The Program on Negotiation annually bestows its Great Negotiator Award on a distinguished practitioner of the art. The first honoree was former Senator George Mitchell for his role in fostering the Good Friday Accords that helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. Other diplomats have been honored since then, including the late Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Negotiators from other domains have been recipients as well, among them the late Bruce Wasserstein for his leadership in corporate restructuring, and the environmental artists Christo and Jeanne‐Claude for their vision and creativity in engaging the public in their work.
Our Great Negotiator events culminate in a celebratory dinner after a rich day of meetings, discussions, and seminars with the recipient. Carefully researched cases are prepared in advance. These sessions are videotaped as well, so that, over time, this project — led by our colleague James Sebenius — has yielded a trove of material for researchers and classroom teachers.
This past spring, the program honored former Secretary of State James A. Baker III for shepherding the reunification of Germany, building the international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and convening the first ever meeting between Israel and a dozen of its neighbors in the Middle East. In the panel discussions with Secretary Baker, participants paid understandable attention to large geopolitical forces and well‐crafted strategy. In addition, we were struck by how many of his accomplishments rested on his remarkable skill at relationship building, especially with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in the waning days of the Cold War. The candor, friendship, and personal trust the two men developed, notwithstanding their ideological differences, was central to their success.
I wish I could report that we cracked the code that allowed Baker to build such relationships. Yes, like some other impressive diplomats, he was persistent and pragmatic throughout his career. As to the former, he met with Shevardnadze dozens of times; as to the latter, he stressed the importance of understanding the constraints under which one's counterparts are functioning. But with Baker, it was all that and more, especially in regard to deep listening. “A dialogue,” he said at one point, “is not just two monologues.”
That epigram fits this issue of the Negotiation Journal neatly, as the articles offer complementary perspectives on relationships. In “The Walk in the Woods,” Leonard Marcus, Barry Dorn, and Eric McNulty describe a structured exercise for negotiation novices that illuminates how parties can develop a deeper understanding of one another's needs and interests. The “walk” approach can be taught in classrooms, as the authors explain, but also in the midst of an actual transaction or dispute.
In much the same spirit, a research report in this issue by Moritz Römer, Sonja Rispens, Ellen Giebels, and Martin Euwema (“A Helping Hand?”) shows how a leader's behavior can amplify or buffer conflict between his or her employees. Our own actions (or more specifically, perceptions of our actions) are signals that set the tone and boundaries for the acts of others.
In “Cultivating Dialogue,” Ran Kuttner inverts Baker's remark about a dialogue being more than the sum of two monologues. Drawing on Buddhist practices, Kuttner reminds us, if we are mindful, that what gets expressed as a monologue really may be part of an internal dialogue, as our own various thoughts and feelings compete for attention. Creating an environment in which those cross‐currents come closer to the surface can help us build closer connections with others.
Negotiation relationships, productive and otherwise, are shaped by the temperament, histories, values, and skills of the parties. Roles are important as well, as Ariel Macaspac Penetrante explains in his article “Simulating Climate Change Negotiations.” How the process is structured, he finds, affects the way that parties subsequently engage one another. Likewise, manipulating the status and voice granted to one group influences how that group, in turn, relates to others.
International negotiations are also the focus of Bertram Spector's recent book, Negotiating Peace and Confronting Corruption, reviewed here by Stephan Sonnenberg. The book compares a set of cases in which foreign aid was granted to postconflict societies, sometimes with anticorruption strings attached, sometimes not. The book concludes that such conditions have generally had a positive impact, at least in the medium term. For Sonnenberg, the jury is still out, although he commends Spector for illuminating a critical foreign policy issue.
The relationships that I have described to this point involve negotiations among individuals, groups, and, in James Baker's case, states and alliances as well. Laurence de Carlo writes in this issue about a different kind of relationship, one that is familiar to many who read and write for the Negotiation Journal, namely the relationship between teachers and their students.
In her essay on “Teaching Negotiation through Paradox,” she notes that those of us in the front of the room often work at cross‐purposes. We want to “put something into” our charges (concepts, frameworks, and techniques) but at the same time “pull something out” by encouraging them to be self‐aware and authentic. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “The test of a first‐rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind and still retain the ability to function.” De Carlo offers us wise advice on doing that better — at least in our classrooms.
