Negotiation

Why do we so often teach war, and so rarely teach peace?

Why do we institutionalize debate and ignore negotiation? Debate trains students in conflict, negotiation trains them in conflict resolution. Debates thrive on contrast, and this can do tremendous violence to nuanced issues. Subtle arguments rarely win debates

Worse, there is no opportunity for synthesis, no chance for reconciliation. There are winners and losers, and never the twain shall meet. We elevate schism and leave the bridge-building to others.

Worse still, the process assigns positions so that teams develop arguments disconnected from their values and beliefs. Debate is persuasion without ethics. We lament the dispassionate amorality exhibited so often in politics, yet teach our future leaders exactly that in school.

What if we emphasized argument as the path to agreement?  What if we helped students to bushwhack through thickets of rationale in order to pave a path forward, to achieve accord? We take shortcuts to conflict resolution, “splitting the difference”, when this avoids the difficult emotional work of trying to understand our opponent, acknowledge their perspective, identify our own intentions, stand up for them with fortitude and resolve, even as we focus on synthesis and the win-win.

The FBI negotiator Chris Voss urged us to “understand how urgent, essential, and even beautiful negotiation can be. When we embrace negotiating’s transformative possibilities, we learn how to get what we want and how to move others to a better place. . . Negotiation is the heart of collaboration” (Voss, 2016, p.21). Collaboration figures prominently in our “C”s of 21st Century teaching. Let us start by teaching and modelling negotiation.

Consider:
How might you model negotiation?
How would you teach negotiation?

References

Voss, C. (2016). Never Split the Difference, Negotiating as if your Life Depended on it. Harper.

Your thoughts on this journal post are highly valued, as I continue to build and refine my perspective on schools and the school environment. Please share your own experiences and perceptions of the school environment below!