25 and Counting: Standout Moments

As part of our ’25 and Counting’ series, I wanted to talk about some memorable mediation cases and mediation training courses that we have carried out over the last twenty-five years. No mean feat, considering the amount of work we have done since we began in 1999. And of course, it’s no easy task to relate specific details of mediation cases, when all of the mediation work we do is strictly confidential.

One thing that does stick out for me is the extraordinary variety of what we have been doing: not just in the diversity of groups and individuals that we have worked with so far (given that we’re still counting!), but also in the kinds of conflict that our work has sought to address.

With training courses, we have had quite a range geographically as well. We have trained groups in nearly every European country, as well as training in places as far flung as Jordan and St Helena. We have had learners from Kenya, Australia, Nigeria, India, Iran, and many more. And this was mostly prior to the current trend for online training, so our trainers all had boots on the ground in these places, as the saying goes.

And given that we travel to our learner groups, we have ended up in venues from oil rigs to army bases, football grounds to cinemas, and from airports to prisons. At the latest count, we had accredited around 6,000 mediators worldwide, as well as training a similar number on our shorter skills courses.

And what is quite striking is the breadth of ways that people have wanted to apply their mediation skills. Along with the most common applications of learning how to better resolve neighbourhood and workplace disputes, we have had groups who want to handle complaints in a more positive way, individuals who hope to resolve intra-family disputes more effectively, those who want to discreetly address the increasing amount of medical mediation cases, and many others who in various settings want informal settlements to all kinds of interpersonal disputes that would otherwise become very costly and litigious.

And as for mediation cases: well, again, we have been pretty well all around the globe and have worked with a frankly mind-boggling array of situations and people. Along with all the medical mediations, family, and workplace cases, we have had some outlying situations that really do stick in the mind. Confidentiality prevents me going into any great detail. But without giving too much away, we’ve settled such disputes as a family feud with members in five different countries, a very expensive airplane restoration that went badly wrong, various ‘celebrity’ fallouts, a long-running conflict over some vandalistic horses, and a serious issue involving alleged identity theft, among many, MANY others.

In short, as we approach the start of our 26th year in this fascinating and ever-developing business, we never quite know where the next request is going to come from and what kind of conflict it’s going to involve. But I do know that with such a great team, and between our UK Mediation HQ and our EU Mediation office in the Republic of Ireland, we’re more than ready for the next challenge!