We are in negotiations everyday, with family, friends, and especially colleagues. While negotiating, it is important to do so in such a way that the needs and wishes of both parties are met, so that the relationship continues in a positive way.
In a business environment, it is necessary that you, as a negotiator, concentrate on the quality of the deal, rather than being focused on just closing the deal. Keep the following Dos and Don’ts in mind when negotiating a deal.
View negotiations as a collaborative process.
Rather than taking an adversarial approach in order to be successful in business negotiations, it is always advisable to take a collaborative approach. This allows both parties the space to work together towards creating deals that are beneficial to all, and thus creates more value in the long run. To adopt this approach, organizations need to build the skills of negotiators, and also ensure that a standard negotiation process is followed.
Don’t focus on driving a hard bargain.
The focal point should be on effectively working together to be more productive once the deal has been concluded, rather than driving a hard bargain. The negotiations should aim at achieving something greater, rather than just signing on the dotted line. It will be immensely helpful if you, as a negotiator, decide prior to sitting down for negotiations what you need from your corresponding team, and how you can fill in what they require. By trying to understand the needs and limitations of the opposing side, you as a negotiator will be able to work out solutions that meet the needs of both parties. This will ultimately foster a positive environment, and lead to building strong working relationships.
As a negotiator, you should carry out negotiations in a justifiable manner, rather than using coercion, thereby creating a healthy working relationship. Carrying out negotiations in a justifiable manner will be immensely helpful in sorting out problems that might arise during the implementation stage.
Adopt a two-pronged approach to negotiations.
As a negotiator for your organization, you will need to adopt a two-pronged approach to negotiations—getting the best possible deal for your organization, and creating a cordial and strong working relationship that will enable both parties to peacefully work together. You, as a negotiator, will have to believe that getting a good deal for your organization and creating a healthy working relationship are not mutually exclusive. As negotiations are a prelude to future exchanges, you will have to ensure an amicable relationship with the other party. You cannot assume that you can repair relationships after coercing a deal.
Ensure adequate stakeholder representation from both sides.
In a fruitful negotiation, negotiators as well as implementers have to be present to ensure that the needs of the project are aptly represented, and the commitments made on the negotiating table are capable of fulfilment. As a negotiator, you will have to ensure that an adequate number of stakeholders from both sides take part in the deal making process.
Don’t ignore the difficult issues to seal a deal.
In negotiations, it is worthwhile to confront the difficult issues, rather than ignoring or minimizing them to seal the deal. As a negotiator, it is important for you to raise the potential problem areas and iron out probable solutions with the other side. Always bear in mind that by ignoring risks and problems, you do not make them go away. Therefore, work together with the other side to address the risks and problems, and identify ways and means to iron them out.
If your organization has a reputation of being fair and honest, you will find it much easier to negotiate a win-win deal for your organization. If the other party feels that you are not being fair to them, they might not be willing to give you any concessions. The attitude of fair play is very important in negotiations, and is a major key to making a successful deal.
Stitt Feld Handy Group offers comprehensive negotiation training for small businesses and individuals. Contact us today if you need assistance in employing these negotiation tactics for your small business.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
I just returned from another fascinating experience teaching in Ethiopia. While I’m not yet over the jet lag (I got back last Friday), I’m also not over the excitement. Ethiopia is a wonderful country with proud people. We have much to learn from them.
The course I taught was an introductory arbitration course. We were invited by our Ethiopian partner, the Ethiopian Arbitration and Conciliation Centre (EACC) to conduct the course. Participants did not pay a fee to attend, but did agree to conduct one free arbitration for the EACC in return for being able to take the course. The participants were both lawyers and non-lawyers (engineers, architects, business-people). While English is not their first language (it’s Amharic), they have had their University education in English so language was not a big issue.
The debates in the course were lively, the group was energetic and the participants’ questions were sophisticated and challenging. Issues such as whether three arbitrators are better than one become a lot more difficult when the discussion centered on which option reduces the likelihood of the arbitrators accepting bribes (the group consensus was that three arbitrators is better because it’s harder to bribe three arbitrators than one).
My teaching colleague (David Haigh) and I conducted mock arbitrations where we left it to the group to analyze the evidence, apply the law, reach a decision and write reasons. The participants took their tasks very seriously and wrote well-reasoned decisions.
I had the good fortune to visit an orphanage and some schools for underprivileged children. We really enjoyed our time with the children who certainly seemed to enjoy our company (and the gifts we brought).
My wife, daughter and I were invited to the house of Dr. Rick Hodes for a wonderful Friday night dinner. Rick is an American-trained doctor who lives in Ethiopia, helping those who most need his help at the Mother Teresa Mission (among other things). He has adopted a number of the children he’s saved and pays for many of the children to go to school. The night we were there, there were about 20 kids at his house for dinner.
The Ethiopian people are extremely kind, considerate, helpful and friendly. They wanted to make sure that we enjoyed our trip, had good food to eat and learned about their culture. I look forward to going back.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
DELL COMPUTER CORP. V. UNION DES CONSOMMATEURS
2007 SCC 34 – JULY 13, 2007
The Supreme Court of Canada recently released a decision that originated from a case based in Quebec. A number of organizations were granted intervener status, including ADR Chambers and the ADR Institute of Canada.
The case involved Dell Computer Corporation and a Consumer (Olivier Dumoulin). Dell’s website had an error in pricing on it for 2 types of handheld computers. One handheld was priced at $89 instead of $379 and the other handheld was priced at $118 rather than $549. When Dell became aware of the errors, it blocked access to the order pages through it’s main website and posted a correction notice. However, a consumer (Olivier Dumoulin) was able to get into the page through a different route and ordered a handheld at the lower price. When Dell refused to honour Oliver’s order at the lower price, the Consumer Union and Oliver filed a motion to bring a class action against Dell. Dell applied for referral of Oliver’s claim to arbitration pursuant to an arbitration clause in the terms and conditions of sale and dismissal of the motion for to bring a class action. The Superior Court and the Court of Appeal both held that the arbitration clause could not be set up against Oliver and authorized the class action against Dell
The first issue before the Supreme Court was whether the arbitration clause was “internal” or “external” to the contract within the meaning of the Civil Code of Quebec. The Supreme Court found that the traditional test that is used to determine whether clauses in paper contracts are “external” could not be transposed without qualification to web-based contracts. The Court held that in web-based contracts, a clause that requires operations of such complexity that its text is not reasonably accessible could not be regarded as an integral part of the contract. In Dell’s case, the arbitration clause could be accessed through a hyperlink and was therefore NOT “external” within the meaning of Civil Code of Quebec.
The second issue before the Supreme Court was whether to allow the motion for authorization to institute a class action. The Union argued that because this is a class action, the dispute is of public order and therefore cannot be submitted to arbitration. The Supreme Court rejected the Union’s argument and held that a class action is a procedure, and its purpose is not to create a new right. In the case at bar, the parties agreed to submit their disputes to binding arbitration – in other words, “arbitration” is the procedure that they agreed to use in the event of a dispute.
The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and held that Oliver’s claim should be referred to arbitration and that the motion to bring a class action should be dismissed.
Interestingly, now, s. 11.1 of Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act, prohibits any stipulation that obliges a consumer to refer a dispute to arbitration. However, the facts triggering the application of the arbitration clause in this case occurred before the coming into force of that provision, so the Supreme Court held that it did not apply to the facts of this case.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
Having just moved from Toronto to Oregon, it was a very interesting series of negotiations to get us there in one piece. Some of the most intriguing negotiations involved the sale of our Toronto house and the purchase of our Eugene house, in part because of the contrast in styles of our two agents.
In Eugene, we really required an agent’s help for a number of reasons, being so unfamiliar with the Oregon procedures legally and practically, and to our agent’s credit, he and his team went above and beyond the call of duty in answering questions as varied as “how do we clarify lot line issues?” to “Who can we get cable from?”
Traditionally around many North American jurisdictions, a house purchase transaction involves almost no direct contact between buyer and seller, with the agents doing most if not all of the talking. In our purchase of the Eugene property, we were obliged to complete the purchase negotiations in stages while in a different country, which made it even harder to have any direct input. To the credit of our agent, Dave Koester, he encouraged us to deliver an “offer letter” with our offer, explaining the background of our offer and developing at least a paper relationship with the sellers. As corny as it may sound, I believe it helped. We got a nice letter back from the sellers with their counter-offer. When we replied with our response to the counter-offer, it was a response that could easily have been seen as harsh, in that we did not raise the dollar amount of our offer. By sending a further letter explaining our response, we were able to minimize the negative reaction and assumptions that might have resulted. Our explanation focused on an explanation of the many objective criteria that had led to our offer. It also identified our reluctance to leap upwards in price not as an attempt to lowball them, but as a consequence of our very real fears that the US housing market was going to continue going down, not up, and leave us with a much less valuable asset.
The result was ultimately a price that everyone was comfortable with, and I’m happy to say that we maintained a good relationship with the sellers despite having only one brief chance to see them face to face due to the circumstances of the purchase. When we moved in, we had a wonderful package of background material, manuals, recommendations and other things (even a listing of all the garden’s plants) waiting when we arrived in our new house, including a bottle of their favourite wine. And I can happily say that we are quite pleased with our new home ourselves.
Part of the reason for that satisfaction is the research we put into the available housing in Eugene before we ever bought (and even after we bought). Over the course of two months, we scanned the MLS regularly to get a sense of what was available and what we liked. Eventually, before going to Eugene to scout prospects on the ground, we did a concerted review of more than 30 “hot prospects”, comparing notes and creating a spreadsheet comparing all of the interests that we had in a house (things like a good view, a nice low maintenance garden, interesting character, a location in biking distance to the university, and various other desires). From that list we were able to quickly and logically narrow the list to 14 really hot prospects, which actually varied considerably in price and location, but all had the potential to make us happy.
Our first trip to Eugene, we visited every one of those houses and a few others suggested by our realtor. By the end of that trip we had a very concrete idea of what would satisfy us, and by making it concrete, we were able to flesh out our interests much more. My wife, for example, had been very reluctant to buy or even look at a hillside house. When we visited some, however, she was surprised to find how attracted she was by the gorgeous views. In exploring why she was reluctant to get a hillside house, it turned out there were two primary concerns. One was the risk of water intrusion (a very real risk in the rainy hills of Eugene and one that our agent echoed). Some of the houses had great views, but looked like they might get a lot of runoff hitting them. Her second concern was that the houses in the hills tended to be more than 4-5 km from the university and too high up to bike back to. That echoed one of my concerns in that I wanted to be close to a neighbourhood with shops and restaurants in easy reach for a Sunday stroll.
By clarifying our interests, we were able to end up with a house on the top of a hill in the center of town that had a great view of the Willamette Valley and the hills of Eugene, and that had no serious risk of water intrusion and (as verified by a home inspection) no history of water leakage, all within 2 km of the university and just a few blocks from a wide variety of funky shops and restaurants. By doing our research, we had the confidence that we had received a great value home, at a very fair price, that was going to make us both very happy, having met all of our key interests.
As for the Toronto sale, more about that anon…
Paul Godin, Stitt Feld Handy Group
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
By: LaKEISHA McSWEENEY
Guardian Staff Reporter
Endeavouring to develop new ways to resolve conflict at the bargaining table is the main objective of the first of its kind Alternative Dispute Resolution.
The five-day conference being held in conjunction with the University of Windsor Law Faculty / Stitt Feld Handy Group got underway on Monday at the school of Hospitality and Tourism Studies.
Participants in the workshop include trade unionists, and people from a cross-section of the public and private sectors.
Vincent Peet, Minister of Labour and Immigration officially opened the workshop. In his remarks, he underscored the importance of government leaders, employers and trade unionists being knowledgeable in effectively addressing conflicts that arise in a continually changing global society.
He said while conflicts are a part of life, it was critical that all entities find ways to resolve conflicts in a harmonious way.
“The time has come for all of us to find better ways to resolve our disputes, without resorting to bitter exchanges, strikes, pay cuts and other punitive measures,” he said.
“It is no longer sufficient for us to be concerned about working conditions, pay increases and other employee benefits, we must also be concerned about how we relate to each other as partners and how we negotiate with one another to secure what we need from each other,” said Mr. Peet.
Towards this end, he suggested six steps aimed at beginning the process of better deliberations. The first, listening which he said would help with better dialogue of communication between the negotiating parties.
Secondly, he said it was important to ascertain facts and to present these facts fairly. Mr. Peet’s third suggestion was for negotiators to develop an appreciation and mutual respect for opposing viewpoints.
“Yes, you are entitled to your opinion,” he said, “but in the best interest of the organization, put yourselves in the other person’s shoes; in other words see both sides of the issue and to be prepared to make the necessary compromises.”
Fourth, the Minister proposed that those involved partner to provide the necessary resources needed for employees to be more productive in the workplace.
The fifth recommendation was partnering to provide adequate training “of yourselves and your members or employees.”
“Such training must not be limited to simply acquiring additional qualifications and skills, which I hasten to add are important,” he said, “but it must be expanded to include making changes to the attitudes and work ethics of all concerned so that greater value can be added to the companies or organizations you represent as well as to the customer.
The final suggestion was to ensure that the training and retraining initiatives would include provision for exchange programmes with neighbouring Caribbean countries “where new and exciting markets could be explored and further developed.”
“I encourage you to redouble your efforts to not only reestablish industrial harmony in the workplace, but promote fair-play and provide equal opportunities for all,” added Mr. Peet.
Paul Godin, representative, University of Windsor and Obie Ferguson, president of the Trade Union Congress also gave brief remarks.
Mr. Godin said it is envisioned that participants at the end of the conference, would be able to find new ways to resolve conflict and to refine tools that are already in use to solve disputes.
“What I want you to leave with is tools, a tool kit, if you will, to resolve conflicts and negotiate agreements more effectively,” he said.
The most important tool in reaching this objective, he said, was learning to deal with each other by learning to communicate in the “same language.”
Mr. Ferguson, in his remarks, stressed that education is the engine for development. He said negotiation was a process that could be facilitated harmoniously if unionists and employers would firstly distinguish between problems and people.
“So you must focus on interest and not on the problem,” he said.
He said negotiators must also examine possibilities and agree on standards or some measure that would allow the situation to be reviewed objectively.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
In mid-March, when the weather in Toronto is still unreasonably cold, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia to help deliver a train-the-trainer workshop to a group of lawyers and judges who are members of the Ethiopian Arbitration and Conciliation Centre. I always find training in a different country to be an eye-opening experience and the workshop in Addis Ababa was no different. The participants were eager to learn our facilitative model of training. I kept thinking about how challenging I would find it to take part in a train-the-trainer workshop in a different language and I was thoroughly impressed with their ability to participate in a language that was not their mother tongue. We encouraged them to use Amharic if they felt more comfortable doing so, but some of them simply preferred to speak in English, which obviously made it much easier for us to provide feedback. I was only in Addis for a short time, but I did manage to make a quick trip to the National Museum to see the remains of “Lucy” (a female hominoid that lived in what is now called the Awash Valley in Hadar some 3.2 million years ago) and the Mercatto (one of the largest markets I have ever seen!). I hope to return to Addis again and have some more injera (Ethiopian bread) soon.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
The Ethiopian Herald (National Section)
Friday February 29, 2008
Page 9
Addis Ababa – A 10-day training attended by officials of the Ethiopian Institution for the Ombudsman on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) wound up at Ghion Hotel here yesterday.
After handing outs certificates to the trainees, Institution Chief Ombudsman with the Rank of Minister, Abay Tekle said that the training is so helpful to offer negotiation, mediation, and arbitration services for parties who would want to avoid courses of litigation which is cumbersome and costs much. He further said the members of the Institution would be able to conduct the ADR mechanisms effectively and efficiently in discharging their responsibilities.
The training was organized by the Ethiopian Arbitration and Conciliation Centre and Stitt Feld Handy Group.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
On April 16th, 2015 in Seattle, Canadian ADR specialists working with the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC) made two presentations to the 17th Annual ABA ADR Conference focusing on ADR in the sports context. Our merry band of CBA-sponsored panelists included Marie-Claude Asselin (SDRCC), Paul Godin (SDRCC, CAS), Richard McLaren (SDRCC, CAS, FIA ICA, BAT), Richard Pound (SDRCC, IOC, WADA, ICAS), and Jeffery Benz of the U.S.A. (CAS, LCIA), with Carol Roberts (SDRCC, CAS) assisting. The ABA invited one of our distinguished panelists, Richard Pound, to present the conference’s opening plenary session, which was very well received by a diverse ADR audience.
The panel highlighted the SDRCC’s unique arbitration/mediation experience, along with recent international developments, and advanced online dispute resolution (ODR) methods. The SDRCC has jurisdiction to handle most national level amateur HP sports disputes. Although the ultimate form of resolution is by arbitration, using a nation-wide panel of sports ADR experts, the SDRCC has also adopted a mandatory mediation process (referred to as a resolution facilitation) in handling these disputes. In its first ten years, respect for the SDRCC has grown amongst athletes and federations. Canada is one of the few states to use facilitation processes in sports disciplinary proceedings like doping violations, and is a leading user of ODR approaches like virtual mediation and arbitration processes.
To begin, Marie-Claude Asselin, Jeff Benz and Richard McLaren summarized ADR processes in HP sports disputes in Canada, the U.S.A., internationally, and in various pro sports. Amateur national-level HP cases in Canada are typically addressed first at the sports federation level, with the SDRCC being the forum of final appeal. Cases include carding (funding) disputes, team selection disputes, doping violations and miscellaneous challenges such as complaints about federation policies and procedures. The SDRCC is one of the few organizations to make mediation a default mandatory step in the sport ADR process, subject to some discretionary exceptions. In the U.S.A., ADR processes include use of the American Arbitration Association, USADA (for doping violations), and other processes for niche disputes. many pro sports have adopted ADR processes in recent years, including baseball, basketball, golf and many others.
Mediation of non-doping cases has resolved a surprising percentage of SDRCC cases. Paul Godin and Jeff Benz identified the unique aspects of sports disputes (such as the sense of a “sport family,” the often small and interconnected world of a sport federation, the fear of decisions being “political” etc.) The unique challenges thereof include hard urgent deadlines, highly competitive parties, win/lose situations like team selection, wide geographic separation of parties, involvement of minors, etc. Best practices from their experiences included the value of identifying common interests like ‘leave no athlete behind’ and “do what’s best for the sport/country.” Brainstorming workable options with athletes and their federation was highly effective.
Richard McLaren, a senior SDRCC and CAS arbitrator, walked through a number of current examples of arbitrations, both for non-doping cases, and doping violations. At the international level, such cases are generally dealt with by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), established in 1984. As noted by Richard Pound in his plenary talk, CAS was originally associated with the IOC, but is now a truly independent international body with its own jurisprudence (lex sportiva), governance, and expertise in sports law that is now recognized by most international courts as being worthy of significant deference in sports issues.
Drawing on his significant experience as an arbitrator of sports disputes, Richard Pound shared a list of best practices for arbitrators when facing sports cases. His checklist of questions for arbitrators to consider (re jurisdiction, issues, parties, process, rules, the standard of review, and orders) was a valuable aid for any arbitrator. In the sports context, issues like jurisdiction and the standard of review, for example, can be very contentious and are often misunderstood even by counsel, who may not have significant experience with sports cases.
Paul Godin discussed the controversial use of resolution facilitation (RF) in doping violation cases. Beginning as a pilot project, the RF process was used as an information sharing session (not a settlement discussion) between the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES- the enforcement body) and the accused. While initially resisted by the CCES because of strong public policy requirements for doping cases under the Canadian Anti-Doping Program, RFs in doping cases have proven helpful to both the CCES and many affected athletes. RFs are now a standard step in the doping violation process. While settlement is not the purpose of doping RFs, the hour long sessions generate increased shared understanding of the issues, improve the athletes’ knowledge and understanding of the complaint against them, and clarify the SDRCC/CADP processes. Athletes can share their perspectives, get their questions answered, and engage in dialogue with the CCES representative. While the CCES does not plea bargain in respect of the sanction, in certain cases, athletes can manage aspects of the sanction faced (such as the starting date of a suspension, and potentially even the severity of the sanction) by cooperating with the CCES in various ways.
Marie-Claude Asselin, the Director of the SDRCC, finished by reviewing the SDRCC’s legacy in its first ten years of operation. The SDRCC faces approximately 40-50 cases a year (almost half are doping cases). Of non-doping cases, more than 50% have been related to team selection complaints (athletes challenging selection of another athlete to a national level team). One of the significant challenges in HP sports cases is the very tight timeline that might apply (a decision may need to be rendered within hours in order to meet an external deadline). The SDRCC has developed a streamlined, highly time-efficient ODR process that has resolved cases from intake through to final arbitrated decision in three hours. Overall settlement rates vary from year to year, but average close to 40% over the first ten years.
Many thanks to the CBA, the Alberta South ADR Section, Dentons law firm, SDRCC and ABA for their generous financial and moral support of the panel. The SDRCC website is http://www.crdsc-sdrcc.ca/eng/home for those interested.
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
Iraqi trains in a Toronto business course for a mediation mission in his homeland
By MARINA JIMÉNEZ
(Globe and Mail)
Thair Karim Ismail, an Iraqi human-rights activist, is learning the art of negotiation and mediation in a Toronto boardroom. Tear sheets with catch phrases scrawled in magic marker cover the walls of this workshop on alternative dispute resolution:
While his Canadian colleagues will be applying these techniques to business and workplace conflicts and negotiations, the stakes for Dr. Ismail are considerably higher.
Dr. Ismail, an exile in Sweden for two decades until his recent return to Iraq, will head back into Baghdad’s Green Zone this week where he is head of IFES, a Washington-based non-governmental organization that monitors election-related violence in Iraq. His job is to attempt to defuse the anger of volatile clerics, persuade Islamic political parties not to commit violent acts, and urge Sunni Iraqis to re-engage in the U.S.-backed constitutional process.
“In Iraq, to try and use any method of conflict resolution is very difficult and brings with it a cost to everyone,” he concedes. “Of course, we cannot talk to people outside the political process, or to al-Qaeda, or to those who would like to stop the process. But we can talk to political parties, to police and the interim government.”
It may seem incongruous to train mediators to work in war-torn Iraq, where suicide bombers and al-Qaeda operatives are intent on destabilizing the fragile political process and driving out U.S. forces. There is also political resistance to the drafting of a new constitution, although once it is approved, the country is supposed to hold elections in December.
But Allan Stitt, president of the internationally renowned Stitt Feld Handy Group which staged the Toronto workshop, says the underlying principles of dispute resolution are universal, even in a country torn by sectarian violence and terrorist attacks. The workshop focused on examples far removed from such an environment, ranging from divorced parents arranging summer plans for their children to sexual harassment in the workplace.
The participants learn to use “interest-based conflict resolution,” which focuses on people stating their interests, instead of their position, and then trying to find a common ground to get their interests to meet.
“Obviously [alternative dispute resolution] won’t work for suicide bombers, but we need to work with those who send out the suicide bombers, the political leadership that plants the ideas,” said Mr. Stitt, who has done training in Australia, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Trinidad, Uganda and other war-torn countries.
In Iraq, Dr. Ismail envisions using interest-based conflict resolution to mediate between Sunni and Shia clerics. Many Sunnis want the U.S. forces to leave the country before they will consider participating in the political process, while Shiites are willing to focus first on strengthening institutions, such as the police and army, and the infrastructure for electricity and potable water.
Dr. Ismail said there may be common ground if, for example, Sunnis can be convinced that U.S. troops can help meet Iraqi residents’ basic needs. About 40 per cent of the election-related violence in Iraq is caused not by insurgents, but by those participating in the political process, according to IFES. For example, members of Islamic political parties deface the advertisements of opposing parties, and some coerce people from other parties into supporting their position or candidate.
“I will try to gather these parties together and find out what they object to in the ads, and create dialogue within the parties,” Dr. Ismail said.
By MARINA JIMÉNEZ
Monday, July 25, 2005 Page A10 (Globe and Mail)
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
Governments and businesses are under enormous pressure due to the financial challenges we are experiencing internationally. A besieged mentality is all too common and many organisations are responding with drastic monetary and staffing cuts. For many in Human Resources, they see their training budgets disappearing. The question arises, as to how can we keep our competitive edge while not offering training and development opportunities to staff? The answer is not complicated – we cannot.
I would argue that significant cuts in our training and development (T & D) budgets are a very short term and, in fact, short sighted reaction to the economic pressures we are facing. In fact, I suggest that a mandate for training is a mandate for survival.
As we attempt to ride out this international economic crisis, we should be focusing more and more on human resource development. How successful an organisation will be in surviving these times will depend on increasing efficiency. That will depend on how successful an organisation is at making best use of its key resource, its employees.
Enhancing, not reducing, training and development opportunities for employees is the most significant contributor to efficiency and survival. In order to achieve the competitive edge, organisations, and this includes both businesses and governments, must commit to enhancing the quality of their employees by investing in effective and relevant training programs. As the Chief Executive Officer of the Cave Hill School of Business, Dr. Jeannine Comma, stated, “The successful companies are the ones that recognise that an organisation is only as great as its people and the only true source of competitive advantage is in its human capital”.
If your T & D department budget has been cut significantly, and more significantly than other departments, chances are your organisation hasn’t fully recognised the value of training. Your work as manager of Human Resources is not done until the organisation sees training and development as an investment rather than as a cost, and recognises that its health, durability, and success depends as much or more on well developed staff than anything else.
But if your organisation needs to reduce costs, arguments should be made as to why the T & D budget should be maintained even in these challenging times. The arguments will generally focus on the need for your best resource, that is your staff, to be efficient, effective and willing and able to deal with change. There are numerous sound arguments for maintaining a healthy T & D budget, some of which are as follows.
First, with cutbacks and uncertainty, morale is low. Unlike cosmetic spending that can been seen as a waste, effective training spending indicates commitment to those who remain, and can raise morale. Staff members feel more confident that your organisation will weather a crisis if it demonstrates a longer-term perspective by maintaining training and development opportunities that will help people do their work better. Training shows that the organisation thinks there is a future, and that staff will be part of it.
Second, an effective organisation may well use downtime or shifts in resources to prepare for recovery and the longer term. Training is the way to develop people who already have valuable information and background experience in the organisation and help them into new roles, or give them the next generation of skills they will need to help the organization recover and flourish. The cost of training or retraining existing staff is far less than the cost of recruiting and training people who have no experience in your organisation, and you will be a step ahead of the competition and able to take advantage of opportunities more quickly than others.
Third, today’s successful organisations must reflect a commitment to learning if they are to retain people who remain mobile even in bad times, or those who, because of uncertainty, may be looking for other opportunities that appear more secure. Paying lip service to training instead of really committing to training damages the credibility of an organisation in other areas as well. “Stay loyal to us while we cut our commitments to you” is not a recipe for success. In addition to damaging loyalty, such behavior adds cynicism to the workplace atmosphere.
Finally, do not forget that there are ways now to deliver learning that are less costly than in the past. In-house training departments can develop web based tools for delivery with fewer travel or logistical concerns. External consultants for periodic programs can be less expensive than maintaining a full learning department but still deliver high quality for specific skill topics. Training organisations understand the pressures and challenges that exist today; they are often prepared to make special arrangements to accommodate cost concerns, such as adjusting the length of programs, the number of instructors, the timing of payments, and so forth.
Remember that embracing the concept of continual training and development is an investment in the future of your organisation and contribution on the road to recovery. I wish you the very best in your T & D budget negotiations!
To learn conflict resolution skills that you can use at work and in your personal life, please visit our Alternative Dispute Resolution Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To improve your negotiation skills and get the results you want while negotiating, please visit our Become a Powerful Negotiator Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
To gain skills to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with confidence, please visit our Dealing With Difficult People Workshop page to learn more about upcoming in-person and instructor-led online sessions.
