FAQs
Have a question about Big Little Insights or any of the services we offer? Find the answers to commonly asked questions.
Question Section Categories
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General questions about Big Little Insights and the services it offers.
Questions about mediation with Big Little Insights and how to choose a mediator.
Questions about coaching services with Big Little Insights and why choose Big Little Insights.
Questions about Big Little Insights' mediation style.
About Our Services
1. Q: What are your qualifications?
Trained at MIT, Harvard, and Oxford, Founder/CEO Jennifer Yeh has been a mediator since 2007 and a coach since 2015. She has a unique interdisciplinary background and experience dealing with polarizing, high-stakes situations. For more information about the background, visit the About Page of the service provider and founder of Big Little Insights Jennifer Yeh.
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For testimonials about the impact of the work of Big Little Insights, reviews can be found on the Client Testimonials page, on Google reviews, and on other review sites.
2. Do you have availability on nights and weekends?
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Yes, Big Little Insights offers services on nights and weekends. This allows flexibility for clients who work or are otherwise unavailable during business hours on weekdays and clients in different time zones.
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3. Q: How can I contact you if I have questions or concerns?
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Please contact Big Little Insights by emailing info@biglittleinsights.com or reaching out through the contact or relevant intake page on the Big Little Insights website directly for clarification on any of these policies. Once you fill out the intake form, we can set up a free discovery call.
4. Q: How can I settle my workplace dispute without going to court?
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For workplace disputes (communication breakdowns, performance conflicts, team tension):
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Mediation, facilitated conversations, ombuds services, and conflict coaching (both individual and team) are often faster and less adversarial than litigation or arbitration. Creating strong systems through organizational development can create systems that make sure that the work environment is healthy to prevent many conflicts from occurring in the first place. Just like proper planning is required for traffic accidents from happening (such as by placement or design of roads or stop signs), organizations and teams also need proper planning for how to resolve or prevent conflicts.
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Internal processes (HR, ombuds, peer resolution) can be strengthened with external support.
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Early intervention helps prevent escalation and cost. Leadership development training and coaching can improve the skills of leaders to resolve conflicts early and prevent conflicts from happening.
Big Little Insights supports
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Early, confidential intervention for teams, leaders, and organizations.
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Co‑designing better internal processes so future conflicts are handled more skillfully.
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Blending mediation, coaching, and other services with training (through the Big Little Insights signature service) so your organization builds internal capacity.
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Repairing relationship harm and culture after an adverse legal ruling.
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To learn about the conflict resolution services Big Little Insights provides, visit our Conflict Resolution Services webpage.
5. Q: Why shouldn’t we go with another, bigger company?
We provide a unique approach and application of services found nowhere else. Big Little Insights fills in the gap that other companies are not filling. Clients share that Big Little Insights services are able to reach the heart of their problems quickly, even those they had been struggling to address for decades or having a hard time formulating what the core issue was. Other firms may not have that talent, so you may be addressing issues that are not your real underlying issue, treating the symptoms or an unrelated issue rather than what truly pains you. You are likely to get cookie-cutter services from individuals who don’t have the extensive educational and work background that Big Little Insights provider Jennifer Yeh has, especially with her intersectional experience. You may find yourself paying more for services in the end, and those that are fragmented (rather than integrated together) when you could have gone to Big Little Insights first.
Big Little Insights acknowledges that many efforts require a joint effort, so feel free to hire everyone together, and Big Little Insights will be able to coordinate efforts. Even with our services, you may realize that you need additional experts and outside consultants. If, however, you only want to hire one company, feel free to go with the bargain brand and come back to us when you realize that you take the typical on-track approach and expect to see an untypical result.
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6. Q: Why should I hire you instead of having an existing employee internally do the work?
Different roles: Big Little Insights has a different role than employees internal to your company. In fact, the signature Big Little Insights process assumes that your employees will play a large role in its transformation. Big Little Insights can facilitate conversations across organizational silos and provide a third-party perspective.
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Outsiders with a different perspective needed: Sometimes, internal staff (e.g., DEI, legal, or HR folks) are too close to the issue. Their roles are different from what Big Little Insights would do (e.g., analytics or progressive discipline rather than organizational coaching and mediation). Conflicts of interest may be present. Employees may not trust HR to mediate a conflict (they do know how to mediate) when that HR person might then use the information to discipline the employee.
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If you already have internal staff working on DEI, but you still have a DEI issue, there is a blind spot your company has not addressed. You should obtain an outside, third-party perspective to help you spot those blind spots. Even coaches have their own coaches.
Different expertise: In addition, typically internal coaches provide career coaching and may not have the specialty expertise and coaching niches that Big Little Insights provides, such as those related to conflict, teams, organizations, executives, leaders, accessibility, and social identity issues.
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Capacity and impact on culture: In addition, your internal staff may also be overworked. We would expect that you would have someone internally, in addition to hiring Big Little Insights to carry out the everyday work and implement the progress made in sessions. Big Little Insights can help support capacity without leading to increased burnout, decreased morale, and diminished workplace culture by adding more work to already overworked individuals without more pay.
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For more information specifically related to DEI work, read the following: When to Hire a DEI Coach: Why Hiring an External, Organizational DEI Coach is Crucial for Your Company's Culture and Diversity and Inclusion Needs
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7. Q: Why would we want to air our dirty laundry?
Instead of framing services as a loss for trying to solve an operational issue or conflict, what would happen if you thought about what you would lose if you did not talk about or address the problem, conflict, or other issue you’re facing? The fact is that ignoring an issue does not always make it go away. Similar to visiting a dentist or doctor, sometimes ignoring a problem makes it worse over time. You should be prepared to know how to respond to common situations before they arise. Improving conflict management skills is one of the top requests from executives for coaching.
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Thinking about the gains might also help you answer this question for yourself: What would you gain by addressing your issue? You may discover that you would love the explosive growth, profitability, improved culture, peace of mind, more free time, and better morale and relationships that you see when you address your issue rather than staying stuck and miserable by avoiding it.
If you’re a federal contractor and you do not already have a system to ensure equal pay in place, you will not have time to overhaul your whole pay system by the time you receive a suspension or debarment notice.​
About Coaching with Big Little Insights
1. Q: What type of coaching do you provide?
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Big Little Insights provides individual, team/systems, and group coaching. Team/systems coaching can include work or other types of teams, organizations, couples or partners, and families, all having a relationship or working toward the same goal. Big Little Insights provides both short-term and long-term coaching. Short-term coaching is where the client chooses a different topic each session or is fairly straightforward or narrow in scope (e.g., identifying a team’s values). Long-term coaching is where clients have a complex topic (often involving many subparts or many people) that they want to achieve over the long-term, and the client keeps the same topic over time (although there may be different subtopics each session). For more information about long-term coaching, please read more about the Big Little Insights signature service. Big Little Insights also provides group coaching programs that can be ready-made or customized to a group.
Coach Jennifer Yeh is trained as a holistic executive, systems/team, life, career, and neurolinguistic programming (NLP) coach. The general niches she practices in include conflict, leadership, social identity (e.g., disability, race, gender/sex, religion), and relationship coaching. For more information about the examples of coaching topics, please visit our Issues Addressed Page: https://www.biglittleinsights.com/solutions.
2. Q: How long are your coaching sessions?
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Intake sessions typically take 1.5 hours. For individuals, coaching sessions typically run 1 hour per session with the potential for sessions as little as 30-minutes to about 2 hours for an intensive session. Typically, thirty-minute sessions are reserved for accountability check-ins or surface-level or logistical topics because the shorter sessions do not allow enough time for both diving deeply into a topic (especially to uncover a pattern or underlying root cause) and making an accountability or action plan. For group or team sessions, these sessions typically are at least 1.5-2 hours per session. However, half-day, full-day, or multi-day intensive sessions are available, such as for a retreat or to dive deeply into a topic or set up initial long-term processes.
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3. Q: How is coaching different from training or mentoring?
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Professional coaching (the same type of coaching as trained through ICF-certified coaches) is not directive. They do not tell the client what to decide, and they typically do not involve telling clients about the coach’s personal experiences. Training conveys knowledge (rather than evokes thought and awareness about the client’s needs, builds skill, and creates action plans through questions and observations) and also typically is on a generic topic that can be replicated to many audiences over time, rather than tailored to specific individuals. Trainers and mentors set the outcome while coaches work with clients to set the outcome with the primary responsibility on the client to determine what outcome they want. While Big Little Insights has preset training modules, it also offers tailored training to the needs of clients.
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4. Q: Why should we hire you as a coach or consultant instead of another company?
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The typical consultant leaves when you need the most help. Unlike others, we can work with you from start to finish. What we do is provide expertise in our hybrid methodology in which you will become aware of your own blind spots and generate and implement your own, tailored solutions that are customized to your specific organization’s issues. We work with you to address issues specific to your organization and can help bring together multiple stakeholders together. We do not leave you hanging to implement the solutions someone else designed, nor do we implement solutions for you or force you to implement solutions that do not apply to your needs. You can also hear from clients about what makes Big Little Insights different: Client Testimonials page.
About Mediation with Big Little Insights
1. Q: What is the procedure for setting up a mediation?
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All parties must first fill out the intake form and sign the engagement agreement. If one party or participant can fill out the intake form on behalf of all parties, the other parties or participants need to email Big Little Insights to confirm that they agree to have Big Little Insights mediate. Once all participants agree to mediation, they will need to coordinate with each other to propose some dates and times for mediation by Big Little Insights. If there is a potential dispute as to who should be at the mediation, the mediator can call a pre-mediation preparatory meeting to resolve these issues.
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2. Q: I have some questions about mediation. What can I do?
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If you have not yet hired Big Little Insights for your mediation services, please reach out by filling out the mediation intake form on our website or reaching out to Big Little Insights through the contact page. Please feel free to read this section to see if this answers the questions you may have about mediating with Big Little Insights. If you contact the mediator, please copy all parties so that they also hear the answer. Before a mediation, the mediator tries not to communicate with only one participant to maintain equal access for all potential participants.
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3.Q: Is virtual mediation available?
Yes, virtual mediations are conducted on Microsoft Teams at no additional cost. However, if you wish to use another program (e.g., Zoom), there will be an extra cost for the time and expenses to acquire and learn that program. If you already have a professional paid subscription and all participants agree to this other platform, Big Little Insights can use it at no extra charge if you grant host capabilities. However, there still may be extra charges for the extra time spent on gaining consensus amongst the participants and making sure everyone can access and use the other platform. If you want a specific video conferencing feature or technology that other parties do not want, you'll pay for that cost yourself.
4.Q: Is in-person mediation available?
Yes, but there are additional costs associated with an in-person mediation, as there are room rental, insurance, travel, and other costs associated with in-person mediations.
5.Can I find a discrimination mediation company open on the weekends?
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Yes. Big Little Insights offers weekend and evening mediation sessions for discrimination and workplace disputes. Because discrimination conflicts are often emotionally intensive and time-sensitive — and because the people involved (employees, managers, founders, HR leaders) frequently cannot take time away from work during business hours — Big Little Insights builds scheduling flexibility into its practice.
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6.Q: Is recording allowed?
No. Mediation is a confidential process, and anything said in mediation should not be able to be used outside of mediation. Therefore, sessions may not be recorded. However, the mediator will take notes to keep track of the issues raised in the session to facilitate a settlement. Those notes may not be used for litigation purposes if the parties do not settle.
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7.Q: How long does mediation take?
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It varies. Some mediations can be completed in one session, while others take more than one session. Some types of mediations (especially where emotions run high) may select shorter and multiple sessions. At other times, parties can select half-day or full-day sessions. Big Little Insights also has a four-hour minimum for Alameda County CMP cases. Drafting a settlement agreement typically takes at least 30 minutes to an hour with a boilerplate agreement and longer when the court or the parties do not provide their own standard agreement. Time to go over mediation procedures and rules and sign the agreement to mediate usually takes about 30 minutes to an hour. Discussing the actual topics can vary widely depending on the complexity of the case and the number of participants. Cases involving multiple participants, disputes, and supporting individuals or third-party stakeholders (e.g., interpreters, attorneys, insurance representatives) tend to take longer than those only involving two people plus the mediator.
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8.Q: How can I find the best mediator?
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Yes, Big Little Insights is available to mediate your dispute, and here is exactly what to look for in any great mediator, regardless of practice area.
The best mediator depends on what you are looking to get out of mediation. The best mediator is not necessarily the one with the most legal knowledge or litigation experience. Typically, the best mediator is the one with the strongest conflict resolution skills. Here is what actually matters:
What to look for in a great mediator:
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Not take sides and refrain from being judgmental: They are able to refrain from taking sides, not viewing the case as who should win and lose or who did right and wrong in the past. This can be especially difficult for someone who in their current or prior career was partisan (a long-time defense or plaintiff’s litigator or a leader of a specific political party) or was a judge telling others what to do. Not only does the mediator need this skill, but the participants also need to trust that the mediator can do this. Sometimes, if there is an internal staff member (e.g., a member of HR, an internal ombuds, a manager), employees can distrust that the mediator is truly neutral or impartial and can keep the dispute confidential.
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Active listening and presence. A skilled mediator hears what is said and what is not said, tracks emotional undercurrents, and helps parties feel genuinely heard, often for the first time in the dispute.
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Neutrality without passivity. Great mediators hold the space firmly, redirect unproductive dynamics, and challenge parties to stay in dialogue without taking sides or letting the conversation collapse. They are not directive; they do not take away your choice on what outcome you want and how to achieve it.
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Emotional intelligence. Disputes escalate because of emotion, not only facts or the law. A mediator who can read the room, de-escalate, and name what is happening without blame is far more effective than one who focuses only on legal arguments.
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Reframing skills and the ability to understand your conflict. The ability to translate a party's position into an underlying interest and help the other party hear it is the core skill of mediation. That means the mediator needs to be able to understand what you’re saying. That does not necessarily mean that the mediator needs to be familiar with the type of law that you are talking about but is knowledgeable enough to ask good questions and move the process forward.
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Creative problem-solving skills: Oftentimes, people attend mediation because litigation is not ideal. Even if the problem were to go to court, the solution would be lose-lose for everyone. For example, roommates would both be made homeless if they cannot agree on how to live together peacefully. A skilled mediator will know how to bring the parties together to brainstorm creative, tangible solutions so that they achieve a win-win (or at least an acceptable outcome to make the best out of a bad or less-than-ideal situation), rather than a lose-lose outcome.
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A clear process. Great mediators explain what to expect, set ground rules, and guide the conversation with structure so parties feel safe enough to be honest.
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Ability to refrain from bias: If the wrong mediator is selected, the mediator can victimize the participant more if the mediator is unable to check their biases and subconscious preferences. This can lead to one participant feeling doubly traumatized or harmed, such as in a discrimination case where plaintiffs already felt they were discriminated against by the defendant, and derail the mediation process. Selecting a mediator who can refrain from giving preferential treatment and unduly pressuring or making one side feel uncomfortable due to bias by the mediator (as well as who knows how to identify when the underlying reasons for a conflict are related to bias) is crucial.
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A focus on resolution, not victory. The goal is not winning an argument. It is designing an agreement that all participants can live with or repairing the relationship.
If price is a consideration for you, an evaluative mediator probably is not the best for you because evaluative mediation can take much longer than facilitative or transformative mediation, being more like an arbitration or mini court trial in length with added legal fees to hire a lawyer to draft briefs (which typically facilitative and transformative mediators do not request) and represent you in that type of mediation.
Myth to bust: "The best mediator is a lawyer or has legal training." Legal knowledge can help a mediator understand context or what the parties are saying, but it can also bias the process toward legal framing, positional bargaining, and risk assessment rather than genuine dialogue and mutual understanding. Lay parties often come into the dispute without being lawyers yet know how to talk about their dispute.
Many lawyers and judges complain about mediators with a legal background and lawyers participating in mediation for that reason and because they tend to find that litigation experience does not automatically mean that the mediator knows how to listen, refrain from telling parties their opinion on the subject matter, or how to collaboratively resolve disputes (instead of telling parties what they think the outcome should be). Unless you want an evaluative mediator to tell you the legal pros and cons of your case, being a litigator or former judge may not help (or rather be detrimental) to participants in resolving their cases.
Big Little Insights approaches every mediation as a conflict resolution process first, drawing on coaching, facilitation, and systems‑thinking methods to create conditions where parties can actually reach genuine agreements, not just legally sufficient ones.
Style of Mediation
1. Q: What style of mediation do you practice?
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Facilitative mediation, which means the mediator acts as a neutral who facilitates dialogue and empowers all parties to find common ground, rather than imposing solutions. This approach fosters collaboration and helps parties discover mutually acceptable outcomes that address their underlying needs and interests. A facilitative mediator can resolve the root cause of many types of conflicts—interpersonal, business, and legal—unlike arbitration, court, or evaluative mediation, which tend only to resolve the legal matters. Facilitative mediation tends to be cheaper for parties both in the short and long run and better equipped to deal with complex, multi-party disputes. Learn more in The Role of a Mediator in Conflict.
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2. Q: Are you an attorney?
Yes, the mediator Jennifer Yeh is an attorney. However, the role of the mediator is not to provide legal advice or represent any of the parties in the mediation. Mediation involves specific techniques to bring parties together that judges and litigators may never have learned, as they are trained to give advice rather than facilitate collaborative solutions.
Learn more: Not Just a Conversation: The Hidden Power of Mediators.
3. Q: Why should I choose facilitative mediation instead of arbitration or evaluative mediation?
Facilitative mediation is a low-risk, cost-effective, and often less-time-consuming alternative that preserves relationships and leads to lasting solutions. Unlike arbitration, where someone decides the outcome for you, facilitative mediation empowers you to take ownership of your own solutions and encourages creative problem-solving that addresses your real interests, including the root causes of conflicts beyond just legal issues. In other words, it’s not simply about whether something fits into a legal definition that determines whether a party is liable but rather what will resolve what caused the conflict to begin with, compensate for the harm done, or ensure the conflict will not happen again.
Facilitative mediation tends to be cheaper for parties both in the short and long run, better equipped to deal with complex, multi-party disputes, and uncover hidden information from parties that they would not willingly share otherwise to spur them to settle. The same case that might take a mediator a couple of hours could take an arbitrator or evaluative mediator months, and a judge several years. Arbitration, evaluative mediation, and court often involve attorneys, which increases the cost of a case.
In addition, litigation and arbitration are inherently risky, so even if someone receives advice one way in an evaluative mediation, the participant might have a different outcome with a judge, arbitrator, or before a jury. If all parties are already represented by counsel, choosing someone who will provide legal advice may add little additional value when parties can simply ask their own attorneys for advice. If one of the parties is unrepresented and does not value what the law says, having someone else tell them they think they will lose may not change the outcome and likely will not bring that party to want to settle.
Read more in our blog post: Moving from Adversarial to Collaborative Dispute Resolution.
4. Q: How is mediation different from arbitration?
In arbitration, an arbitrator decides the outcome for you, similar to going to court. In mediation, the mediator doesn't impose solutions but helps parties discover mutually acceptable outcomes themselves. Mediation preserves relationships and encourages accountability because parties take ownership of their own solutions. Additionally, arbitration tends to disfavor minorities and women with unfavorable judgments, especially with big-name arbitration organizations. A key benefit of mediation is that it's not binding—parties choose when and whether to settle, maintaining full control over the outcome.
Learn more in our blog post: Choosing Between Arbitration and Mediation for Your Dispute Resolution Needs