About Us

Linda Olden-Smith founded TRUCE Dispute Resolution Firm, LLC & Institute (TRUCE) in 2001.  The purpose of founding this organization was to establish a quality-controlled mediation roster to serve TRUCE's diverse client base, including government, corporate, and private entities.   Olden-Smith has conducted over 15,000 mediation sessions and staffed mediators from her roster to serve her large organizational clients. Inspired by the Transformative Mediation Approach, she sought to model her practice after this approach.

Through in-depth research and testing, she developed a method for evaluating mediator practice to establish consistent quality control standards. This research and testing revealed several other amazing dynamics that apparently were not considered in the Transformative Approach. Among them is the systematic application of treatment to foster a mental environment that contains and blocks natural human bias, allowing mediation practitioners and mediator technicians to demonstrate impartiality more reliably. Other powerful dynamics also began to emerge,. These dynamics include minimizing unnecessary, unproductive banter that tends to devolve into posturing and entrenchment and strategies to capture the discussion focus productively on the most immediate "now" experience.  

After applying this approach to hundreds of cases, documenting and experiencing the remarkable effects, Olden-Smith developed and coined the Thought Resolution Protocol™ mediation approach. She then wrote about the discoveries in a book titled "Playing the Resolution Card - Mediating Disputes with the Thought Resolution Protocol." She submitted the book in a blind review to the Texas Bar Association in 2008.  The review was published in the State Bar of Texas Alternative Resolutions Magazine, Volume 18, No. 1, Winter 2009 issue. The approach was  touted as "not short of ingenious" and "This protocol presents the mediator with a more-viable means by which to consider 'resolution' itself."

Years later, more amazing dynamics surfaced. The book has been rewritten and retitled. The core protocol is the same, but the book's title is now Surpass Impasse—Mediating Disputes with the Thought Resolution Protocol™. This book is now in its third edition and is currently available on Amazon.com in print and E-Book formats. 

Olden-Smith has also released the Surpass Impasse Mobile App on the App Store and Google Play Store.  This app is a search tool for mediators using the Thought Resolution Protocol™ to quickly locate conflict cues and resolution points that tend to surface in a dispute discussion and then to search and find the strategically structured, systematic mediator intervention language to treat these cues.  

This systematic mediator intervention language fosters an impartial, safe, and productive mental environment whereby the parties' self-empowerment and self-determination are maximized. When this occurs, the parties can easily achieve clear resolution and the natural, mutually satisfactory, enduring, and secure result of the settlement agreement.