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Successful business is always about relationships. We interact with partners, investors, customers, suppliers, and other persons so our company functions. In addition, the success of our companies is very dependent on the quality of our team interaction – whether the members of the team believe in what they are doing and whether invest their time and expertise in that. Stable relationships in a team make the basis of a business.
◊ Advantages of stable relationships
The way we build relationships and cope with conflicts both within the company and with external partners affect a lot of issues. For example, in the short term, it is whether we get a commercially favorable price for our services, and in the long term, it is whether it is possible to build high-quality cooperation and ensure stable income for our business, create favorable reputation and gain competitive advantages in the market. Trust is the basis for building quality networking.
What could assist to develop quality relationships and contacts? It could be the ability to build trust relationships and use not only moments of collective triumph, but also moments related to living conflict situations arising when we interact and affecting relations between companies.
◊ Modern tools affecting relationships in a positive way
There are many tools that help to build trust relationships in business, and one of them is mediation.
Mediation is a negotiation process aimed at settlement of disputes and conflicts where a neutral intermediary-mediator assists parties to overcome differences and to come to agreement.
Mediation is popular in the USA and Europe as an extrajudicial way to resolve conflicts, while in Ukraine it is still gaining popularity.
◊ Advantages of mediation
Sometimes, being in the epicenter of a dispute, it is difficult to imagine how the parties may even get to one negotiating table. It seems that it is easier to transfer dispute settlement to relevant legal experts. However, by doing so we deprive ourselves of many opportunities that constructive cooperation may provide us with.
By contrast with other processes for resolution of disputes and conflicts, during the mediation process parties get the opportunity to consider the conflict situation together, investigate own interests and those of the partner, work out alternatives and take only the decisions entailing commercial or other benefits to the business or reducing losses.
Mediation as an approach to disputes resolution is a unique tool allowing the parties to the conflict to unite their efforts and interact with each other to overcome difficult and sometimes deadlock situations and take their own decisions themselves. During the negotiation process, mediator focuses parties on the problem and its solution, rather than on destructive getting into an argument, assists in hearing and understanding vis-a-vis map of reality. In mediation, the parties become partners in the process of finding solution to a problem and get an opportunity to learn more about each other, understand pains and root causes of conflict situations, and resolve the dispute in its essence. Culture of parties' interaction in the process of mediation may become solid foundation for personal, team, and company development, as well as for building trust relationships with partners.
Conclusions:
1. Trust relationships are the basis of successful business.
2. Relationships become stronger if parties seek solutions to overcome crisis situations together.
3. Mediation is a process, in which parties unite efforts to take mutually beneficial decisions.
4. Results obtained during the mediation process help parties in better understanding each other, and in some cases even in expanding areas of cooperation.