“When more than one of my colleagues suggested I would make a good mediator, it sounded like a great fit for me, putting best use to my professional and personal skills.  Life was so busy that I did little about it for a couple of years (sound familiar?). Fortunately, the suggestion never left me and I decided to train as a mediator, which I completed in 2019. Since then I have embraced the training and techniques into my working life and am able to follow my passion of helping individuals and businesses to resolve their differences and move forward, closing out those negative and often stressful events.

Having spent many years involved in commercial negotiations, representing or advising one ‘side’, it was often clear to me that there were other influencers at play impacting the negotiations, but being proprietary in nature these were not being aired. “How useful an impartial and confidential facilitator of those negotiations could be!” I would think. Hence the appeal in mediation…

Helping people to move forward permits better quality working and personal lives. I want businesses to thrive, relationships to build and to keep unnecessary cases out of our expensive and creaking judicial system.

I’m not a lawyer; I’m appropriately informed and use my skills, experience and perceptions to really get to the heart of the matter. I have a good knowledge of contract law, having studied it and worked with it for many years. Mediators though are not actually permitted to give legal advice, so whilst this knowledge informs me, it stays firmly in the background as appropriate.

I use a style of mediation called “Facilitative Mediation” which is the original form of mediation and focuses on participants achieving their broader interests in light of a potential court case, rather than a compromise deal based on the likely court outcome. I believe that given enough support and the environment for authentic communication, participants can achieve mutually agreeable, long-lasting solutions to their disputes.” Jo