Why do we keep explaining mediation to ourselves instead of decision makers?

If business leaders ignore mediation, we should ask a harder question. Who have we actually been talking to all this time?

Most conversations about mediation still happen in rooms full of mediators. The people who actually have to choose mediation, CEOs, founders, general counsel, are often not in the room at all. We organise conferences, publish reports, and keep on refining frameworks and regulations. And then we almost solely talk about it to people who are already convinced. I am part of that same ecosystem. I have learned a lot from it, and I have benefited from it. But I have also seen, time and again, how often we end up preaching to our own choir.

We develop mediation as a professional discipline, while business leaders experience conflict as a management problem. And when they finally encounter mediation, it is often late, indirect, or framed by someone who is not enthusiastic, and its merits have already long evaporated in hearsay. This is not mainly a communication failure. It is a design consequence.

In continental Europe, mediation is still explained inwardly. We use professional language that makes sense to practitioners, not to decision-makers. Even the word “mediation” itself is jargon outside our field. (More on that next week) In places like Australia, mediation is introduced very differently. Business owners encounter it directly, in plain language, through public-facing channels designed for them. Not through legal or professional filters. There, mediation is explained as a tool for business problems, not as a professional discipline.

When mediation is not primarily addressed to and for decision makers, it never seriously competes with litigation for attention, mandate, or urgency. It stays optional. And optional tools rarely feel like an answer when pressure is already high.