involvement and performance during the crisis had not been appreciated by the partners and, from her current position as commercial director, she held strong views on strategic planning and was often in conflict with Miguel. Ana felt that Miguel was unaware of important issues while ignoring her advice. Miguel, in turn, felt that Ana was meddling in his areas of responsibility, creating a lot of tension.

After a first session of mine with the HR manager, the conflict was defined on the basis that Ana needed to be recognised and valued, while Miguel needed her to trust his judgement and support his leadership. In addition, Ana wanted salary adjustments, which were introduced without any problems for the company.

Indeed, Ana explained to Marisa that she needed Miguel to meet with her regularly, listen to her input and make decisions based on it. Miguel, in turn, wanted Ana to let him do his work with autonomy by backing him up against other workers. In practice, achieving this, when they went to mediation, was not easy without help as communication between the two was tinged by mistrust and they had already had several clashes. The objective, therefore, was to re-establish communication based on respect and to make it sustainable over time. So, once I had identified the key points of the conflict with the HR manager, I assisted her in working with both workers individually and preparing their joint negotiation. They were given the Motivational Attractors questionnaire and, after another session with me, Marisa had several individual sessions with Ana and Miguel according to the guidelines of their Attractor profiles and what she and I had worked on together.

For example, Miguel’s predominant Attractor in this conflict was “Personal Success”, while Ana experienced the situation from “Power”. Ana had to communicate with sense and responsibility, encouraging Miguel’s sense of belonging in order to get him to stop ignoring her suggestions. Ana found this very difficult to do because of her anger and feeling of being undervalued, so Marisa, after promoting the salary changes Ana needed, had to encourage, in turn, in Miguel, a calm and sincere recognition of Ana’s contributions to the smooth running of the company. It was in these terms that the joint session took place with apologies flowing from both parties involved. As a result, in just 3 sessions with me, Marisa managed to manage and resolve this conflict in a profitable and healthy way for her organisation by creating a protocol, as a preventive measure, which reflected the agreements reached between both workers.