| Mary Lynne McIntosh is a mediator, lawyer and human resources professional with over twenty years of business experience in the private and broader public sectors. Her career has included private practice, and working as a lawyer with a national transportation company, as the manager of employment standards with a major financial institution and as the employment equity co-ordinator with an internationally recognized research and teaching university.
In 1997, Mary Lynne established McIntosh & Associates, which provides dispute resolution services to individuals and businesses. In addition to conducting private mediations, Mary Lynne mediates cases for the Ontario Mandatory Mediation Program in both Toronto and Ottawa. She also mediates at federal government departments for The Sullivan Group. The disputes Mary Lynne handles relate to employment and workplace issues, business and commercial matters and personal injury.
Mary Lynne is also a trainer and a coach in courses on mediator training, managing workplace conflict, interest based negotiation and valuing diversity. Her clients include Stitt Feld Handy Group, CDR Associates, Richard Weiler, Agree Inc., the Conflict Consensus Institute and Budget Car and Truck Rentals.
In her early dispute resolution practice Mary Lynne mediated at the ADR Centre and at the Landlord Tenant Court, served as a third-party neutral in mediations for Agree Inc., was a mediator in the ADR pilot project of the Law Society of Upper Canada and served on a Federal Government Mediation Panel.
Throughout her career, Mary Lynne has displayed an ability to handle conflict and to work with senior executives, managers, front-line supervisors and unionized and non-unionized employees. Her experience in three significantly different organizational cultures equips her to understand the perspectives of parties' positions at mediation and enables her to keep the process moving to probe their underlying interests.
Skills alone are not enough to be an effective dispute resolution practitioner. However, every successful mediator and trainer needs the following skills:
- professional competence
- strong mediation and training skills
- complete customer satisfaction
- willingness to travel
- independence and neutrality
- empathetic and effective communication skills
- attentiveness to people and their needs.
The combination of Mary Lynne's background and skills empowers her to provide uniqueness, capability and sensitivity to clients to guide them through the exploration of each other's interests and needs to the creation of an appropriate settlement. Mary Lynne enables parties to reach settlements that are mutually acceptable, fair and durable. |
