Members of
The Sierra Club
National Mediation Team
The members of the Sierra Club National Mediation Team produced this joint statement about their experience with Marvin L. Schwartz
“When the Sierra Club established an internal Conflict Resolution Team, Marvin Schwartz’s mediation training provided us a process of resolving conflicts among volunteers working on environmental issues in ways that allowed participants to continue working together.
Our newly trained mediators said this in evaluating Marvin’s training:
‘I feel really benefitted by the training.’
‘The role-plays were very true to life, applicable, and pertinent.’
‘On a rating scale of 1 – 5 (excellent) I’ll give you a 6’
‘Thanks Marvin: you’re a very powerful mediator.’
‘The information was fantastic, and so was the level of detail.’
‘I loved the training. I found it very complete and thought provoking. I would definitely recommend it.’
‘This whole training is excellent.’
ABOUT US AND OUR NEEDS
The Sierra Club is an international organization with over 700,000 members working to preserve our environment. When conflicts arise, they can significantly detract from the effectiveness of communication and working together.
We established an internal conflict resolution committee as an alternative to judicial or fact finding processes that can be time consuming, expensive or demoralizing. We heard of the stellar reputation of Marvin L. Schwartz in training such teams, so we called on him to train our volunteer mediation team and we have been thrilled with the results.
MARVIN’S TRAINING… WHAT A TREAT!… BETTER THAN WE BARGAINED FOR
Marvin did not just show up with a training model or manual. Instead, Marvin spent days meeting with staff and volunteers, learning about the Sierra Club’s structure, operations and the context of the types of conflicts that might arise. He designed the training specifically to fit our needs.
Using what he learned about us, the content of the most frequent and difficult types of conflicts that we face, he produced customized role-plays that allowed us to practice the mediation skills in reality-based situations. In fact, in the subsequent real cases faced by the new Sierra Club mediators after the training, we were struck by how closely the reality of those conflicts followed the practice cases we had done.
We now feel fully prepared to handle these conflicts because the training we got from Marvin was so clear, powerful, and relevant for our needs.
IT REALLY WORKS!… MORE ABOUT OUR MEDIATION EXPERIENCE
The Sierra Club now has a team of “in-house” neutral third party mediators that have been used successfully. With mediation’s emphasis on empowering the participants, the process encourages participants to really hear other points of view and to work together to achieve an outcome satisfactory to all parties.
In the cases where we have used mediation, the volunteers involved continue to work together and appear to have resolved subsequent differences on their own. Marvin has continued to provide assistance and support when requested.
The mediation training has encouraged the members of the Conflict Resolution Team to step outside of the fact-finding mode and to examine our roles as third-party neutrals using a structured process. Learning ways to facilitate listening and encourage progress toward resolution without imposing a mediator viewpoint has been mind-stretching. Most members of the team consider the mediation training to be a tremendous opportunity for personal growth.
Making an internal mediation process available to volunteers experiencing conflict has provided an additional tool in the Sierra Club’s tool kit. Most importantly, this tool seeks to maintain and improve volunteer relationships in an organization that depends on its volunteers for strong and effective work in the public arena.