Build trust – communication, mediation and repair, so that trust holds under pressure.
Your concern
Cooperation has become difficult. Positions have hardened between teams, partners or groups. A conflict blocks decisions, or relationships have been damaged and need repair. Many actors need to find a shared understanding.
Trust on three levels
Trust is not only a matter of good relations. It grows – or erodes – on three connected levels:
- Between people: understanding, recognition and dealing with conflict. Are people heard, and can they disagree without being shut out?
- Between groups: belonging, exclusion, historical injuries and cooperation. Is injustice acknowledged, including what happened between groups?
- Between people and institutions: reliability, fair procedures, a say in decisions, accountability and the repair of harm. Are commitments kept? Can those affected influence decisions? Are there working ways to complain and to repair?
Dialogue, mediation and shared reflection work on all three. Telling one’s own story and being heard are part of this – as a matter of recognition, not as a separate method.
Working together
THAC prepares and facilitates dialogue. It helps those involved understand the dispute, work through differences and reach agreements they can carry forward.
- Dialogue preparation and facilitation for teams, leadership groups, partners and multi-stakeholder processes.
- Mediation in conflicts within or between organisations.
- Shared reflection – workshops on how stress, harm and trust affect working relationships.
Relevant experience
Peter Aeberhard is a trained mediator (modular mediation training, 2000–2003; conflict management after Glasl) and teaches mediation and negotiation at the Institute for Peace and Dialogue in Basel.
- Mediation between a media consultancy and its local partner (THAC, Tanzania). Mediator between an international media consultancy and its Tanzanian partner on local ownership and the terms of their cooperation. The process ended with a signed agreement.
- A civil society platform on migration and development (THAC, 2016–2019). Coordinator of the Swiss Civil Society Platform on Migration and Development, which brought more than 80 diaspora, development and human rights organisations, researchers and public administration into one dialogue.
- Sudan Roundtable (KOFF, swisspeace, mandate). Coordinator of a roundtable that regularly brought together Swiss government and civil society actors working on Sudan.
Approaches and resources
- Five questions anyone can ask – about safety, reliability, recognition, fair sharing and repair. Why this matters →
- Relational Systems Framework (RSF) – connection and repair are two of its five functions. The RSF →
- Essay What Extremism Offers – and How Societies Unintentionally Strengthen It. Forthcoming. Publications →
Talk about your concern
The first conversation is free. Scope, result, timeframe and fee are agreed before work begins.
Contact: peter.aeberhard@thac.ch · Get in touch
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