Inside a Confidential Training Consultation: What to Expect Before You Commission Team Training
Updated: 3 days ago
A confidential training consultation with Shiv Martin is a private scoping conversation, not a sales pitch. Information stays between the parties, nothing is published, and there is no obligation to proceed. It exists to work out whether in-house training, coaching, facilitation, mediation or a clearer management decision is the right response to what your team is facing.
Most heads of HR, L&D leads and government directors delay this conversation longer than they should. They worry that enquiring means disclosing sensitive internal detail before they are ready, or that they will be handed a glossy brochure and a published price list before anyone has understood the actual problem. Neither happens here. In my experience, the organisations that get the most value out of team training are the ones who talk it through properly first, before a single module is designed.
This article walks through exactly what happens inside a confidential training consultation with Shiv Martin: what is asked, what stays private, what you walk away with, and how to prepare for the call in about 20 minutes. It is written for decision-makers who are weighing up in-house conflict resolution training but are not yet ready to formalise a request.
Key takeaways
A confidential training consultation is a scoping conversation, not a sales pitch. Nothing discussed is published, and there is no obligation to proceed.
Not every workplace matter needs mediation. Some need coaching, some facilitation, some training, and some simply a clearer management decision.
Pricing is scoped to the cohort, sector and risk profile, never published as a flat rate, because a five-day tribunal-facing program and a half-day team session are not the same job.
The most useful thing you bring to the call is a plain description of what is actually happening, not a polished business case.
Delay compounds conflict. Clarity, delivered early and calmly, is kinder than a slow, careful silence.
Summary table: matching the response to the problem
Situation | Likely Response | What It Looks Like |
A pattern of tension in a team, not yet a formal complaint | Conflict coaching or facilitation | One-on-one or small-group sessions to build language and confidence before things escalate |
Two people in an entrenched dispute | Mediation or conciliation | A structured, neutral process to reach a workable agreement |
A whole team or cohort lacking shared skills | In-house multi-day training | Founder-led delivery built around the team's own legislation, case types and context |
A single manager struggling with a recurring dynamic | Conflict coaching | Confidential, individual coaching focused on that manager's next real conversation |
Allegations of misconduct | Investigation, not mediation | A fact-finding process, separate from any conflict resolution work |
Genuine confusion about which process fits | The confidential consultation itself | A scoping call to work out the right instrument before committing to one |
Why capability conversations stall
Most workplace conflict does not begin with a dramatic event. It begins with a small issue everyone quietly decides to manage around, and the delay is what does the damage. By the time someone finally raises it, people are reacting to the silence and the perceived unfairness as much as the original concern.
The same pattern shows up at the organisational level. A head of HR notices recurring friction in a team, or a director sees complaint volumes creeping up in a particular unit, and the instinct is often to wait. Wait for another data point, wait for the right budget cycle, wait until the problem is undeniable. The issue is rarely just the original conflict. It is the accumulated cost of not having a structured way to talk about it.
There is also a reluctance to enquire because enquiry feels like commitment. Decision-makers assume that picking up the phone means disclosing sensitive detail to an outsider before they have permission to, or that they will be pushed toward a program before anyone has confirmed it is the right one. That assumption is what keeps good teams stuck. Conflict is not a failure. It is often a signal that something has not yet been properly understood, and the sooner that signal is examined, the smaller the eventual intervention needs to be.
What 'confidential' actually means here
Confidential means the conversation stays between you and Shiv Martin. Nothing you describe is published, shared externally or used without your agreement, and there is no obligation to commission anything afterward. For politically sensitive or reputationally exposed matters, that discretion is the whole point of the call.
This matters more in government and regulated sectors than almost anywhere else. Roughly 80% of Shiv Martin's work is with government departments, ombudsman offices, commissions, tribunals and regulators, where a complaint pattern, a staffing issue or a jurisdictional sensitivity cannot sit in an inbox or a procurement portal before it has been properly scoped. A confidential consultation lets a director describe what is genuinely happening (a complaint spike, a fractured team, a legislative change nobody is ready for) without that description becoming a public record or a commitment.
There is no published price list, no generic proposal template sent before the call, and no expectation that you arrive with a fully formed brief. The confidentiality is designed to lower the cost of asking the question, not to obscure what happens next. What helps is treating the first call as diagnostic, not contractual.
The scoping conversation: what Shiv asks
A scoping conversation moves through a consistent set of questions: what is presenting, who is affected, what has already been tried, and what constraints (timing, procurement, seniority mix) shape the response. The goal is a clear diagnosis, not a quick sale.
In practice, that means working through the presenting symptoms first: is this a spike in complaint volumes, a recurring conflict between two senior staff, a team that has gone quiet, or a legislative or structural change that has left people undertrained?
From there, the questions get more specific. What themes show up in complaints or grievances, and how long have they been building? What is the seniority mix in the team, because a program for frontline complaints officers looks nothing like one for tribunal members? What has already been tried, whether that is an external EAP referral, an HR-led mediation, or nothing at all?
And what are the practical constraints: a budget cycle, a procurement panel, a board that needs a business case, or a hard date because new legislation takes effect in a defined window?
This is the same structure I use inside teams when a matter first surfaces, formalised as the Early Resolution Sequence: clarify the issue, understand what matters to the people involved, choose the right process, create structure around the conversation, support the people having it, and document the next step. Applied to a scoping call, it means we are not designing training in the first conversation. We are working out whether training is even the right tool.
Want to stay steady when a conversation heats up?
Staying calm when someone is angry with you is a skill, not a personality trait. My recorded course, De-escalation Skills for Difficult Conversations, gives you practical ways to respond to strong emotion without absorbing it, and to set clear boundaries when you need to. It is $180 (including GST), with a course guide and six months of access.
What you receive from the consultation
You receive an honest view on whether training is the right instrument at all, and if it is, roughly what shape it should take: a single facilitated session, a multi-day accredited program, or a referral to coaching, facilitation or conciliation instead.
Sometimes the answer is a full in-house program. A federal government department once needed tribunal-facing staff trained in mediation, and rather than send people out to generic external courses, we designed and delivered a five-day accredited mediation training program in-house, built around that department's own statutory context. The whole cohort trained together, inside their own regulatory frame, working with the case types they actually see. That is the flagship version of what a consultation can produce.
Sometimes it is narrower. An ombudsman office's complaints teams were fielding emotionally charged contacts daily, and what they needed was not a broad training suite but in-house communication and early-resolution training built directly on their own real case patterns, so teams gained shared language for their hardest conversations without anyone leaving the building.
And sometimes what surfaces during scoping is a genuinely new pressure: growing public-sector and business demand led to a dedicated Navigating AI in Complaints and Dispute Resolution program, covering fairness, evidence integrity and workload realities, now delivered both publicly and tailored in-house for regulators and complaints teams.
None of those outcomes were assumed before the first conversation. They were the result of it.
Why pricing is scoped, never published
Pricing is never published because no two engagements are the same job. A five-day accredited program for tribunal members carries a different risk profile, cohort size and design load than a half-day facilitation for a twelve-person team, and a single number could never fairly represent both.
A published price list also invites the wrong comparison. It positions in-house training as a commodity, priced against generic external courses, when the actual value sits in the tailoring: the department's own legislation, the office's own case patterns, the sector's own risk exposure. Government procurement processes, in particular, often require a scoped quote against a defined statement of work rather than a rate card, and that statement of work cannot exist before the scoping conversation has happened. Pricing follows the diagnosis. It does not precede it.
How to prepare in 20 minutes
You do not need a business case to have this conversation. Twenty minutes spent on three internal questions, and a glance at two documents, is enough preparation to make the call genuinely useful.
Ask yourself three things before you call. First, what is actually happening, described in plain language rather than HR terminology: is it a complaint theme, a personality clash, a structural gap, or something none of your existing labels quite fit? Second, who is affected and at what seniority, because that shapes whether the right response is coaching for one manager or training for forty staff. Third, what has already been tried, even informally, because that tells us what has not worked and why.
Then glance at two things before you dial in: recent complaint or grievance data if your team holds it, even a rough summary of themes and volumes over the last year, and any existing training or PD records for the group in question, so we are not proposing something that duplicates work already done. Neither document needs to leave your organisation before the call. Describing them is enough.
When you are ready, book a confidential, no-obligation consultation with Shiv Martin to scope what your team actually needs, whether that turns out to be training, coaching, facilitation, mediation, conciliation or a clearer internal decision.
Why scoping sometimes points away from training altogether
Not every matter needs the same process, and the hardest decision in dispute resolution is often not the outcome, but which process gets you there. A confidential consultation exists precisely to make that decision properly, rather than defaulting to whichever tool the organisation already knows.
I call this Process-Fit Distinctions: mediation versus investigation, conflict versus misconduct, early resolution versus avoidance, neutrality versus fairness, empathy versus agreement, and psychological safety versus comfort. Organisations regularly default to the familiar tool. If the culture is mediation-literate, everything looks like a mediation matter. If the culture is training-literate, everything looks like a training gap. Neither assumption survives a proper scoping conversation.
Consider a typical scoping call: a director describes a manager who keeps clashing with the same two staff members, and the initial request is for a team training day to "reset the culture". Working through the presenting symptoms, it becomes clear the issue is not shared across the team at all. It sits with one manager's conversational habits under pressure, a pattern that shows up in one-on-ones, not in group settings.
Group training would have addressed a problem that did not actually belong to the group, and would have cost that manager credibility in front of staff who were not part of the underlying dynamic. Individual conflict coaching, focused on that manager's next real conversation, is the better-fitted response.
The issue is rarely just the presenting complaint. It is usually something narrower and more specific once you look properly.
That is the value of scoping before committing. Good process creates safety, and safety is not created by matching a problem to the biggest available tool. It is created by matching it to the right one, at the right time, in the right structure.
FAQs
What happens if I enquire and decide training isn't the right fit?
Nothing is owed. A confidential training consultation carries no obligation to proceed, and if scoping points toward coaching, facilitation or a management decision instead, that is exactly what you will be told. The consultation exists to find the right response, not to justify a training sale.
How do I scope workplace conflict training if I'm not sure what the problem actually is?
Start with plain description rather than diagnosis: what is happening, who is involved, and how long it has been going on. The scoping conversation itself is designed to turn a vague sense of tension into a clear, workable process using a structured sequence, so you do not need a finished diagnosis before you call.
Is commissioning team training different for government departments compared to private enterprise?
Yes. Government and regulatory bodies, including ombudsman offices, commissions, tribunals and departments, usually need training built around their own legislation, case types and procurement processes, not a generic external course. Roughly 80% of Shiv Martin's work is with government, and in-house programs are shaped around each organisation's statutory context.
How do I make a dispute resolution training enquiry without disclosing sensitive internal detail too early?
A confidential consultation is built for exactly this. You can describe presenting symptoms in general terms first (complaint themes, team dynamics, timing pressures) without naming individuals or disclosing specific case files, and detail is only shared as far as you are comfortable.
How long does a typical in-house training program run?
It varies by cohort and purpose. Some engagements are single facilitated sessions, others are multi-day accredited programs delivered over a week, and the right length is determined during scoping based on the team's seniority mix, statutory context and existing skill level, not set in advance.
Do I need a business case or budget approval before I contact you?
No. The confidential consultation is designed to happen before formal approval, so the resulting scope and pricing can actually inform the business case, rather than the business case guessing at a scope that has not been defined yet.
References
National Mediator Accreditation System (NMAS) - the national accreditation framework for mediators in Australia: https://www.msb.org.au/
Resolution Institute - the professional body for mediators, conciliators and dispute resolution practitioners across Australia and New Zealand: https://www.resolution.institute/
Fair Work Ombudsman - guidance on workplace disputes and resolving issues at work: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/
Australian Human Rights Commission - guidance on workplace complaints handling and discrimination: https://humanrights.gov.au/
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