Models and insights

Practical ideas for listening, implementation, trust, and outcomes.

This is where George connects lessons from program operations, schools, community work, mediation, and facilitation.

Listening in practice

The Right Ear / Left Ear Framework

The framework gives mediators a concrete way to notice what they are hearing and what they may be missing. The right ear tracks facts, dates, amounts, timelines, documents, and commitments. The left ear tracks emotion, tone, fear, hurt, resentment, trust, and unstated needs.

Source note: Douglas A. Thompson taught the listening framework in UMass Boston's Mediation Theory and Practice course. George Boakye Yiadom wrote, synthesized, and designed the guide. This is a practitioner framework, not a peer-reviewed or proprietary theory.

Download the guide (PDF)

Detailed visual

Two listening channels, one mediation process.

The visual maps factual and emotional listening across mediation stages, caucus, emotional engagement, and self-assessment.

Infographic explaining the Right Ear factual channel and Left Ear emotional channel across mediation practice — The Right Ear / Left Ear Framework at a glance.

The central idea

Track the facts with one ear and the emotions with the other.

Professional backgrounds create dominant listening habits. Program operations sharpened George's attention to dates, details, documentation, participation, and follow-through. Restorative practice and mediation strengthened his attention to tone, fear, hurt, trust, and what is not yet being said.

Good listening is not choosing between facts and feelings. It is holding both long enough to understand what the situation actually requires.

The model is useful beyond mediation. Intake workers, managers, facilitators, and community partners all need to capture the record while also noticing whether the person in front of them feels heard.

From the field

Thinking that stays close to practice.

Implementation

Why Good Programs Break During Delivery

A look at the routines, roles, and feedback loops that turn a program model into consistent practice.

Community trust

Data Is Not the Same as Being Heard

Participation numbers matter, but they do not tell you whether people trust the process.

Program design

Start With the Why, Then Build the System

Purpose matters most when it becomes visible in roles, choices, tools, and daily behavior.

Start a conversation

Good models should change what people do next.

Contact George