Finding the middle ground

Karen Erwin speaks to Barry McCall about alternative dispute resolution and her role as president of the Mediators Institute of Ireland.

Winning isn’t everything, or so the old saying goes, and it certainly holds true for interpersonal
disputes between work colleagues, neighbours or family members. The key to achieving a long term resolution to such disputes or grievances is to come up with a solution that allows both parties to work and get along together in future – and declaring one side a winner and the other a
loser rarely delivers this.

Mediation is increasingly being used to achieve such long term resolutions. Mediation is a
voluntary, confidential process which allows both parties to an interpersonal dispute an opportunity to vent their feelings, give their full side of the story and express what it is they need to be
able to put things behind them.

The ultimate aim of mediation is not to adjudicate on who is right or wrong, rather it is to achieve an agreed solution that both parties can live with and
allow them to go re-establish a working relationship afterwards.

Karen Erwin’s background in law and the business world has given her an excellent preparation
for her current role as a mediator and President of the Mediators Institute of Ireland (MII). She
began her professional life as the first woman apprentice in leading legal practice A&L Goodbody and spent 15 years there as a litigation partner. Following that she moved to the Irish Times where she notched up another first when she became that organisation’s first woman executive director – she was also General Counsel to the Irish Times for a number of years.

“I saw a lot of conflicts going through the courts when I was with A&L Goodbody and I saw another side to things during my eight years with the Irish Times”, she recalls. “When I left the Irish Times I took a look at what I wanted to do in the future and decided on mediation and I set up my own company, Erwin Mediation Services, in 2003.”

She wasn’t prepared to simply rely on the experience she had gained in legal practice and the Irish Times, however. She set about acquiring new skills to meet the needs of her career change.

“I decided to train as a mediator and trained with ADR Group in London and got on their panel of accredited mediators”, says Erwin. “I then decided to do the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) course. This is the top internationally recognised body in the field and I became
accredited with them in 2004.” And she didn’t stop there. “I went back college and did Delma
Sweeney’s course in UCD and got a diploma in mediation”, she adds. “It was back to being a
student again every Monday, real flared jeans and open-toed sandals stuff but I loved it. After
that I became involved in the Mediators Institute of Ireland (MII) and was elected to its Council. In
2005 the MII president was standing down after her three year period in office and they asked me
to take on the role and I was delighted to do so.”

She enthuses about the benefits of mediation. “One of the key advantages of mediation is that it
is completely confidential”, she points out. “What goes on in the room between the two people and
the mediator stays in the room and can’t be revealed or used in any other forum without the
agreement of both parties.

Another important point is that mediation allows you to say what the other party has done and what effect it has had on you and your family and so on. The other party is able to give their side as well. This is usually not possible in a court. This venting of spleen can be very important in helping people arrive at a resolution to the issue.”

She describes the mediation process as akin to onion peeling.“The job of the mediator is to help
the parties to the dispute to tease out the issue, to discover the how, what, where, when and how of it. Sometimes we look for the why, but only if it’s going to be helpful, sometimes it’s not.”

“A mediator has to be a determined optimist”, Erwin continues. “People come to the process with positions, interests and needs. The job is to try to move people from their initial positions, establish their interests, and then try to get to their needs and see how these can be met. But the great thing about mediation is that the parties to it are in control at all times, this is not the case if they go to the courts where they hand over control.” Her role as MII president has seen her become involved in the promotion and advancement of mediation services in Ireland. “We now require people to be assessed as mediators”, she says. “Mediation is a skill not just a theory and just because someone goes through the rigours and courses that I went through doesn’t necessarily make them a mediator. The MII cannot stand over people who don’t have the requisite skills. We have looked at the competencies required for people to be mediators and assess people on these before they can become members.”

This assessment process is very important as it means that people can be confident that MII members do have the skills and qualifications to help them should they require the services of a mediator.

She is among the determined optimists when it comes to mediation, but her attitude is backed up by hard facts. “Because of the confidentiality of the process you can’t really have success rate figures for mediation but the CEDR says that up to 80% of cases that come before its members result in successful outcomes”, she notes.

And when it is considered that successful mediation results in both parties to the conflict actually agreeing to the solution this has to be seen as an astonishingly high success rate, especially when it is considered that if the parties had gone to court instead at least 50% of them would probably have been dissatisfied with the outcome.

EM