Navigating Conflicts at Work: A Guide to Workplace Mediation

This comprehensive resource provides a practical framework for understanding and conducting workplace mediation before conflicts become costly and disruptive.

Part I examines the distinctive nature of workplace conflict and the conditions that allow it to take root and persist. Audrey Lee explores the interpersonal and organizational dynamics that often underlie workplace disputes, offering readers practical guidance for approaching difficult conversations and addressing conflict before it escalates. Whether dealing with a conflict of their own or helping others navigate one, readers will gain a deeper understanding of how workplace disputes develop and how they can be managed more effectively.

Part II focuses on the workplace mediation process, guiding readers through each stage from initial assessment and preparation to facilitated dialogue and resolution. Organized around the questions most frequently asked by mediators and participants, the book addresses the challenges that commonly arise in workplace disputes and offers thoughtful, experience-based guidance for responding to them. The result is a practical resource for anyone seeking to understand workplace mediation and its role in fostering healthier, more productive organizations.

Audrey J. Lee is a senior mediator at Boston Law Collaborative, LLC, and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches courses on mediation and diversity & dispute resolution.

Audrey has mediated or coached hundreds of workplace conflicts over the last two decades. Since 2016, she has served as affiliate faculty at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, currently as a lead faculty for the Harvard Mediation Intensive. Previously, she has served as a mediator for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and as a panel mediator for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In her mediations, Audrey draws on her experience as a consultant for the Cambridge, MA-based organization Essential Partners to bring a dialogue-centered approach to create spaces conducive to constructive learning.

In her consulting practice, Audrey works with clients to increase their effectiveness in difficult workplace conversations and negotiations. In recognition of her professional development work with lawyers, she was invited in 2018 to become a trusted advisor for the Professional Development Consortium, the national association for individuals responsible for the professional development of lawyers at law firms, law schools, government agencies, and corporations.

As a mediator and conflict management consultant, Audrey has worked with clients including lawyers at Am Law 100 firms, mediators at the Australian Fair Work Commission, and musicians at the League of American Orchestras. She has been featured in Harvard Business Review's "Insights" series on Leadership and Managing People and in the BBC Capital's Work Ethic column, and her writing on mediation and dispute resolution has appeared in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal, and ABA Dispute Resolution Magazine, among other publications. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She lives in Boston, where in her spare time she often finds herself mediating her children's sibling conflicts.