About TeKay Brown-Taylor TeKay Brown-Taylor is the owner and president of BMS. Having run her organisation for almost five years, TeKay has coached and advised thousands of employees and leaders on workplacerelated issues across a range of fields, including the academic, corporate, non-profit and military sectors. As a thought leader often sought out for her insightful perspectives on issues of inclusion and conflict management, TeKay has received a number of accolades, including the CSRA Business League’s ‘Woman Entrepreneur of the Year’, Perry Broadcasting’s ‘Business Professional of the Year’ and the peer-selected ‘Woman Making a Difference’ corporate award. About BMS Brownstone Mediation Services LLC (BMS) is a human relations (HR) consulting firm with a solutions-focused niche in ADR strategies aimed at turning people problems into transformative learning experiences. BMS has been recognised for three consecutive years as one of Georgia Business Journal’s ‘Best of Georgia’ for Business and Creatives Services: Mediation and HR Consulting. BMS operates on the principal belief that equipping an employee with the confidence, skills, and capacity will enable them to become leaders that help build better workplaces and in turn better organisations. Contact TeKay Brown-Taylor President Brownstone Mediation Services LLC 207 Hudson Trace Suite 105, Augusta, GA 30907, USA Tel: +1 706-955-2031 E: tekayb@brownstonemediation.com www.brownstonemediation.com BMS and credentials. We never walk into a mediation talking to the party for the first time. Most often, the hardest part of our work is getting the parties to the mediation table, more so than helping to navigate the conflict mine itself. What accommodations should be made if one or more parties involved in a conflict are resistant to the mediation process? Educating a party on the benefits of participating in mediation is the best way to contend with resistance to the process. Once parties are fully informed about the many advantages that come with participating in an ADR process, he or she is most often usually open to the option. In what ways have you developed your practice as a mediator with the benefit of experience? As a mediator, I have been fortunate to work in many spaces as a neutral third party. I personally have experience in several mediation categories, including juvenile delinquency, peer, general and civil, divorce, family, domestic violence, equal employment opportunity and of course workplace mediation. At the heart of it all is conflict resolution. With almost 20 years in HR workplace mediation is where I am a natural but family mediation is where I operate with a deeper sense of obligation. It is my belief that no family belongs in a courtroom pitted as plaintiff and defendant. I believe it is also important that young offender systems have programs for reform that include mediation and other restorative justice practices so that youth are allowed an opportunity to right their wrong before being thrust into a legal system with criminal backgrounds. As such, encourage schools to institute peer mediation programs for students to enable them to gain conflict capacity and interpersonal skills early. It is a fact that the most experienced mediators are also the most skilled mediators. As mediators, we are communication and conflict specialists. Expertise equates to the degree of experience, with the most experienced being able to creatively facilitate difficult dialogue no matter the category. In your opinion, how will the field of mediation develop in the coming years, particularly in regard to resolving workplace conflicts? Thanks to high-profile cases and settlements, mediation is becoming more and more mainstream. It is no longer the ‘alternative’ dispute resolution option. Mediation is beginning to establish itself as the most productive, most successful and most non-adversarial way of resolving issues and disputes. Thanks to the recent pandemic, many courts are so backlogged that mediation provides a necessary relief. This means mediation is serving a need! Even before the pandemic, courts were beginning to establish ADR programs, recognising the higher likelihood of success when mandatory mediation required parties to make an attempt to resolve issues on their own before using the resources of the court. These same benefits have flowed over into traditional workplace grievance processes. Mediation is now a key part of many organisation’s HR policies and processes that aim to resolve issues between staff informally. BMS is an HR firm and the heart of our existence is helping organisations identify the right tools and solutions to drive better workplace experiences through its people relations, and I over many years working across several industries have determined mediation is one of our best and most reliable tools. EXPERT INSIGHT 47
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