In this chapter, we looked at what you (or others) may need to do beyond the mediation in order to try and help the parties to continue to work towards resolving the issues and repairing the relationship. We also looked at how the mediation skills and elements of the process can be used in other situations in order to help you resolve conflict situations that you may come across yourself or to assist colleagues to resolve. Finally, we looked at some of the scenarios that arise and examples of how mediation can work in practice.

I hope that this book has started you down the path of attaining greater skills and confidence to assist others who are in conflict, to better manage conflict situations with others, and to improve your management skills. That might be a tall order in one book but my concluding piece of advice is to go and put the skills into practice. Generally it is far better to try and to fail (and to learn from that), than to never have tried at all. Remember that while words can hurt they can also help to heal. If you don't try then there is no opportunity to heal the hurt and I cannot describe adequately how rewarding it is when you have played a part in doing so.