INKOVEMA Podcast „Well through time“

#48 – The dark sides of mediation I – The dangers of mediation

What we need to pay attention to as a society and what we – can do with mediation–…

In conversation with Markus Troja

Well through time. The podcast about mediation, conflict coaching and organisational consulting.

Markus TrojaDr rer. pol., partner at trojapartner GbR, co-editor of the specialist journal Konfliktdynamik.

Studied political science, economic policy, communication science and German studies; from 1995 to 2000 research assistant in projects of the German Research Foundation on questions of democratic theory in environmental conflicts; since 1997 self-employed as mediator and trainer for mediation (BM) as well as systemic coach and team developer (ISB); main areas of activity are conflicts in organisations, between shareholders and in the public sphere in planning in the field of renewable energies.

Contents:

Mediation is a colourful term whose dark sides often remain unrecognised. In two parts, Markus Troja and Sascha Weigel explore these dark sides of mediation.

The dark side is a consequence of the power and influence of mediators.

On the one hand, there are dangers posed by mediation as a conflict management process, because structural conflicts remain unnoticed and the individuals are left to their own devices and occasionally reach inadequate conflict agreements with each other. On the other hand, there are dangers posed by the mediators as third parties in the conflict, who, as a power factor, often fail to recognise their own influence and can personally „ end up on the dark side“.

Sometimes individual conflict mediation is unfortunate if it prevents the organisation from thinking more deeply about the underlying structural problem and taking a more far-reaching decision.

Literature:

  • Specialist article: Markus Troja, The dark side of mediation, ZKM 4/2019, 138-141.
  • Reference book: Fritz Breithaupt, The dark side of empathy. Frankfurt am Main 2017

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