I just had to mediate a discussion between two of my employees, and I couldn’t be happier.

Neither of them is going to lose their job: we’ve never fired an employee. Neither of them is going to be paid more or less than the other: we pay all of our employees the same.

Mediation wasn’t even the first step- there was a lot of back and forth, a lot of legitimate communication and miscommunication between them before I was ever asked to help.

And I was asked to help- I didn’t force myself on the situation. An ideal system is one that maintains itself, and in my experience the best way to get a system to self-maintain is to stay out of it in the first place. That said, they couldn’t reach a healthy conclusion without a third party, and recognizing that, they asked for a mediator.

I couldn’t be happier because these are two people, with nothing to gain or lose, that are passionate enough about the business and the state of the shop that they could get to the point where they needed mediation. Most shops have to deal, not with an excess of passion, but with trivial drama, or worse, common apathy.

I couldn’t be happier because I didn’t do anything until it was requested. I couldn’t be happier because after 30 minutes of conversation, a solid resolution was reached, opinions had been voiced, and everyone was at the very least putting on a good show for the boss. I suspect that they were actually satisfied, and the meeting began and ended with a strong mutual respect and an acknowledgement of having issues with the situation, not with the people.

I hope that I get to do this more in the future, and I hope in the future that mediation can occur entirely among employees, so that I don’t have to get involved at all. Mostly, I hope that people realize that differing opinions build resolve, that clashing in good faith has been done for thousands of years to test (much more than others) ourselves, and that at Float On, there is no higher power that decides what is ‘right.’

The best we’ve come up with, as six owners of the business, is to debate continuously until some unanimous decision is reached. Usually this goes to the person who is the most passionate- another strike at the heart of apathy.

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Graham Talley, Co-Founder, Float On