Professional Supervision As Continuing Professional Development

December 2025 Elizabeth Rosa 

The new standards for mediators, known as AMDRAS (Australian Mediator and Dispute Resolution Accreditation Standards) “the Standards” came into effect in July 2025 after a transitional period from July 2024. The Standards indicate that an AMDRAS mediator must complete 25 hours of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) every two years. Within the CPD requirements, there are a number of categories in which the hours can be completed, of which one of the more significant categories is ‘Professional Supervision or Coaching.’ Under this category activity code, C3, ‘Receiving supervision in relation to practice issues’, the maximum claimable category hours are eight. (This is effectively four hours of Peer Supervision per year.) The Standards contain four professional practice ‘Domains’ or areas of knowledge and skill for mediators. In this article, I will be focusing on Domain Four, which is Professional Development, and which includes ‘engaging in Reflective Practice’. Reflective Practice is a model of Professional Supervision. It is the process of a mediator reflecting on their work with a more experienced or senior mediator, in order to learn from past mediations and develop further approaches and skills for future mediations. In particular, they will consider what went well or what didn’t go so well in a recent mediation; how they felt during the mediation and what they think would work better next time.

Mediation, by its nature, is inherently challenging because it involves dealing with human beings in emotionally charged and unpredictable situations. As a mediator, the role requires us to go into the “deep end” with real-life situations and people in conflict. To help us in these situations, we must understand both the mediation process itself and the underlying interests and needs of all participants. The challenge then comes in applying the mediation training to real-life practice. As a mediator, you learn about human nature and how it manifests in conflict situations. The training process helps develop the mediator's own techniques and approaches to these situations. To support professional growth, it's important to have opportunities to reflect on this experience with a senior mediator, who can help you articulate your thoughts about the process, identify what worked or didn't work, and explore what you could have done differently.

Mediators also need opportunities to discuss how stressful it feels to deal with participants and to find relief from affirming that engaging deeply with participants is part of the work. One goal of reflective practice is to help mediators feel less stressed when dealing with participants, which supports their well-being and professional confidence.

Reflective Practice as a model of Professional Supervision can involve a mediator speaking to a more experienced mediator to reflect on areas such as:

• How they felt when we were in the room with the participants

• What were they anxious about when they were with the participants? For example, the participants’ elevated emotions and a fear that those emotions may escalate.

• What tools did they use to manage the emotion and encourage participation?

• How did the stages of the mediation model work to guide the participants towards discussing a resolution?

• Did they feel that there was some kind of “elephant in the room”? How did that impact them? How did they think it impacted the participants?

• Were they satisfied with how they conducted the mediation? Or not?

• What do they feel they could try next time in a similar situation?

In the Reflective Practice approach, the participant is asked to reflect on how they felt about the mediation. For anything that they felt didn’t go so well in the mediation, they are asked what they think could have helped in retrospect. That way, the mediator can consider the body of learning they have from mediation training and their developing skills, in order to find a good technique to help with further mediations.

The goal is that the mediator experiences outcomes from the Professional Supervision, such as:

• Confidence in their ability to diagnose what went well or what didn’t go so well, and how to approach it differently next time.

• An acknowledgement of their feelings in the mediation and what they were worried about.

• A realisation of their own intuition in dealing with people.

• An appreciation of their ability to pick up the emotions of participants.

• A strengthening of their understanding of the usefulness of all stages of the mediation model in getting the participants towards resolution.

• An increased knowledge of skills and tools used in mediation to handle elevated emotions and reluctance.

• Developing confidence in conducting mediations.

•Feeling the support of the senior mediator and the mediator community in general – that they understand the problems all mediators face, and they are there to help other mediators.

Professional supervision is an important component of continuing professional development as it supports, encourages and empowers mediators to develop best practice during their careers and feel more confident in the process.

Elizabeth Rosa is an AMDRAS Mediator and a Fellow of the Resolution Institute. She is also a Trainer, Coach, Supervisor and Assessor.

Elizabeth offers Professional Supervision to mediators. https://www.resolveatwork.com.au/mentoring