Facilitating courageous conversations and achieving sustainable outcomes

About

Felicity Steadman

I have been a mediator and facilitator for most of my professional life. I have a busy mediation practice based in Oxford UK, working throughout the UK and internationally.

My strength and experience is in employment and workplace dispute resolution, and as a member of CEDR Chambers panel of mediators I mediate a wide range of contractual disputes. I enjoy designing and facilitating relationship building processes with teams that are struggling to work together effectively.

My career started out in the turbulent apartheid years in South Africa where I honed my dispute resolution skills and my capacity to work with diverse groups of people. It was a privilege to play a small

part in the transition to democracy in the field of industrial relations and with the National Peace Accord. This is where my passion began for working with people and the problems they encounter at work and in their communities and business relationships.

About

Felicity Steadman

I have been a mediator and facilitator for most of my professional life. I have a busy mediation practice based in Oxford UK, working throughout the UK and internationally.

My strength and experience is in employment and workplace dispute resolution, and as a member CEDR Chambers and the Court of Appeal panel of mediators I mediate a wide range of contractual disputes. I enjoy designing and facilitating relationship building processes with teams that are struggling to work together effectively.

Countries

Years Mediating

Cases

Mediation

My first experience of mediation was in 1986 as a young negotiator on the management negotiation team of a large company.

Talks had stalled and we agreed that a mediator be brought in to assist. He worked in separate rooms with our team and with the other team, shuttling back and forth and helping us move beyond our positions and the grandstanding to what was really important to us both. We achieved a settlement in a day. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a mediator.

Since then I have trained and been accredited as a mediator in South Africa, the US and the UK. I have worked as a mediator in many different settings with a diversity of people and problems. I train mediators in the UK and South Africa, and internationally too.

I went into the mediation believing that the prospect of a successful outcome was low, and that proceedings seemed inevitable. Felicity’s diligence, patience, and careful problem-solving arrived the parties at a commercial solution. The mediation started with a hitch in the operation of the technology. Felicity calmly navigated the problem and agreed to continue the mediation later at no additional cost to make up for the lost time and a little extra.

James Barrett | Partner, Hamilton Pratt

Your work was both meticulous and thoroughly professional. We would highly recommend your mediation services - carried out with sensitivity and attention to detail.

Kieran Cooke | Former foreign correspondent BBC

The outcomes of the mediation with Felicity have continued well past the meetings themselves and resulted in tangible relationship and hence business improvements. Both sides provided only positive feedback on the experience and on Felicity herself.

Commissioner | HR Manager

This is the second time I have asked for Felicity’s help in two intractable situations – she has brokered an agreement in this case which has remained intact and usable by the parties involved.

Claimant Solicitor

facilitation

As my experience grew as a mediator, I saw opportunities to apply my skills in situations where teams face performance and relationship problems.

For example, unions and management face difficulties trusting one another following protracted industrial action or redundancies. In other situations, relationships in teams become strained as a result of changing circumstances such as the need to co-operate in times of COVID-19.

As a facilitator, I design a process in consultation with the parties and then manage the process such that everybody has an opportunity to participate firstly in problem analysis and then in option generation and a search for solutions.