Restoring the Circle
IWS's unique culturally grounded group mediation, Restoring the Circle helps teams, departments, leadership groups, and organizations address collective conflict, communication breakdowns, and strained workplace relationships. Through facilitated dialogue, careful listening, and culturally responsive conflict resolution, groups can identify shared concerns, rebuild trust, strengthen collaboration, and restore harmony to the workplace. Allows participants to work toward healing, solutions and compromises that best serve the organization.
What is IWS’s Restoring the Circle?
A culturally grounded approach recognizes that how people communicate, understand conflict, build trust, demonstrate respect, and restore relationships can be influenced by culture and lived experience. For Indigenous, Tribal, and Native-serving organizations, mediation may need to consider relationships that extend beyond the immediate workplace, community connections, cultural values, historical context, and the importance of collective well-being. This does not mean assuming that every participant shares the same perspective or cultural experience. Instead, it means creating space for cultural context to be acknowledged and respectfully considered as part of the mediation process.
Why would you need Restoring the Circle?
Group mediation may be appropriate when conflict or unresolved concerns have spread beyond individual relationships and are affecting the broader team or organization.
Organizations may consider group mediation when experiencing:
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Ongoing conflict within a team or department
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Breakdown in trust or communication
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Leadership or team division
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Interpersonal conflict affecting the larger group
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Competing perspectives or agendas
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Repeated misunderstandings or unresolved concerns
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Workplace tension affecting morale or productivity
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Difficulty working collaboratively
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Organizational transitions or significant change
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Conflict involving cultural or relational considerations
Group mediation can provide an opportunity to address concerns collectively rather than allowing unresolved conflict to continue shaping the workplace.
How could IWS’s Mediation Program help your Organization?
When conflict becomes collective, the path forward often requires more than addressing individual disagreements. Group mediation can help participants:
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Create space for people to be heard
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Better understand different perspectives
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Identify shared concerns and common ground
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Address communication breakdowns
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Recognize patterns contributing to conflict
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Rebuild trust and working relationships
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Establish shared expectations
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Strengthen collaboration
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Develop agreements for moving forward
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Reconnect workplace practices with organizational value
The goal is not necessarily to make everyone agree. The goal is to create a healthier foundation for communication, relationship, accountability, and shared responsibility.
Why choose IWS?
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Our approach combines structured conflict resolution with careful listening, cultural awareness, and an understanding of organizational dynamics.
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We do not approach group conflict with the assumption that there is one person to blame or one simple solution. We work to understand the broader picture, identify patterns, create space for meaningful dialogue, and help groups identify practical ways to move forward.
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For Tribal Nations, Native-led organizations, Native-serving programs, and Tribal Educational Professionals, our culturally grounded approach recognizes the importance of relationships, respect, community, responsibility, humility, and collective well-being.
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Every group is different. The mediation process is therefore shaped around the group's circumstances, the nature of the conflict, and the organization's goals.
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The goal is not simply to resolve a disagreement. It is to help a group rebuild the ability to communicate, work together, and move forward with greater understanding and shared responsibility.