When Neutrality Isn’t Enough: Mediating High-Conflict Personalities with Joy Qiao

Joy Qiao is a volunteer mediator with the Los Angeles County Superior Court and a cross-cultural leadership strategist whose work bridges dispute resolution, higher education, and global media, bringing a multidisciplinary perspective to navigating complex conflicts, power dynamics, and communication across cultures.

In this interactive roundtable, Qiao explores a question many mediators and individuals quietly wrestle with: what happens when strict neutrality begins to undermine fairness? Drawing from personal experience, mediation practice, and her article When Neutrality Fails: Rethinking Mediation with Narcissists, she will lead a discussion on mediating high-conflict personalities, managing power imbalances, and maintaining the integrity of the mediation process. Participants will engage in case-based discussion and reflect on practical approaches such as boundary setting, strategic empathy, and adaptive process management when traditional neutrality is no longer sufficient.

This session fulfills part of the continuing education requirement for CDSC mediators. If you have any questions, please email us at cdscinfo@communitydispute.org.