Jennifer Mahony, Client Director, Fairway Resolution

Jennifer Mahony is one of our earliest adopters of The Emotional Culture Deck. She is a Client Director at FairWay. Fairway provides specialist conflict management and dispute resolution services for New Zealand organisations.
Jenn wasn’t the type of leader we expected to be an early adopter. We didn’t originally design the deck to resolve conflict in the workplace. But over the past 6 months, Jenn has used The Emotional Culture Deck with her clients.
We were excited and intrigued to hear how Jenn has used it to help change the way organisations and individuals approach disputes.

Jenn's told us how it can help start to break down barriers of mistrust (within teams and between individuals). And how it can begin to shift perceptions people have about each other.

This is what Jenn had to say:

"As a dispute resolution professional, I purchased The Emotional Culture Deck because I saw that it had real value in team facilitation where there were breakdowns in communication — particularly where some voices were louder than others.

Using the deck ensures that everyone in the team has a chance to be heard and has a chance to share what they need at work at an individual level, but then they also have to work together as a team to come up with their team emotional values.

Often, one of the most useful things for teams to see is that they want to feel many of the same things. That alone can start to break down barriers of mistrust and can begin to shift perceptions people have about each other. Once we have the core emotional values agreed to, the team works together to translate those emotions into concrete actions that they can agree to commit to.

For example, a “must have” value might be respect. We spend time talking about how people demonstrate respect and how that translates into desirable behaviours. I also find that the same emotional values appear regardless of the team I work with.

However, each team comes up with a different list of agreed behaviours that resonates with them and is specific to their needs and dynamic.

The deck is an excellent, fun, engaging tool and one I will continue to use."