Inside Out: handling difficult conversations in mediation and beyond — Gary Friedman and Mario Dotti — 13 and 14 September 2024

Mediators and lawyers deal with difficult conversations every day. With the parties, with colleagues, with the judge, with clients. Mediation itself is made of conflictual conversations, and for that reason often difficult ones. But everyday life is full of difficult conversations too. In any situation: at work, in the family, with people we love, with people we do not love but have to work with, or even with perfect strangers. In a conflictual conversation a lot happens outside us, but also inside us: all those thoughts, judgements, reactions and emotions that the conflict or its protagonists trigger in us. What boils inside us, however, is harder to read. And if we neglect it we end up, even unconsciously, building barriers that prevent us from connecting with the other person. The book “Inside Out”, written by Gary Friedman and by now a key text in mediation and conflict management, teaches a method for understanding what conflict is causing inside us and how we can turn the negative impact of conflict within us into a resource to use outside us, to resolve the conflict. Recognising and handling the duality between the conflict outside and the conflict inside us is a crucial skill for the mediator and for the negotiating lawyer, even more than individual techniques. The same is true for anyone who wants to learn to handle their own conflicts.