Nanouk Cancian

Mediator

Employment Mediation
Team and Workplace Collaboration Conflicts
MfN Registered Mediator
Dutch- and English-speaking
Active throughout the Netherlands and internationally

This is how Nanouk
makes a difference

Engaged and connecting: Through her open, inquisitive approach and targeted interventions, Nanouk enables parties to get to the heart of what divides them in a trusted environment and helps them look ahead together.

Clear communication and analytical skills: She communicates clearly, monitors the progress of cases, and quickly analyses complex issues, providing structure and reducing tension between the parties. This creates space for dialogue.

Creative and solution-oriented: Nanouk creatively encourages the parties to seek a solution that is acceptable to both, based on their mutual interests.

About Nanouk

Employment, collaboration, and the dynamics that come with them in both international and national (changing) organisations have been the common thread throughout Nanouk’s career for many years.

She is an MfN Registered Mediator and employment lawyer with extensive experience in complex matters, including reorganisations, performance issues, incapacity for work, inappropriate behaviour, and workplace collaboration conflicts.

Nanouk is trained in the Harvard negotiation method, has completed a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) programme, and has extensive experience in dialogue training. She is able to recognise and make visible the underlying communication patterns of the parties involved. This enables participants to quickly get to the heart of the conflict and shift their focus from the cause of the conflict to the future.

Many conflicts arise from miscommunication, unfounded assumptions about one another, and differing perspectives. Intercultural differences can also play a role. According to Nanouk, a central challenge in mediation is breaking through selective perception: the pattern in which one's own, often negative, view of the other person is continually reinforced. By actively listening and using the right interventions, she guides parties from entrenched positions to their underlying interests, enabling them to make practical and sustainable agreements together.

Nanouk in her own words

“Conflicts become entrenched when parties see each other only through the lens of their own perspective. In mediation, I help participants break that pattern, understand the essence of the conflict, and, based on their mutual interests, look ahead together and reach practical and sustainable agreements. A solution that the parties have helped create themselves is more likely to endure in practice and therefore provides an excellent alternative to a unilateral decision imposed by a third party.”

Recent work

Mediation in employment disputes involving underperformance, damaged working relationships, redeployment, and incapacity for work;
Facilitation of workplace collaboration conflicts between teams within a changing organisation;
Mediation between members of the executive board;
Mediation in cases involving perceived inappropriate behaviour;
Mediation in a partnership dispute.