CONFIDENTIAL SUPPORT FOR STRENGTHENING SUPERVISORY RELATIONSHIPS
Graduate supervision is meaningful鈥攁nd complex. Supervisors regularly navigate evolving expectations, communication challenges, and difficult conversations, often without a clear place to pause or seek support. Common Ground is a confidential consultation service for graduate supervisors, delivered by the Workplace Restoration team within the Centre for Human Rights, Equity & Inclusion (CHREI) in partnership with the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS). It provides early, neutral, and non鈥慹valuative support to help supervisors address challenges before they escalate.
Program Overview
Common Ground is a confidential, early-intervention support service for graduate supervisors navigating relational challenges or conflict in graduate supervision. The service is delivered by the Workplace Restoration team within the Centre for Human Rights, Equity & Inclusion (CHREI), in partnership with the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS). It complements existing academic and policy-based processes by offering a neutral, restorative, and non-evaluative space for consultation, preparation, and facilitated dialogue.
Common Ground supports supervisors in making thoughtful and informed choices about how to respond, by providing a confidential space to reflect, prepare, and engage with situations constructively and with confidence before issues escalate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Purpose and Objectives
The service aims to support supervisors before issues escalate, strengthen supervisory relationships, reduce unnecessary formal escalation, and reinforce a relational culture of care and clarity in graduate supervision.
Who the Service is For
The service is available to Graduate Supervisors and Graduate Program Directors (GPDs). Graduate students do not access the service directly.
Services Offered
Services include confidential consultations, facilitated conversations, and practical tools to support strengthening the supervisory relationship.
Access and Intake
Supervisors may be referred through GPDs or may self-refer via email: commonground@yorku.ca or the
How Common Ground Can Help
You do not need to wait for a serious conflict.
Supervisors often reach out when they notice repeated miscommunication, growing frustration, unclear expectations, avoidance of difficult conversations, or when they want a neutral sounding board to think something through.
What the Service Is Not
The service does not investigate complaints, make findings of fact, replace formal processes, or engage in performance evaluation.
Who Delivers the Service
Common Ground consultations are delivered by the Workplace Restoration team within the Centre for Human Rights, Equity & Inclusion (CHREI).
Advisors on the Workplace Restoration team bring experience in:
- navigating complex workplace and academic conflict
- supporting individuals and teams through tension, breakdown, and repair
- facilitating difficult and high stakes conversations
- restorative and trauma informed approaches
The team works neutrally and non evaluatively, supporting supervisors to think through challenges, clarify options, and approach conversations thoughtfully and responsibly.
Role of Graduate Program Directors
GPDs promote awareness and can make referrals. They are not expected to mediate or manage cases. GPDs can also access Common Ground.
Confidentiality
The service is confidential with limits related to safety, harassment, discrimination, retaliation, or serious policy concerns.
Conflict in Graduate Supervision
Conflict is inevitable; how we respond to it is a choice.
Conflict in graduate supervision is not necessarily a sign of failure; it is often a natural part of working across different expectations, perspectives, and styles. When approached early and thoughtfully, it can be an opportunity to clarify communication, strengthen relationships, and even spark new ideas and approaches.
Conflict can open the door to positive change. To move through it with care, there needs to be a willingness to connect with the other person, with a mindset of something to learn, not to prove or win. Turning conflicts into connections paves the way to finding common ground, so how you approach your next conversation can be the difference between strengthening connection and closing the door.
Additional Resources
FGS Conflict Resolution Policy and Intentional Reparative Approach
Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS)