Teaching Negotiation through Paradox

In this article, I describe a way of teaching “deliberation”–a type of negotiation that occurs in public decision‐making processes in France¹–at the graduate level. I adopted these methods progressively over approximately thirteen years, but have not previously formally conceptualized them. I propose here to conceptualize them based on the psychoanalytical approach developed by Donald Winnicott and on ideas gleaned from my participation in a workshop with psychoanalysts and negotiation experts.² Winnicott's approach recognized and accepted paradoxes, which are central to this way of teaching. Indeed, for Winnicott, “what we feel and what can be observed to be true cannot be reconciled. Paradoxes are not meant to be resolved; they are meant to be observed” (Winnicott 1986: 148).

The paradoxes that I describe and explain here are the following:

• seeking to “put something into the students” (a strategic aim) by teaching them concepts, methods, and techniques, while simultaneously seeking to “pull something out from the students” (a personal development aim) by helping them to be more sensitive, self‐confident, and creative in their interactions with others;

• caring for the students while simultaneously causing them frustration;

• leading an interactive course while respecting those students who choose to remain silent;

• helping the students be more autonomous while manipulating them;

• accepting students' vulnerability while helping them develop their creativity; and

• as a professor, maintaining both closeness and distance at the same time.

By the end of the course, I have found that many students in the classroom have become better listeners who sincerely try to understand viewpoints different from their own, and more creative negotiators who are able to create more value in their negotiations.

This way of teaching through paradox can be related to Yiannis Gabriel's interest in reconciling “an ethic of care with an ethic of criticism as the basis of management education that is both interesting and socially useful” (2009: 384). Gabriel argued that the ethic of care, as well as the ethic of criticism, lies at the heart of the teacher–student relationship.

There are at least two types of negotiation learning. Negotiation can be learned as a group of techniques to be analyzed and tested out in class, then reproduced in real settings. These techniques are “put into the students.”

Negotiation training can also catalyze changes in students' behavior that involves a deep‐seated shift: from convincing the other to listening to her, from defending one's positions to being conscious of one's interests (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1981), from repeating behaviors to inventing new options, from behaving aggressively and/or shyly to displaying confidence, and from being locked into one type of reasoning to considering others. These profound changes occur when something is “pulled out from the students.”

These two kinds of learning are interlinked. Students will be unable to effectively apply such theoretical concepts as the seven elements of negotiation (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1981) or the tension between cooperation and competition (Lax and Sebenius 1986) in complex real‐life negotiations after using them in only a few short in‐class role plays. To determine when and how to use such concepts effectively in an actual negotiation, students must first feel the negotiation dynamic and recognize their own reactions and responses within that negotiation, which means identifying their own emotions in the negotiation (Kisfalvi 1993; Fisher and Shapiro 2005). Students will be better able to identify their emotions — and the emotions of others — and use them as a basis to understand negotiation settings if they have first had practice doing so in classroom settings. Having opportunities to engage in a reflective process about their classroom experiences is also helpful.

Deliberations in public decision‐making processes in France are long and complex, and involve a large number of diverse actors and constraints. Creativity is vital in such conditions. In the deliberations classes I teach, I use paradox to acknowledge conflict. I also use paradox to highlight the negotiation concepts that I examine with the students. In particular, I focus on Georg Simmel's (1992) theory of conflict. Simmel described conflict as a necessary component of social interaction and as such preferable to indifference.

The core of the “Deliberation and Local Democracy” course is the specific deliberation shown on the CD‐ROM La Francilienne (de Carlo 2005). This simulates a deliberation over a highway project that, in real life, lasted six years, from 1990 to 1995, and involved various actors in the decision‐making process. The goal of the players in the simulation is to make recommendations to the Ministry of Transport about the layout of a highway that will connect two cities twenty kilometers apart northwest of Paris. The scenario is neither pure negotiation nor mediation, but involves a complex decision‐making process.

The course is an elective master's level course and comprises ten class sessions lasting two and a half hours each. Approximately thirty students are enrolled in each class. I have no teaching assistants. The students usually work in groups of two at the same computer, with each pair sharing one role in the simulation.

The simulation has four phases. In the first three phases, students review the information provided on the CD‐ROM, meet and debrief, and record their experiences in individual logbooks. In the fourth phase, students organize a press conference. Each phase has six roles, and students change roles two or three times during the simulation.

The CD‐ROM itself is used in the final seven class sessions. The first three sessions examine the history of French public decision‐making processes in regional and urban planning since the 1960s and include a comparison with Quebec's deliberation processes.³ Two cases on paper are used during these three sessions.

During the first session, I present the course's pedagogical and administrative framework. I introduce such key concepts as bounded rationality (Simon 1974) and double‐loop learning⁴ (Argyris and Schön 1978). I tell the students that they will work in a context of bounded rationality, just as they will in real‐life settings, and they will not have all the information or time they would like to make their decisions. Developing the students' capacity to adopt double‐loop learning is one of the teaching aims of the course. Students seldom understand the concept initially because it is too abstract, but they usually come to understand it as the course goes on.

During the fourth class session, we begin working with the La Francilienne case. The first CD‐ROM screen contains links to videos, to the logbook each student is expected to write, and to texts, maps, and photos. When they log on, they are informed of the state's decisions for the previous phase. These decisions depend on the level of agreement (the parties propose an agreement; they decide to pursue the exchanges; some of them reject the deliberation process) reached by the parties in the previous phase but not on its precise results.

After each debriefing, students have access to the methodology sheets, which summarize theories and methods relevant to that particular part of the exercise as well as all the information for previous phases. Students are, thus, encouraged to actively engage in reflective thinking while writing their logbooks. They can use the concepts and methods to analyze their past experience, and they are informed of the whole context of that experience.

The information provided to students is limited to what they receive through the CD‐ROM, and each is only given information pertinent to his or her role. This exercise provides more overall information than a simulation on paper, and students must find (via links), organize, and rank this information themselves. Consequently, they must take greater initiative and participate more actively than they would in the typical simulation on paper.

In teaching through paradox, the classroom functions as a “transitional space,” which Winnicott (2001) defined as a space of creation and analysis. In his psychoanalytic theory of infant development, Winnicott referred to the transitional object as “the first object in object‐relationships [. . .][situated] in the intermediate area between the subjective and that which is objectively perceived” (Winnicott 2001: 3). For René Kaës (in Amado and Ambrose 2001: 64), transitional thinking concerns “the passage from a state of union with the environment to a state in which the subject relates to it as something external and separate.” Maud Mannoni (1979) argued that the transitional (or potential) space is not only where the child discovers the difference between himself and the world, but, in psychoanalytic terms, a separation between the baby and his mother permitted by the transitional space that also allows creativity. It is a place for analysis, playing, and dreaming. More specifically, “in order to give a place to playing,” Winnicott postulated “a potential space between the baby and the mother” (Winnicott 2001: 41).

Given these definitions, some class settings can be compared with transitional spaces for adults who have already moved through transitional spaces — first, as children with their caregivers, and then in other situations with teachers, mentors, colleagues, and friends. Adult students, of course, unlike babies, can use language to work through and assign meaning to their experiences.

Although the classroom is an institutional environment with its own rules, it does, in some ways, reproduce aspects of the potential space from infancy, with the professor caring for the students to help them cope with the frustrations of learning new ideas and skills, with the aim of helping them be more effective in negotiation and creative in life.⁵

According to Winnicott's theory, the “good‐enough mother” helps the baby progressively accept her own vulnerability and the frustrations she encounters in the environment. With negotiation students, who are typically adults, the professor tries to create a setting that simultaneously includes caring and frustration from the outset.

The authority exercised by the professor also plays a role in how the classroom functions as a transitional space. The psychoanalyst Gérard Mendel (2002) wrote that authority can address an individual's feelings of abandonment. When a person submits himself/herself to authority, according to this theory, he/she will receive love and feel protected against abandonment. According to Mendel, limited authority offers protection against feelings of abandonment without taking control over individuals. It is limited, “strict but fair,” contractual, and reciprocal, with clearly defined known rules. Another type of authority is unlimited, arbitrary, violent, and excessive. Mendel points out the dangers of the second type of authority, which can include imposing a climate of general anxiety that causes individuals to repress their fear, which impedes their autonomy and creativity. He argues that the first type is necessary to create psychological security.

Authority, as defined here, is a fundamental dimension of a transitional space in general and of the classroom dynamic in teaching through paradox in particular. In teaching through paradox, the professor's authority is bounded by the institutional rules, which are typically explained during the first session and repeated when necessary throughout the course. These rules frustrate the students but at the same time contain them and provide the security that makes creativity seem less risky.

Predictably, creating an environment that is both nurturing and frustrating can generate conflict. Students sometimes clash with each other, for example, when one cannot accept another's point of view and becomes verbally abusive against him/her or when a student is unable to recognize another party's interests. Students in such situations behave defensively, being unwilling or unable to be self‐reflective without expressing their opposition vocally.

In these cases, the professor can be aware of — that is, feel — the student's frustration and will typically display concern for him/her. The professor may speak generally to the entire class about the issue that is causing the student's turmoil, in terms of “we,” so that the student concerned does not feel singled out or accused.

The professor should also acknowledge the legitimacy of students' feelings; for example, he could explain that all humans have convictions and all want in good faith to convince others that their attitudes and beliefs are legitimate. This approach displays recognition and respect for the student. The professor can tell the students about a time when he/she was unable to convince someone of the legitimacy of his/her viewpoint and, conversely, how another time someone's insistence on changing his/her views made him/her feel that he/she was not being listened to nor recognized. By not only listening to the students but by feeling what is happening in the classroom and by intervening effectively, the professor plays the role of a “good‐enough mother” in Winnicott's words, that is, the container of the transitional space.

Although students have chosen the course, they may not fully understand the particular teaching method that will be used (i.e., simulations), and they may find that it does not particularly suit their own learning style. Thus, the professor must accept that the appropriateness or effectiveness of various learning processes will vary from student to student. Self‐reflection is instrumental in the course because it enables students to identify their feelings and use them to understand their own responses in negotiation settings. But those who do not wish to be self‐reflective themselves will have the opportunity to observe others engaged in self‐reflection and learn in that way. Some may never become comfortable with self‐reflection in an academic setting, while others may become more comfortable with self‐reflection as the course goes on, and others may gain enough comfort to engage in it later in a different course.

One of the main paradoxes of this teaching approach is that it involves taking care of and frustrating the students at the same time. These are not teaching aims, but means used by the professor to offer the students a constructive learning experience.

The nurturing dimension should help students undertake potentially difficult processes of self‐reflection. In a warm, secure environment, the students should feel safer accepting their emotions and more open to others' emotions. They should feel less need to defend themselves against their own and others' emotions, especially rationalizing them and applying “formulas.”

Nurturing the students can take various forms, which will depend on the professor's feelings about the class. The teacher may demonstrate caring by adapting the pace of the course to the students' collective learning processes, spending longer on one phase and less on another if necessary. For example, if students are engaged in and interested by a detailed debriefing at a specific phase of the simulation, the professor can spend more time on this specific debriefing, proposing more concepts and methods at that stage and afterward skipping another phase of the simulation, and giving a brief oral presentation instead.

It is also possible to recognize and acknowledge a student's anger and encourage him/her to consider what has made him/her angry and why, without making him/her feel guilty about his/her feelings.

The professor need not give precise advice to the students at the end of an intervention, but in an open‐ended way ask the students to revisit or reconsider a challenge they have faced in a negotiation exercise, thus encouraging their own self‐reflection. Nonadvisory behavior of this kind can frustrate students who often want quick and easy formulas for how to improve their negotiation skills. The professor can acknowledge this frustration and help students manage it by emphasizing the nonlinearity of learning processes, but he/she is also willing to limit his/her intervention in a potentially frustrating way for the students.

The professor may also frustrate his/her students by not answering some questions directly. Instead, he/she will encourage students to pursue their questions, conceptualize them, or even enlarge them, finding that there may yet be no definitive answer. The goal is for them to be active players in their own experience, to use their feelings and reasoning to better understand the situations in which they find themselves.

The choice of not answering students' questions leads to situations in which some students cannot find a solution (agreement or proposal for an agreement) in their negotiation experiment — another source of frustration. This experience can be rich for them regarding learning, as they are engaged in a reflective process, but uncomfortable or painful to live through at the time. Their pain is acknowledged, expressed, and analyzed, and worked through during debriefings or in private conversations that bring the students to accept it, work through it, and transform it into knowledge.

In the process of converting classroom experiences into lasting skill development, students often need time to evolve and to process those experiences, and during that time, they may choose to remain silent. Other students will want to discuss those experiences, to process them verbally. Depending on my sense about the needs of the quieter students, I will either encourage them to talk or leave them alone, perhaps encouraging them to speak with me one‐on‐one after class.

Admittedly, tolerating silences can be a challenge for teachers because they very often judge the effectiveness of a lesson — whether the students “got it”— by the content and quality of classroom discussions. Also, teaching a lively class rather than standing in front of a silent group of students gives the professor a greater feeling of confidence.

But forcing a student to talk could pose too much of a challenge to that students' sense of autonomy. Students are encouraged to recall feelings they experienced in a past negotiation setting, analyze this experience, and achieve subsequent change. But they have the right to refuse to talk about their emotions in front of the entire class, as “fear of failure or of looking foolish in front of their peers [. . .][presents] a major threat to their self‐esteem” (Kisfalvi 1993: 17). Some come to talk during the break or after class, or the professor can go and talk with them in small groups or individually. Also, they can write about their individual change processes in their journals.

Lack of oral communication by students may reflect a process that Winnicott characterized as “active non‐communication” (Winnicott 1970: 152). According to Winnicott, communication is often associated with compliance. In the classroom setting, forced communication can create a demanding environment in which the students may feel that their only aim is to fit in. Thus, the student who feels forced to speak in such an environment may communicate a “false self,” a “defense designed to protect the true self” (Winnicott 1986: 33).

To avoid communication based on the false self, students are not forced to talk in front of the others but are encouraged to try to express their feelings in specific situations. Even with such encouragement, students sometimes simply want to fit in, to please the professor. For example, when the professor thinks a student appears from his/her words to be listening to another person (“I am listening to you”) but is in fact ignoring the other's point of view (“Yes, but that doesn't matter”), the teacher will choose to encourage that student, recognizing his/her efforts to listen.

Later, he/she can talk to him/her individually, or talk to all the students if others are also concerned, in order to engage him/them in reflexive thinking (“What, in your opinion, was your colleague trying to tell you at that moment?”). The importance of this new information and how to take it into account can then be discussed. Not all the students concerned will participate in the conversation: some need time, listening to the others, in order for their stance to evolve, while for others, it may not be the right time to build listening skills.

This practice has implications for debriefings, a widely used feature of negotiation classes. In debriefings, the professor talks and listens, and often evaluates students' participation. Here, assertiveness is evaluated at another level: seeing whether the students are able to develop new ideas and ways of understanding and solving problems.

The classroom setting itself can be considered as a place of manipulation. The professor has his/her own learning objectives and wants the students to attain them. In order to succeed, he/she uses manipulation (e.g., orienting the discussion in order to attain his goals), whether consciously or unconsciously. How can the teacher both simultaneously manipulate his/her students and respect their autonomy to improve their learning?

Kaës and his colleagues (1997) described the teacher's fantasies in teaching situations. One of them is the fantasy of omnipotence, in which the teacher sees the student as an object to be taught, denying him/her the possibility of being a subject, effectively becoming like the mythic sculptor Pygmalion whose sculpture metamorphoses into a woman.

Manipulation is of particular concern when using role plays and simulations, as students choose neither their roles nor the way they are defined. Role plays and simulations often require students to take on roles of people whose personalities, rationales, and emotions may be quite different from their own. Students will feel less manipulated if they are aware of the context in which they study and of their realistic power in this context. For example, at a specific phase of the simulation, students must not follow all their given instructions if they want to reach a proposal for agreement. They have to invent an option that contradicts their instructions. The debriefing that follows is an opportunity to discuss autonomy with them.

The professor reduces the threat of manipulation that role‐play simulations create by emphasizing the role of play in a negotiation classroom, as well as the pedagogical benefits of role‐play simulations. Winnicott defined the healthy individual as one with “the ability [. . .] to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person, also to allow the other person to do the same to us” (1986: 117). Autonomy can be defined here as the capacity to be a “healthy person” in Winnicott's words while remaining true to oneself, being assertive, and accepting one's own feelings and rationales without being on the defensive or overpreoccupied by others' perceptions of oneself. The professor can give more space to students' autonomy to develop, for example, by participating himself/herself in role plays during the course, seeking to display the openness to risk and vulnerability that this involves.

Often, negotiators feel vulnerable when contemplating confrontation with the other party (Leary and Wheeler 2003). Their self‐esteem is under threat (Hansell 2002). Some negotiators may feel impotent, while seeing the other party as omnipotent.

Students likewise sometimes feel impotent and vulnerable for two different reasons: they feel limited by the constraints imposed upon them by the role, and they are unable or unwilling to engage openly with their counterpart. In the first case, students may argue that the definition of the role is unrealistic or that it is almost impossible for them to play a role so different from their own experiences. In the second case, they may use the preparation phase to anticipate the other party's discourse, but during the actual encounter, they may fail to listen to the other party and instead focus on their prepared arguments. They try to dominate the situation and the other party.

I have observed that in the simulation I use, students who seem to be more comfortable playing their roles approach the simulation more creatively. On the other hand, the more reluctant students seem less likely to engage in creative problem solving. These students' progress in terms of creativity (and, therefore, also in negotiation and especially in deliberation, for which creativity is an important factor) is marked by their capacity to be more comfortable and enthusiastic playing their roles at the end of the simulation.

Playing, according to Winnicott, releases the tension that arises when “inner realities” conflict with the external world (Winnicott 1989). Those who succeed in “playing” earlier during the course may learn more because they are able to release this tension sooner than those who do not.

M. Robert Gardner (1994) learned important lessons about teaching from being a grandfather. With his grandson, he learned the grandparental principle, which signifies “teach as a grandparent, not as a parent” (1994: 69), which he defined as following his grandson's “learning agendas” rather than being preoccupied by his own parental “teaching agendas.” To attain this state, a teacher should have the capacity of being “half asleep,” which makes us open to other people's needs and in particular to students' “hidden questions” (1994: 82). Gardner thinks that it is possible “from time to time” for a teacher to act as a grandparent by organizing his/her courses precisely but diverge from his/her plan in order to be open to his/her students' needs.

He/she can adjust to the classroom dynamic while knowing that if, for some reason, the students arrive in class tired or overexcited, for example, he/she can fall back on planned exercises and a precise schedule. This “not slavishly followed” design provides a safety net for the professor while encouraging students by example to take risks and pursue their own reflective processes. His/her capacity to take these risks, of course, can depend on such factors as the size and dynamics of the class.

The professor's institutional status, of course, creates a distance between him/her and the students — this will typically be a familiar and reassuring relationship for students, who, by the time they take a negotiation course, have clocked many hours in the classroom. But this distance does not preclude closeness.

Kaës, Anzieu, and Thomas (1997) argued that becoming too close to students can be dangerous: it could give them the illusion that all their needs will be satisfied by the professor, forgetting their own desire and autonomy in favor of the illusion of being totally understood. The professor's authority, as well as his/her expertise and knowledge in the subject he/she is teaching, help him/her maintain an appropriate distance from students.

Humor offers a way to be both close and distant at once; I often use humor during the course to deal with this paradox, playing different roles, for example. Marianella Sclavi (2008: 166) argued that, in conflict management, “active listening and creative conflict transformation [. . .] suggests involvement and detachment and displacement to reach the multiplication of frames, the exploration of other possible worlds and constructive meta‐communication.” Because “humor challenges our frames” (2008: 169), Sclavi advised following a “humor‐based methodology” (2008: 179).

Similarly, I argue that using paradox to teach negotiation invites the use of humor in negotiation courses. A professor can use humor to deflect students' demands, not answering them directly. But he/she can also use humor to bond with his/her students. As mediator Karen King (1988: 120) wrote, “humor that bonds individuals together in a dispute resolution setting increases the likelihood of a positive outcome.” In teaching through paradox, humor can help students cope with their frustrations when the teacher refuses to give them easy answers and they must search for their own.

For example, when a group of students realize they have been misled by another group that lied to them during a simulation, the professor can display care and closeness by acknowledging the legitimacy of the betrayed students' discomfort, perhaps by noting that betrayal is difficult for everyone and can leave one feeling angry and alienated. He/she could then use humor — thus, adding some distance — to lighten the atmosphere. For example, he/she could tell the students a funny story about when he/she felt betrayed as a negotiation student. By “not taking herself too seriously,” he/she reduces slightly the distance between him/her and his/her students.

One of the professor's aims is that the students should encounter the two sides of the paradoxes almost simultaneously because, in my experience, if one side of the paradox dominates for too long, equilibrium must be regained. In particular, with too much frustration, the students become too tense and do not listen as attentively. When there is too much closeness and too much comfort, they ask less challenging questions.

The risk of displaying too much closeness and caring is that it may encourage too much confidence in students, making them feel omnipotent (i.e., “I understand everything, and I will be the best negotiator”). Conversely, if the professor is distant and allows the students to become too frustrated, they may become underconfident and feel impotent (i.e., “I'm unable to apply these concepts, and I won't ever be able to negotiate well”). The goal is for them to develop the capacity to create agreements by being open to the real possibilities in their environment, feeling neither impotent nor omnipotent, but with a limited and realistic sense of their own power.

Teaching negotiation through paradox is a pedagogical approach that puts the teacher's paradoxical stance at the center of the students' learning process. Teaching through paradox seeks to recognize and help students develop their subjectivity and creativity through reflective examination of their own emotions and reasoning. Teaching through paradox can include encouraging play and using humor as ways of promoting active listening and creative conflict transformation (King 1988; Forester 2004; Sclavi 2008).

Design of and involvement in a “teaching through paradox” course requires the professor to situate himself within these paradoxes. He/she must be as alert as possible to his/her own and the students' feelings and to the class dynamic. This enables him/her to perceive what is happening in the classroom, in interactions between the students and with himself/herself, and thus adapt his/her own interventions in real time.

I suggest here that the negotiation classroom can function as a “transitional space” (Winnicott 2001) that seeks to help student negotiators situate themselves between extreme self‐perceptions of impotence and omnipotence, and develop a realistic understanding of negotiation settings and their place within them. Elements of this approach are likely to be already practiced by many negotiation teachers — I do not claim that these are all totally new pedagogical approaches. Rather, I seek to bring out and put words to certain dynamics and stances that may be common but are not often discussed or verbalized, and to provide a theoretical background for them.