Succession was never just a TV show about which Roy child would inherit the corner office. It was a competitive lab experiment on how smart people, under stress, turn relationships into litigation cosplay. Their corporate strategy quickly spirals into emotional dodgeball, while they continue to profess their kinship with one another.
Then, there was Logan Roy’s stroke, which turned a hospital waiting room into the Waystar boardroom with worse lighting. Overnight, one medical crisis sparked several succession plans and enough status anxiety to power a small data center. The question became not only who would run the company. It metastasized into whether anyone could separate affinity, loyalty, ambition, survival, and control before the wheels came off. Over dramatic… sure, but it laid bare all the behaviors we rail against as mediators.
Now move the scene to the break room of a mediation organization or dispute-resolution partnership, where the people involved are mediators.
After more than 30 years in this field, I have seen or heard of many internal conflicts… including among mediators. Let me be clear. I’ve never been prouder to be part of a community than I have with mediation. This is not a takedown of the field – it’s a “reflective love letter.” It’s been a rewarding privilege to work with talented professionals who are trying to make the world a better place. AND (not, BUT) I suggest we might benefit by taking stock of our internal dynamics when things get sticky in our own neighborhood.
Remember the debates about what counts as mediation, who owns the process, if and how to balance power, and whether neutrality survives social justice concerns? Now, the challenges with AI are here.
Sometimes we need to ask questions that force us to examine our own behavior. Where could we do better? Do we challenge power while embracing it when we have it? Celebrate differences while dismissing different mediator models? Profess curiosity while setting rhetorical traps?
What have you seen that makes you uneasy? Have you witnessed mediator groups use “process” for tactical advantage? Change core tenets without meaningful member input? Policies that don’t match bylaws? Control agendas? Hold private factional meetings? Resort to Robert’s Rules when consensus feels too hard? Watch volunteers and paid mediators talk past each other at conferences?
These examples are composites, not an indictment of any particular group. If you recognize any of them, my invitation is for us to reflect, not to accuse. We’ve all shared stories about these mediator passion plays while rolling our eyes. I know, when I reflect, there are occasions when I wish I had done better. What’s been your experience?
No model has clean hands here; facilitative, evaluative, transformative, restorative, and hybrid practitioners can all turn principle into posture from time to time. The issue is not which model we practice; it is whether we can still be true to our values when our own interests are challenged. We know the map, but ignore the compass… not us, of course, but them! When left unchecked, we aren’t always that much different than the Roys… except they had helicopters and a catering budget.
The research is telling. Rachael Blakey found real tensions within the family mediation profession, including a poorly collectively understood professional identity. Jay Rothman reminds us that mediators are not bias-free instruments. Hilary Astor adds that mediators cannot simply “do” neutrality, yet we also cannot function without some disciplined version of it.
The practical takeaway is simple and occasionally inconvenient: expertise helps us diagnose a pattern. It does not automatically cure our participation in it. When the conflict is ours, we need process, humility, and often someone else to guide us forward.
If you feel yourself thinking, “Yes, but my situation was different,” you’re probably right. And it may still be worth asking if any of this reflection applies even as a cautionary tale.
The issue is not that we lack skills. The issue is that we sometimes lose access to those skills when our identity, authority, status, income, belonging, or professional legitimacy feels threatened.
Expertise does not overcome ego. Training does not erase fear. Impartiality is much easier when the outcome does not affect our personal role, reputation, budget, status, board position, or favorite practice theory. That’s the Roy-family trap: everyone can name the dysfunction and still fully participate in it.
In fact, sometimes our skills can make the problem worse. A non-mediator says bluntly, “You are wrong.” A mediator says, “I am noticing positional rigidity undermining our shared process integrity.” Translation: “You are wrong, but I’m using polite words in a calm voice, so I’m being collaborative. If you react to what I’ve said, you’re the one behaving inappropriately.” On paper, we celebrate process. In practice, we can use it competitively. We need to own that it can happen… for cryin’ in the night!
Helping others resolve conflict requires skill, patience, structure, and discipline. Resolving our own conflict requires all of that, plus humility.
When we become parties, we can lose distance. We react, defend, remember old slights, and rebrand our positions as “process concerns.” The presenting issue may be leadership. The deeper issue is often identity: Who are we? Who leads? Who gets credit? Who still matters? Succession unfolded as it did because the physical crown was never just the crown. It was affinity, legitimacy, grievance, and unfinished business, wearing very expensive clothes.
When our clients fight, they weaponize facts, tone, timing, and selective memory. When we fight, we can use collaborative language as a sword: “This is not a safe space.” “I want to name the power dynamic.” “I am concerned about impartiality.” “We do not have capacity.”
These concerns can be real, necessary, and courageous to raise. The problem is when this language becomes a substitute for self-scrutiny or hides clenched fists with velvet gloves. The difference lies in the intent and its accompanying impact on our professional family.
We teach the VECS framework: Validate, Empathize, Clarify, and Summarize. But in our own conflicts, we can use those tools to regain control rather than to be changed by what we hear.
Performative listening sounds accurate, but real listening costs us something. It creates the dangerous possibility that the other person has a point, a truth that may be disturbing. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
Our words sound elevated when we conflict with each other: values, impartiality, power balancing, inclusion, safety, and standards. On the ground, the pattern is simpler: attack, defend, blame… but said nicely. Then someone announces, “We need a mediator,” and the room goes silent because everyone is one, and nobody wants to admit it. That is when our field approaches peak irony.
Look, power imbalances are real, and mediators should name them. But we still need to remain aware that any value, including fairness, neutrality, inclusion, or safety, can become a shield against self-examination if we let our guard down, especially when we are volunteering. Sometimes it is easy to give ourselves license when we show up for free. Volunteer service deserves gratitude…but it does not exempt us from accountability.
A mediator group may draft policies, create communication protocols, assign interim authority, and issue a tasteful statement about continuity, values, and being “excited for the next chapter.” That may “settle” the matter.
What it does not necessarily “resolve” are the challenges associated with leadership mistrust, role acknowledgment, and dignified transition. Failing to do so leads to an organization without a soul. Waystar’s communications team would recognize the move: everyone smiles for the statement, then we start plotting the next move. One week later, someone says, “Let me be candid.” We all know where that road goes, and there is no scenic offramp.
Perhaps we should each do an internal cognitive bias check at the first sign of a problem. We are not immune to the traps we regularly explore with the parties in mediation. It’s just much easier to identify their biases than our own.
A quick self-audit might include: What am I protecting? What am I assuming? What would I say if the other side used my exact tactic? What feedback am I dismissing because it is inconvenient?
Second, consider calling “you-know-what” on ourselves early, preferably before we form a subcommittee. Jon Stewart warned that BS is everywhere and offered a practical test: if you smell something, say something. That can be uncomfortable when we tend to avoid issues that are likely to cause friction… because, among ourselves, we don’t always do friction well.
A simple reset might sound like this: “Before we debate the solution, can we name what each group is trying to protect, what each group fears losing, and what shared interest would make a workable outcome worth supporting?”
Then, let’s create and use a guiding Umbrella Question.
How can we meet [the needs of group A] while also satisfying [those of group B], thereby advancing our shared interests in…?
That question changes debate into exploration. It moves the conversation from threat to opportunity. It gives us a shared problem instead of a shared enemy. It is the opposite of the Roy-family default: turn every issue into a referendum on who gets the crown. It forces us to do what we tell clients to do every day: to stop asking, “How do I win?” and start exploring. “What would work for everyone here?”
Mediators are not hypocrites. We are human. We have nervous systems, histories, ambitions, status concerns, control issues, money worries, anxieties, insecurities, and a stubborn wish to be seen as the reasonable adult in the room. As a result, we are subject to cognitive biases, defensive habits, and the occasional bout of boorish behavior just like everyone else.
The difference is that we have fewer excuses because we know better. But knowing better is not doing better. Knowing better is cognitive. Doing better is behavioral. It requires commitment, structure, feedback, and humility to let the process work on us, too.
Mediators need mediation, facilitation, coaching, or outside assistance when the conflict is ours. Our potential occupational hazard is believing professional skill exempts us from personal reactivity. Polite vocabulary is not enough. The best mediators are not the ones who never get triggered. They are the ones who notice it sooner, repair it faster, and have enough humility to manage their own “stuff.” The next time I find myself in a conflict, I plan to re-read this before I allow my “stuff” to grab the microphone and start whispering nonsense into my good ear!
We move forward by practicing, together, the same conflict-resolution discipline we ask of everyone else. We practice what we preach. To those who consistently walk their talk: thank you for showing us it can be done.
Now, let’s take our helicopter to brunch!
First published by Franchise New Zealand This article considers the potential for franchising systems to be undermined by kamikaze conflict, involving people acting in ways that appear to be against...
By Jeff Giddings, Lorelle FrazerThere are times when a moment in a play or movie leaps out as if it was written just for you. At a recent production of Anna Deavere Smith’s one-person...
By Richard BarbieriDisputes are an inevitable part of life. Family, workplace, community all occasionally present conflicts. In our culture, many of us default to the cliché “I’ll see you in court!” Mediation...
By Gary Doernhoefer
