There can be many reasons why collaboration with a colleague or within your team is not going smoothly, or why constructive dialogue is hard to achieve. Perhaps cooperation is going well, but you want deeper insight into how you work together so that it stays strong in challenging times.
A neutral and independent mediator can help guide open and constructive conversations, enabling you to reach a solution together. Confidentiality, voluntariness, and autonomy form the foundation of this process.
Approaching a mediator may feel like a big step, but it should be a small one. Mediation provides space to share assumptions and to address misunderstandings or miscommunication. It can also play a preventive role: by engaging in dialogue early, escalation is avoided and mutual understanding can grow.
Mediation/Dialogue Facilitation
In mediation, staff members enter into dialogue under the guidance of an independent mediator. The mediator provides a safe and trustworthy environment and acts as a neutral facilitator. Their focus is on creating calm and trust while helping to translate emotions into underlying needs.
Through mediation, you reflect on what went wrong and gain insight into the deeper issues at stake, both for yourself and for the other party. Together, you search for an outcome that works for everyone. This requires a willingness to listen and to seek a solution that serves the interests of both sides.
Participation in mediation is always voluntary. Confidentiality is essential so that you can speak freely about the issues and possible solutions without being bound by them. Everything shared orally or in writing during or after the mediation is confidential. All participants in the process are therefore bound by a duty of confidentiality, unless other arrangements are jointly agreed.
Mediation is often perceived as a formal or legal process, but in reality it is not. When two colleagues cannot resolve an issue on their own, a conversation facilitated by an independent third party can be highly effective.
Choosing mediation is always possible when a conflict exists, even if a legal procedure has already been initiated. Any ongoing procedures are then suspended until the mediation outcome is known.
Group mediation
Sometimes more than two people are involved in tension or an emerging conflict—for example, when cooperation or relationships within a department or (sub)team are under pressure. In such cases, the team or department can opt for group mediation to improve collaboration, strengthen trust, and safeguard a constructive shared future.
Group mediation is always tailored to the situation and is facilitated by multiple mediators. Apart from the larger scale, the same principles apply as in mediation between two parties.
Who are the mediators of the in-house mediation pool?
The in-house mediation pool consists of Geerte Faas (coordinator), Marise van Amersfoort and Arie Koops. They each hold other roles within VU Amsterdam and are required to keep these strictly separate from their mediation work. Geerte, Marise and Arie are registered with the Mediators’ Federation of the Netherlands (MfN). For more information about Geerte, Marise and Arie, see the bottom of this page.
