The Art of Pathway Mediation. Member Spotlight: Alison Haly
“I have been mediating since I was 6 years old – being the product of a father who loved numbers and a mother who loved colors. Their fraught communication practices taught me from an early age how to get people to take stock, slow down their reactive thinking, understand first and communicate second. I wanted to be a referee of conflicting communications – something I knew later as mediation.”
From lawyer to mediator
Alison Haly is a mediator based in Brisbane, Australia, where she runs her own mediation practice Haly & Company. Prior to that, she practiced as a litigator in various international firms, including as a partner of the world’s biggest firm, DLA Piper. Apart from general commercial mediation work each week, Alison is also involved in national and international mediations involving race, the environment, union discord, and government policy. The thing that inspired Alison to take a different approach to mediation was extensive reading in international, non-western, and sometimes ancient practices of dialogue.
“I saw dialogue and mediation very differently. Dialogue is about understanding, it is about building community, not about trying to persuade but to understand. Mediation is really about bringing people along, trying to persuade, trying to resolve something rather than understand. In the right circumstances, either or both are critical.” Alison says. She is also one of the first women in Australia, who decided to pursue a mediation career in a very male-dominated environment. Her major adaptation of mediation practice is to create what she calls “Pathway mediations” using techniques of structured dialogue, group coaching, facilitation, and mediation, heavily influenced by the work of Kenneth Cloke, Daniel Kahneman, and the body of work that has become Reflective Structured Dialogue. “The product of pathway mediation is often not a settlement of damages but a memorandum of understanding, an agreed process, a way to communicate, or the documentation of plans and timetables for carrying out ways to progress to a stated goal.” She pays a lot of attention to conducting an individual dialogue and providing a safe space for every participant to talk about their environment, their concerns and invite curiosity, conversation, and interest management, rather than being just advocates for a position.
Alison also has the experience of working in the United Nations in New York during the High Level Political Forum, when she became particularly interested in “how nations don’t communicate, or how they communicate ineffectively, and the role that mediators need to play in communications between nations and their representatives.” Since that time, her side project is to bring about a role for mediators to help commit governments to Sustainable Development Goals.
Role of culture in mediation
One more thing that Alison draws attention to, which she is concerned is inadequately factored into international mediations, is the role of culture. “The elements of cultural mediation are fascinating. For example, there are quick trust cultures and slow trust cultures. For example, in Australia, you often trust first unless given a reason to distrust. But in other cultures, you have to build trust first and I have seen where that dynamic is misunderstood as disagreement when the conversation is just needing space for exploration” she explains.
“Understanding those differences without stereotyping is then a critical part of creating a good environment for understanding and conflict management”. Alison believes this to be so whether you are trying to find the pathway to save the planet or enabling a means for dialogue between a person seeing only colours and another seeing only the numbers.
Discovering MBBI
When Alison started her adventure with mediation, establishing her own practice was not the only goal. She wanted to create an organization that will provide international mediators with opportunities to talk to one another and grow through exchanging experiences, techniques and knowledge from different parts of the world. Before she started getting it together, she decided to do some research on what is already there, and this is how she stumbled across MBBI. “Oh my gosh, my work is done. I couldn’t have been happier to find MBBI. I have grown as a mediator through the connections and the wonderful education programs which just give you a broader insight in relation to the whole sphere from dialogue to mediation.” Alison adds that MBBI brings perspective and transformation – both essential elements of growing our ability to understand, discuss and mediate a conflict.
Final message
Asked about a special achievement that she is proud of; Alison says that her “pride is in looking at something and having the courage to do it differently, to go into something where certainly in my country, women weren’t present.” She adds “also through MBBI you can see support for doing things in a way that take into account a lot more cultural dynamics and the need to converse for understanding, rather than persuading. I can see that people can embrace those stages to a mediation, and that makes me proud that I pursued that journey.” Her final message and advice for anyone who wants to start their own pathway in mediation is “make plans, reach out, be resilient, interested and generous.”
Article by Maciej Witek, MBBI Writer