2026 Maryland Mediators Convention

Mediation is often described as a neutral process, but mediators, facilitators, and conflict practitioners do not enter the room without lenses. We bring lived experience, professional training, communication preferences, assumptions, and internalized norms that can quietly shape how we interpret conflict behavior.

This interactive workshop explores how implicit bias and neurodiversity bias can appear before, during, and after the mediation process. Participants will examine how automatic meaning-making influences perceptions of credibility, cooperation, professionalism, emotional expression, resistance, and readiness to participate. Special attention will be given to the ways neurodivergent communication patterns, including processing pauses, limited eye contact, directness, fidgeting, clarification requests, and sensory responses, may be misread as dishonesty, disengagement, aggression, or incompetence. Using experiential activities, media analysis, reflective discussion, and mediation-centered scenarios, participants will practice distinguishing observation from interpretation, identifying assumptions before they harden into certainty, and applying curiosity as a bias interruption strategy. The session will also challenge the traditional language of neutrality and offer a more practice-grounded framework of impartiality: the disciplined responsibility to notice one’s lenses while guarding the fairness of the process.

This workshop is designed for mediators, facilitators, restorative practitioners, conflict coaches, nonprofit leaders, educators, and professionals who want to strengthen fairness, access, and participation in conflict resolution spaces.

Learning Objectives:

• To challenge mediators and conflict practitioners to examine how implicit bias and neurodiversity bias can shape interpretation before the full story is known.
• To invite participants to rethink neutrality and consider impartiality as a more realistic and disciplined commitment to process fairness.
• To explore how assumptions about credibility, cooperation, emotional expression, processing speed, professionalism, and resistance can affect participation at the mediation table.
• To help participants distinguish observation from interpretation and identify the space where bias often enters.
• To equip participants with curiosity-based questions they can use to interrupt certainty, expand understanding, and support more equitable mediation practice.