Fortunately, mediation is an option. In most cases, mediators are lawyers who specialize in family law. But the mediator doesn’t give legal advice or judge the case. Instead, the mediator facilitates discussion between the parties and creates a space for them to explore their options for resolution. Here, we’ll explore why mediation is preferable for family law cases.

Fewer Expenses Associated with Mediation

Couples mediation processes are less costly, and estimates show that they are 40% to 60% cheaper than conventional litigation. Mediation is affordable because it doesn’t require court fees and other expenses associated with traditional litigation. Furthermore, court cases may take years to resolve, but mediation may only take a few months.

No Public Hearings

Unlike public court hearings that may accompany divorce, family mediation has more client privacy and confidentiality. Information on cases that go to trial is often made available to the public. In mediation, all parties can agree to keep all sessions confidential, and this is important for cases with sensitive personal details.

Mediation May Be Less Traumatic

Court cases pit both parties in a lawsuit against each other. Things can go from zero to 100 in no time. But in divorce mediation, both parties are urged to collaborate and reach an amicable resolution. This cooperation implies that even if you’re not on good terms with your spouse, you can at least discuss pertinent family issues and work together to find a beneficial solution for all parties. Such cooperation doesn’t elicit emotional trauma and stress, which characterizes most court trials.

Relationships Can Be Preserved

Mediation can help preserve relationships, which often get destroyed in the long and dragging litigations. Unlike litigation, which is an adversarial process, mediation is a collaborative process that brings the spirit of togetherness because it doesn’t entail the win or lose feeling commonly felt in court cases.

If you’re undergoing a divorce and you want to preserve your amicable relationship with your spouse, mediation may be the best solution for you. When you invest in mediation services for family law, you’re investing in a more positive solution for everyone.

The post Why Mediation Is Better than Litigation in Family Disputes appeared first on Baltimore Mediation.

Business leaders face the uphill task of resolving conflict within work environments so that business operations can run smoothly. The responsibility falls on directors, managers, and executives to settle disputes between staff members amicably and fairly. Doing so, however, is easier said than done. A whopping 60% of business leaders and employees have never received training on conflict resolution in the workplace.

Healthy co-worker relationships are the backbone of a thriving business since workers are an organization’s most important asset. Employees work together efficiently to accomplish tasks when they are on good terms but fail to do even the simplest jobs when there is friction between them. Disputes in the work area are also not a good show for the company as a whole.

For these reasons, it becomes all the more important to find ways to resolve conflict in the workplace. A proper approach to workplace conflict resolution is etched in simplicity and fairness. In this article, you’ll find some great tips on how to solve employment disputes to improve worker relationships.

How to Solve Conflicts in the Workplace

1. Stay Centered: No matter how bad the situation is, remember always to remain centered. Maintaining your cool is a vital aspect of workplace mediation and a great trait for relational leadership for two main reasons. First, it puts you in a better position to listen relationally and understand the whole situation without triangling or aligning with either side. Second, it shows that you’re taking a balanced approach to the situation.
2. Listen and Be Engaged: The next step is to listen and understand to get the whole gist of things. Workplace mediation is useless without crucial listening skills. Effective listening will allow you to analyze the situation comprehensively, establish the root cause of the issue, and ask open questions to help both parties get clearer and closer to a possible resolution.
3. Focus on the Problem and not the Employees: Workplace conflict can be a real headache. However, it is important to direct your attention not on the employees, but on the root of the problem itself. No matter how much of an inconvenience employee disputes can be, it is important to tackle the issue at hand instead of castigating the employees.
4. Avoid Bias: Bias ruins the whole idea of workplace mediation as it favors one party over the other in a process anchored on fairness. Not only does this further brew animosity, but it also portrays a serious character flaw within you. Showing biases toward either party in a dispute is not indicative of relational leadership.
5. Ask the Right Question: Most workplace disputes culminate in a never-ending blame game where employees are always pointing fingers. The right leading question will help you establish the point of contention step by step. Avoid short and direct questions that are somewhat interrogative as they’ll often solicit defensive answers from the respondent. Instead, ask open questions that aim at finding the main cause of the problem and follow them up with questions that don’t necessarily attack anyone.

All in all, how well your workplace mediation efforts work will depend on how often you employ these tips and your overall relational leadership skills. It doesn’t hurt to pat yourself on the back if you successfully resolve a workplace conflict.

Learn more about our comprehensive training programs here.

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Facilitating team leadership development is paramount to enable your management to handle challenges that come with leading a diverse team. And while you can recognize a good leader when you see one, it’s important to develop those leadership traits where you can. Consider these five essential attributes when facilitating leadership development.

1. Unbiased perspective: It would be uncomfortable for a manager to steer a meeting towards a preplanned conclusion. The team may end up feeling uncomfortable and sometimes even threatened if the leader drives the discussion the only way they see fit. For instance, when handling inter-employee issues, the facilitating leader should be non-partial and listen to both parties before making any judgment. Leaders trained and armed with a relational transformative skillset have the ability to do this with ease. The relational transformative skillset allows all the opposing parties to make their case without feeling threatened or feel that they treated unfairly. In meetings, good team leaders make their team members feel comfortable to contribute because their opinions are welcome, encouraged, and valued.
2. Intuitive thinking: An intuitive thinker is someone who has knowledge of self and other, looks at the whole picture, and uses the full potential of their entire brain when making evaluations and decisions. A workplace conflict, for example, is likely to bring forth a lot of emotions. An intuitive thinker, instead of taking sides or triangling, may look at the conflict and how it affects the company at large. This does not mean that everyone will walk away smiling, but it means that the company, and what is right for its employees will be put first.
3. Tactful action: There will be instances when a leader will be expected to do and say something awkward for the good of the group. This requires tact and a relational mindset. For instance, one person may take over a meeting and give others no chance to contribute. When you’re looking for opportunities to facilitate team leadership development, look for someone who can diffuse these awkward moments while maintaining a productive environment and getting the best out of the session. A leader with a relational mindset will look for opportunities to empower members of the team and give them a chance to participate in the discussion. When trying to facilitate team leadership, create a space for quality dialogue. It allows the ideas to flow and your team to shine.
4. Inspires action: A leader’s role is more than just settling employee disputes and keeping the company running. To effectively do this, potential leaders need to have the ability to paint a vision of the future that inspires the team to push forward. Taking time to reach out to other employees and discuss strategies to reach a bright future is essential in a leadership position.

Not all leaders are born, but by attending enneagram training and facilitating team leadership development, anyone can be transformed into an excellent leader. In fact, almost 95% of people who have gone through this type of training say that they navigate workplace conflicts more positively and are now prone to seeking mutually beneficial outcomes.

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The success of an organization specifically depends on several factors, but one of the major factors that influence the success of the company is the leadership style exemplified by the leader. Working through conflicts in the workplace and motivating employees are highly dependent on the leadership style that sets the cultural tone for the company.

Despite there being several leadership styles that have their own merits and demerits, Relational Leadership attributes have proven to be some of the most effective incorporated by companies.

So, what is Relational Leadership?

Relational Leadership is defined as a leadership strategy that focuses on creating well-being throughout the company, internally and externally. It is an employee-oriented as well as customer-oriented leadership perspective. This leadership approach has been gaining positive reviews in the corporate sector because it is known to generate significant results for the company. Here are some of the benefits of relational leadership style.

1. Solving Disputes

Employment disputes are very common in major organizations around the world. Employees might be disputing with the employer due to the poor working conditions, workplace safety, and the quality of the work performed. In many cases, these disputes end up in EEOC processes or in labor courts, and often both parties suffer. Relational leadership is not specifically geared towards forming solid and unmovable stands against the employees. It is a leadership focus that involves understanding the needs of the employees and coming up with a compromise that adheres to the needs of the employee and the employer without moving to courts.

2. Leaders as Facilitators

Most of the leaders who have incorporated the relational leadership style are facilitating leaders. A facilitating leader is a supervisor who helps his/her team to achieve the expected objectives. Most of the leaders are known to be very subjective. They push their employees to the limit and request for unreasonable targets to be met. These leaders treat their employees as subjects. Relational leaders act as facilitators and treat their employees as co-workers. All of them, including the leader, are working towards achieving a common goal.

3. Enhancing Sense of Belonging

Most of the employees have a feeling that they are working for a huge corporate body that is only interested in the output generated by the workers. This perspective creates a huge boundary between the workers and the organization and most of them feel that they work to be paid. However, relational leadership focus changes this perspective and puts employees at the driving wheel of the organization. Creating a sense of camaraderie between the company and the employees such that they feel they are part of the company and they belong to a large family.

4. Employee Motivation

Workplace conflict is one of the major factors that lower motivation at the places of work. Workplace conflicts are likely to skyrocket where the leader is not focused on the interests of employees but ends up showing significant levels of discrimination and biases. This reduces motivation and sometimes increases employee turnover.

However, with positive vibes coming from the leader, other employees are likely to follow the same behavior, and there will be no conflict in the company. With a greater sense of friendship and a situation where all workers are treated the same, motivation will be very high.

5. Encouraging Innovation

Employees are supposed to come up with methods of simplifying their tasks with the company. However, with bad leadership, there is no motivation and drive to come up with new and fresh ideas that can make the work easier while at the same time increasing the output of the company.

With relational leadership style, the innovation model of idea generation, idea promotion, and idea realization are enhanced. The impacts of employees and their technological innovations are encouraged and motivated by the leader. This makes the employees have the drive to be innovative and to make the various activities carried out in the company to be more efficient.

Relational leadership style is not only a leadership perspective that can be used in organizational growth and development. It can as well be used to solve social aspects such as divorce through mediation, which is 40 to 60 percent lower than the legal divorce litigation process. Therefore, it is a cost-effective technique that can be used in solving various conflicts.

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United States employees spend around 2.1 hours each week involved in conflicts in the workplace. This comes out to about $359 billion spent on workplace conflict instead of on positive productivity. Managers typically spend 25% to 40% of their time trying to resolve workplace disputes and conflict. That can amount to as much as two days out of every week.

The most common problems in the workplace are with leadership; between departments; and with differences in work style, ideas and personality. That could be because 60 percent of employees have never received any sort of workplace mediation training.

So, what can be done about it?

Employers can hire the type of leaders that already fit into their work culture or provide more leadership training. Enforcing current policies or booking mandatory training sessions are just a few of the ways to go about this. Employers can clarify employees’ roles and responsibilities. They can set out clear policies and guidelines in a handbook. They can train employees in workplace diversity. They may even need to replace some employees.

Another approach to solving workplace conflict could be through Enneagram training. Inviting employees to participate in this training could be the key to fostering mutual understanding and creating a better workplace environment. Not only does it teach them about themselves, it teaches them how to better interact with others. Let’s take a deeper look at this training.

Enneagram training focuses on the Enneagram, which is a system of nine distinct personality types. It offers a method of management that is focused on self-awareness. For that reason, it is a key tool in your workplace mediation arsenal. Each personality type has a distinct pattern of thinking, feeling and acting. These patterns arise from personal motivations or worldviews. Considering that personality clashes account for 49% of workplace disputes, this methodology has its merits.

In the Enneagram, there are three centers of intelligence and perception, which include the head, heart, and body. Each of the nine personalities falls into one of these centers. Enneagram training can help you and your employees find balance and mutual understanding across these defined personality types.

The three personalities that are considered body-based types are called the protector, the mediator, and the perfectionist. These people focus on power, control, and doing the right thing. They are often considered to be very instinctual.

The three personalities that are considered heart or feeling-based are called the giver, the performer, and the romantic. These people care deeply for others and focus on success and living up to expectations. They are thought to be very emotional.

Finally, the three personalities that are head or thinking-based are called the observer, the loyal skeptic, and the epicure. These people focus on rational actions, creating certainty, and finding several different options. They are believed to be very intellectual.

People have a natural inclination to connect with each other. However, when the connection or responsiveness is interrupted, conflicts arise. Each individual has their own world view, which can often create a barrier to stepping outside of their own box and empathizing with others. That barrier often creates fractures in interpersonal interactions. Understanding and utilizing the Enneagram can help repair those fractures and build personal bridges.

The purpose of Enneagram training is to help you become more self-aware and understand what motivates you and others to act the way you do. By doing this in a group, you can learn to have more compassion for those who have different personality types than you. This can help everyone better handle conflict.

While Enneagram training may not be for everyone, one study concluded that 95% of employees claimed that some type of mediation training helped them resolve workplace conflict in a positive and mutually beneficial way.

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Marriage is a long and difficult road at times. Every couple faces trials at some point that will test their relationship. The reason almost 50% of marriages end in divorce is that, at some point, the couple cannot come to an understanding with each other. In fact, in America, there is one divorce approximately every 36 seconds. That’s nearly 2,400 divorces per day, 16,800 divorces per week and 876,000 divorces a year. That is a lot of cases that can often be resolved using couples mediation.

Also known as divorce mediation, couples mediation is when you hire a neutral third party, called a mediator, to meet with you in an effort to discuss and resolve the issues in your marriage. The process sees the mediator serve as a facilitator to help you and your spouse figure out what’s best.

There are quite a few incentives to mediate your divorce rather than settle it in the courts. Mediation is much less expensive than a court trial or a series of hearings and most cases end in a settlement of all of the issues in your divorce. It is strictly confidential and allows you to arrive at a resolution based on your own ideas of what is fair in your situation, not what the courts decide is fair. Deciding the divorce separation and property agreements in couples mediation give both parties an equal amount of player.

The best way to ensure mediating a divorce goes successfully, both sides need to come in with open minds and a willingness to listen to each other. Do not let any bad feelings you might have towards your spouse get in the way of coming to terms on your divorce.

When a couples mediation case is started, it often begins with a conversation with the mediator or an assistant to provide background information about your marriage and any issues lying between the two of you. During this time is also a good time for the mediator to decide if the meetings should be held all in the same room as each other or separately to get your views or positions in private. The goal of the mediator is to make the situation as comfortable for both parties as possible.

Next, both sides need to establish where they agree and where some work needs to be done to get to an agreement on your couples mediation. When you have a sense of what needs to be accomplished, you, your spouse, and the mediator will plan how you’re going to accomplish it.

When it is time to begin negotiations, it might be best to solve the easier disputes before getting into the tougher issues. If you and your spouse can start out the mediation process making progress on issues the two of you can easily compromise on, it will lay the groundwork for more civil conversation towards the more heated topics. During this time, the mediator will help you to stay on track and brainstorm options, express your opinions, positions, and what’s important to you, and will help you listen to each other in ways that will make a resolution more likely.

Once all the negotiations have been finalized and a solution set in place, one of your attorneys will write an agreement, a parenting schedule, or parenting plan. The agreement will be included with your divorce papers and the courts can enforce them if one of you doesn’t go through what was agreed on.

Couples mediation can be a much better way to solve your divorce settlements than with the courts. If both sides can decide to be civil and open-minded to communicating, it will make the process much easier and less stressful on both parties.

The post Using Couples Mediation to Resolve Conflicts appeared first on Baltimore Mediation.

By using cutting-edge relational leadership techniques, businesses can handle and move on from all kinds of conflicts in the workplace; from two or more folks in a dispute (mediation) or a larger group moving through growth and transition (facilitation).

As detailed by a 2000 study on relational leadership, working relationships are “built through interpersonal exchanges in which parties to the relationship evaluate the ability, benevolence, and integrity of each other,” and the fruits of these exchanges serve as the basis for behavior. This is why at the heart of the mediation training process there is one pivotal goal: engaged culture dialogue.

Thankfully, individual employees have the capacity to overcome all kinds of personal and professional differences, leading to all kinds of positive breakthroughs and improved communication. An organization that emphasizes the importance of having engaged and respectful dialogue within its culture has a much better chance of success.

There are five components of the relational leadership model: inclusion, empowerment, purposefulness, ethical behaviors, and process orientation. Below is a breakdown of how each term relates to the communicative goal of mediation training:

1. Inclusion: Engaged culture dialogue simply cannot occur without all parties feeling that their input is welcome. Listening to others and making it clear that you value their opinions are key tenets of good leadership.
2. Empowerment: This component is an essential mechanism for improving inclusivity. Greater dissemination of information to all team members combined with frequent solicitation and affirmation of the ideas of others empowers everyone to express themselves. Fostering an environment in which more thoughts and feelings are shared each day is crucial to proper cooperation and conflict resolution. In other words: make sure everybody has the confidence to talk to each other! Fun team-building exercises and retreats can be great for this.
3. Purposefulness: Everyone at work should feel that they have a reason for being there — no one wants a job that feels ambiguous and arbitrary. This is another element that is achieved through communication. Employees who engage in honest discussions about the goals and the vision of their workplace, as well as the overall culture, will feel better knowing why they do what they do, and how it fits within the whole operation.
4. Ethical behaviors: No system of values can be agreed upon silently! Social responsibilities, standards of behavior, and the like must be discussed openly to ensure that ethics properly influence workplace behavior and decision-making.
5. Process orientation: This component simply means that in order to practice effective relational leadership, you have to stick to the process. What does that process primarily involve? Talking to each other!

Not exactly sure what your next step should be? If you are in the area, visit Baltimore Mediation to learn more about growing as a business, overcoming personal obstacles, and improving your workplace culture. With everything from negotiation and dialogue coaching to help with contract disputes, you are certain to find whatever resolution services you may need.

The post Why Engaged Culture Dialogue Is Central to the Relational Leadership Model appeared first on Baltimore Mediation.

mediate a divorce

To properly understand the difference between an absolute divorce and a limited divorce, you first need to know the grounds for divorce in the state of Maryland. They are:

• A separation of 12 months
• Mutual consent
• Adultery
• Desertion
• Cruel treatment or abuse
• Legal insanity
• Incarceration

Limited Divorce

A limited divorce isn’t technically a true divorce in that it does not legally dissolve the marriage. It is also known as a “legal separation” and it typically the avenue sought by individuals who do not meet the grounds for divorce listed above, though some of the grounds do overlap.

The grounds for a limited divorce include:

• Separation
• Desertion
• Cruel treatment

Residency Requirements:
To be applicable for a limited divorce, you must also be a legal resident of Maryland and physically reside in the state. If the grounds or reason for the divorce occurred in Maryland, you only need to be living in Maryland at the time you file for divorce. If the grounds took place outside the state, you or your spouse must have lived in Maryland for at least six months before filing.

During a limited divorce:

• Remarriage is not allowed.
• Sexual relations with a third party is considered adultery.
• Property claims are not terminated.
• Temporary decisions about custody, child support, alimony, and property may be settled.

Absolute Divorce

An absolute divorce is fairly simple; it legally ends the marriage. Either spouse can remarry after a decree of absolute divorce is entered, and any jointly-owned property is divided as specified by the agreement (prenuptial agreement or other written contract like one drawn during couples mediation). Furthermore, an absolute divorce means that one spouse can no longer inherit property from the other upon death.

It is important to note that a couple does not need to seek a limited divorce before getting an absolute divorce; one does not preceed the other.

If you are looking to mediate your divorce in a civilized and conflict-free manner, contact the Baltimore divorce mediation team people trust: Baltimore Mediation.

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Solving Conflicts in the Workplace 
Every office is essentially a small space with a lot of personalities who need to work together to achieve results. Even if the majority of the work is largely independent, almost no office can get by without some kind of teamwork, collaboration, and assistance among the employees. Needless to say, workplace disputes can crop up.

It can be something as simple as bad communication, a gossipy work environment, or a disregard for the rules. And it can be as complex as performance issues, workplace discrimination or sexual harassment suits.

Either way, being well versed in conflict management and conflict resolution can go a long way towards solving whatever’s happening in your office. Unfortunately, 60% of employees have never had access to even basic conflict management courses, even though 95% of those who undergo the process say that the training helped them get through workplace conflict in a positive manner and find outcomes that are mutually beneficial to all parties involved.

And it serves the company well — organizations that have taken on conflict resolution training, such as mediation and arbitration, say that they’ve seen a reduction in litigation costs by as much as 50-80%! Plus, it reduces the amount of time managers or other employees need to spend trying to solve the conflict, instead of focusing on their own work.

What Options are There For Resolving Workplace Conflict? 
Workplace mediation and arbitration are two big processes for resolving conflicts in the workplace. With workplace mediation, the parties involved get together with a mediator to talk out their respective points of view about why the dispute is happening, any larger context, and to mutually find solutions together for the issue at hand. It’s a voluntary process and one that’s kept confidential.

With workplace arbitration, claims are submitted to be resolved by a private arbitrator and the decision is made by the arbitrator after the evidence has been presented. The ultimate decision is not a mutual one and may not be satisfactory to one or even both parties. Everything is settled outside of a public court.

How Does Leadership Impact Conflict Resolution? 
Ideally, the leaders at your company lead by example. Facilitating team leaders who are trained in conflict resolution provide a good example for everyone else and by demonstrating their ability to tackle tough subjects, it can empower others to do so as well. And, they’ll likely push for some kind of mediation training, so employees have the skills and knowledge to work through issues together.

Relational leadership can be especially impactful here. There are five main elements to relational leadership — inclusion, empowerment, purposefulness, ethical behaviors, and process orientation. Leaders who practice this style can often head off conflicts because of how they operate, and the way they ask others on their team to work as well.

A good leader should ideally be able to confidently mediate conflicts in the workplace and keep everything working as it should.

Conflicts in the workplace are more or less unavoidable, but knowing how to handle them can make a huge difference in the overall quality of life in your workplace and job satisfaction.

The post We Can’t Avoid Every Conflict at Work — So Here’s How to Get Through It appeared first on Baltimore Mediation.

Give regular acknowledgment: This may sound simple, but many workplace leaders fail to simply give their employees the acknowledgment they want and need. Employees need to feel safe and like they matter — this allows them to feel like they have a place at work and encourages productivity. But when managers fail to even acknowledge their employees on a personal basis, employees are going to feel unwanted and uninspired. So every good manager should make the time to acknowledge and appreciate their employees.

Provide the right goals: One of the best ways to inspire and motivate employees is to give them the right goals. When employees are given the right motivational conditions, they’re more likely to want to succeed. So consider giving employees stretch goals and challenge them to do things differently. While routine is good, mundane work can lead to burnout. Produce more opportunities for employees to get involved with new projects and responsibilities to keep them interested in their job.

Take it outside of the office: Even the best and brightest leaders need to ask for help every now and then. So why not give your employees inspiration outside of work? Hiring a keynote inspirational speaker to discuss employment issues, conflicts in the workplace, and an overall lack of productivity and motivation can be just what employees need. Employee trust and bonding exercises along with the help of a great keynote inspirational speaker can help give employees the motivation they need in the workplace.

There are plenty of ways to inspire and motivate your employees. If you’re a leader in your company, consider using these tips to help employees be their best.

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