John Brand
John Brand is a lawyer, retired consultant and ADR specialist at Bowmans in South Africa, mediator, trainer, and retired director and shareholder of Conflict Dynamics. He serves on the ADR Advisory Committee of the South African Law Reform Commission. John is an IMI Certified Mediator and a member of IMI’s Independent Standards Commission and a CEDR-accredited mediator. He has specialised in dispute resolution and the training of negotiators, mediators, and arbitrators, has written extensively in journals and other publications, and co-authored “Commercial Mediation – a User’s Guide” and “Labour Dispute Resolution” both published by Juta. Over the past 30 years, he has arbitrated and mediated many large commercial and employment disputes and he regularly facilitated negotiation, strategic planning, and transformation processes. He was a member of the team of international experts appointed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to design mediation training for developing countries and he regularly trained mediators from countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America. The ILO also commissioned John to design training material and to train parties and trainers from countries across the world in mutual gain negotiation. This training material has been translated into French, Portuguese, and Arabic and is used extensively throughout the world.
I recently had the pleasure of listening to a Ted talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a leading Nigerian author - HERE
What struck me about the talk was that, by telling stories rather than lecturing, Chimamanda brought home the lesson that every person has lived experiences which differ from one person to the next, and that there is no such thing as one identical, group lived experience. It also emphasised for me, something that I have learnt from mediation, which is that everyone has unconscious biases based on their different lived experiences and that it is not just one racial group of people who all have one identical unconscious racial bias.
It probably also helped Chimamanda’s audience to appreciate that to maintain that all people of a particular skin colour have one identical unconscious bias, is itself a gross form of stereotyping. It certainly reminded me that all people, and mediators, in particular, need to check their very varied potential unconscious biases and stereotypes, no matter what their race or gender may be.
This is more important than ever at present, as people find it so difficult to hear each other across race, gender and other divides because of group stereotypes that are so promoted, popular and prevalent today. Much of the conflict in our society seems to be caused or at least aggravated by this, and mediators have an important role to play in moderating it.
As both a mediator and a trainer, what also struck me about the talk was that, as we know from andragogic theory, these lessons are not ones we can pedagogically lecture adults about because of the risk of reactive devaluation. What Chimamanda does so brilliantly is, through her stories, she lets us discover the lessons for ourselves.
Join a Conflict Dynamics Mediator Skills Training course to learn how mediators might manage their own bias and work with the bias that parties may bring into the mediation process in so far as this impacts the parties’ decision making and interaction in the process. Attend one of our forthcoming mediator skills training courses either online or face-to-face HERE