Developing a strategy for negotiations – online workshop, Gaza, 12th August 2020
On Wednesday 12th August 2020, Forward Thinking facilitated an online workshop for contacts in Gaza with Professor Alain Lempereur. During the meeting, over 20 participants explored principles for developing an effective negotiations strategy. This meeting was part of Forward Thinking’s work creating capacity-building opportunities for political leaders in Palestine.
The workshop outlined three main ‘pillars’ to negotiations: people, problems, and process. Negotiators must be willing to engage people through actively listening, empathising, and convincing. They must also work to solve problems both at the table and away from the table. Finally, they must facilitate an effective process, paying close attention to those that they are negotiating with, as well as the groups they are representing and negotiating on behalf of. Participants took part in a negotiations simulation exercise to contextualise their learning and better understand how negotiations strategy can work in practice.
The meeting was the first in a series that we will be organising in the coming period.
Professor Alain Lempereur is the Professor and Director of the Conflict Resolution and Coexistence Programme (COEX) at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Police and Management. He is an affiliated faculty and executive committee member of the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School. Over the last 25 years Alain has conducted consultative missions and training for several international organisations including UN agencies, NGOs, and national governments on conflict reconciliation.