The Democrats’ peculiar negotiating strategy – The Washington Post

What can we learn about the tactics taken by Dems/Repubs on the debt deal in DC?  Ezra Klein breaks it down.

So far, Republicans have not said yes to any of the deals the Democrats have offered. They continue to assume a better deal is just around the corner, and thus far, they have been right. Currently, they may be assuming that yet a better deal could be struck with, say, President Mitt Romney, and if he wins the election, they may well be right. If Obama wins, a reinvigorated Democratic majority might prove them wrong. But the fact remains: Their strategy of saying no has, thus far, paid great dividends, though not ones Republicans have decided to collect.

via The Democrats’ peculiar negotiating strategy – The Washington Post.

Intellectual Roots of Wall Street Protest

Take II on digging out up archeology of where Occupy Wall Street came from, what they want, and how effective they may be.  In the Chronicle, an exploration of its roots from the academy:

But Occupy Wall Street’s most defining characteristics—its decentralized nature and its intensive process of participatory, consensus-based decision-making—are rooted in other precincts of academe and activism: in the scholarship of anarchism and, specifically, in an ethnography of central Madagascar.

via Intellectual Roots of Wall Street Protest Lie in Academe – Faculty – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Is there a religious dimension, the “shining city“?

Could OCW represent a new form of discourse, “political disobedience” against the “structure of partisan politics” as philosopher Bernard Harcourt writes in The Stone.

Is it working?  Room for Debate parses how OCW could it work better with Paul Berman, Satya Pattnayak, Naomi Klein and others.

The movement has gone global–allowing an opening for anarchists to cause trouble in Rome.  And it appears to be growing according to Silvia Pojoli in Rome…Occupy the World?

And Slate has a recap addressing the ongoing issues of where they may be right about the 1 percent, how they have influenced U.S. politic already, and how they compare to the Tea Party.

 

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? – NYTimes.com

This compelling story asks a relevant question for learning about diplomacy, leadership, and influencing-skills:  can you teach character?  This relates to earlier discussions as to what are the “critical skills” for an accomplished life.

There are 13, according to the U.S. Department of State for would-be diplomats, 7 as per LDS management consultant extraordinaire Stephen Covey (although I hear there are now 8), or one question and twenty attempts if you believe a notable biographer of the essayist Montaigne.  But the answer is simpler?

The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

via What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? – NYTimes.com.

Insights Into Negotiating Like the FBI

High stakes make for good strategies, at least that what these two features show.  First, negotiating for something like a salary based on the FBI publication “Crisis Intervention: Using Active Listening Skills in Negotiation” as referenced in the Career section of WSJ online:

So let’s say the HR person says, “We think you’re a great fit for the job, and we’d like to offer you a starting salary of $75,000.” Say something like: “I see. So you’re saying that the salary for this position would be $75,000.” Then be silent.

In doing so, you’ve listened attentively, paraphrased what the interviewer has said, mirrored back the last few words, and left an effective pause in the conversation to allow the interviewer to fill the gap. Most people hate awkward silence in conversation, and will rush to fill it, and what can happen in this scenario is they fill it with a higher offer.

via How to Negotiate Your Salary Like an FBI Agent .

And a longer interview worth exploring on hostage negotiations with founder of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit–via a Bob Edwards interview (previously available as a podcast via his iTunes channel) or Terri Gross Fresh Aire.   (You can find Noesner’s book and website, as well as see another summary.)

“Negotiations requires a lot of patience,” Noesner says. “You typically don’t create that relationship of trust by the specific words that you articulate. You have to earn the right to be of influence with someone, and you do that by projecting sincerity and genuineness. And those are great qualities for a good, successful negotiator.”  via NPR

So How Do Enemies Become Friends?

Georgetown professor Charles Kupchan explains how it works in World Politics Review:

1. One party must be backed into a corner with limited resources. When Britain chose to reach out to the United States, they were faced with conflicts in Japan, Germany and South Africa. “You choose one enemy to move into the friend column,” Kupchan said.
2. Parties test the budding relationships by acts of reciprocity. A grand gesture, which is really where normalization moves forward, must come from the stronger of the two sides if its shift is to be seen as genuine, rather than desperate.
3. Normalization moves from the negotiating tables to the streets. A cultural exchange between societies starts to change their national psyches and begins to shift their view of the other from “them” to “us.”

See a videocast of UN University’s interview with Charles Kupchan on his book, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace | UNU Video Portal.

Remembering Ambassador Richard Holbrooke

Larger than life?  A peacemaker with an abrasive personality?  A man of letters?  A wise man?  How should we remember Richard Holbrooke, who passed away on Sunday, 13 December 2010?  Even the Taliban issued a statement which Alissa J. Rubin notes, borders on true regard.

I had initially planned a briefing with him when he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. with my students at the urging of my wife–and having been wishing I pushed harder to make it happen in the style of this already legendary U.S. diplomat.  Since his passing I have been thinking about what made him so substantial, interesting, and important.  I like the emphasis Eliza Griswold in Slate puts on him:  someone who knew that ‘relationships are the building block of diplomacy”–and wish I could have known him, too.

A lot of different pieces of the mosaic are readily available.  The book blog Paper Cuts hones in on Holbrook as author and intellectual:

Richard Holbrooke was, like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of those rare public intellectuals who managed to combine a life in world affairs with the life of the mind. In his role as a diplomat, he seemed to maintain ironic distance on himself, watching as he conducted negotiations at the highest level and reflecting on his own activities and decisions.

via Barry Gewen, Paper Cuts, NYT.com

At FP.com, David Rothkopf seconds this motion, calling him a “wise man,” not only for his briliant organiational strategy in creating a team that worked across and largely through bureaucratic silos, but also for his thoughtful engagement:

In fact, perhaps that term “wise man” is one that we should not pass over too quickly. Holbrooke was a direct descendent of that line of U.S. foreign policy thinkers who earned that title, one made famous by Walter Issacson and Evan Thomas in their great book on the seminal foreign policy thinkers of the post World War II era.

via On the death of a wise man – the passing of Richard Holbrooke | David Rothkopf.

He was never sentimental about U.S. foreign policy, a ‘machine that doesn’t work’–and even had strong words for how the State Department must needs be reorganized to be the essential player that he believe it should be.

From a personal standpoint, Nick Kristof hits on Holbrooke’s abrasiveness, a force that was useful for good ends:

It’s well-known that he could be abrasive, and he rubbed some people the wrong way. But what’s sometimes missed is that abrasiveness was usually serving some cause; it wasn’t just him trying to get his way. Quite regularly when I would write about AIDS, I would get a reproachful call from Richard. “So, why didn’t you mention testing?” he would ask. As chairman of the Global Business Coalition against AIDS, he was among the first to appreciate the importance of widespread testing for HIV, on the theory that you couldn’t constrain the epidemic until you knew who had it. And so once he understood that, he pushed and persuaded and bullied to get more testing. For my part, persuaded and bullied by Richard, I began to mention testing more often – and my readers and the public were better off for it.

via Richard Holbrooke, RIP – NYTimes.com.

These skills were useful in his diplomatic profession:

A brilliant, sometimes abrasive infighter, he used a formidable arsenal of facts, bluffs, whispers, implied threats and, when necessary, pyrotechnic fits of anger to press his positions. Mr. Obama, who praised Mr. Holbrooke on Monday afternoon at the State Department as “simply one of the giants of American foreign policy,” was sometimes driven to distraction by his lectures.

But Mr. Holbrooke dazzled and often intimidated opponents and colleagues around a negotiating table. Some called him a bully, and he looked the part: the big chin thrust out, the broad shoulders, the tight smile that might mean anything. To admirers, however, including generations of State Department protégés and the presidents he served, his peacemaking efforts were extraordinary.

via Strong American Voice in Diplomacy and Crisis, NYT.com

There’s more, and you should spend the time–the Packer New Yorker piece, a list of Holbrooke’s Foreign Policy articles–at the Atlantic Wire--as well as the WaPo update on his final words to “end the war” which appear to be more of humorous banter than famous last words.  But even so, if the U.S. was to have found a diplomatic way out of Afghanistan, it was well served having this diplomat extraordinaire on its side.

John Boehner: The GOP’s Misunderestimated Man – The Daily Beast

To gain support, leaders frame an issue in a way that is favorable to their perspective.  Political observer Reihan Salam makes the case for Boehner 1, Pelosi 0, in a quote noted this past week in Time:

By any standard, Speaker Pelosi should be celebrated by the left. She accomplished legislative goals that Democrats have been working toward since the New Deal era through sheer doggedness and determination. But John Boehner has outmaneuvered her at almost every step since the passage of the new health law. Instead of celebrating the health law as a major progressive victory, Democratic incumbents are skirting the issue, hoping it won’t cost them their jobs. And in the last weeks before the midterms, Boehner forced Democrats into a tax fight they can’t win. One gets the impression that he has been misunderestimated.

via John Boehner: The GOP’s Misunderestimated Man – The Daily Beast.

Why do women hate negotiating? – Selena Rezvani

Assessing where the women were in terms of negotiating experience, I asked, as I often do, who in the room counter-offered their current salary.

About 10 percent of the room raised their hands.

If you’ve never personally observed this, it is uniquely unsettling–but if you conduct your own local experiments you’ll likely see the same result, and not just around salary. In fact women initiate negotiations four times less often than their male counterparts. Women also report “a great deal of apprehension” about negotiation–at a rate 2.5 times more than men, according to the research of Carnegie Mellon’s Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever.

via On Leadership Panelists: Why do women hate negotiating? – Selena Rezvani.

Where to Sit

At first glance the catfights over seating arrangments at Fashion Week may have little to do with the world of high stakes negotiations.

James LaForce, a veteran publicist who is organizing at least six Fashion Week shows, was contemplating the oh-so-delicate placement of Very Important Editors in the front row when it occurred to him that the old rules — like always ensuring a proper distance of at least two seats between the competing editors of Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar — have been replaced by a complicated set of new ones.

“It’s quite possible there will be a land grab for seats,” he sighed.

via At Fashion Week, Front-Row Seats Are Badges of Honor – NYTimes.com.

In fact, seating doesn’t determine negotiation outcomes, but it does play a key role.  For example, it sets the mood.

Implementing Peace – KUER

If you ever wonder why skilled politicians and negotiators can’t pull off the peace deal for Israel and Palestine, invest some time listening to KUER’s Doug Fabrizio interview today with Professor Guiora.

University of Utah law professor Amos Guiora for a different perspective on the newly revived Mideast peace talks. Guiora spent 5 years working as a legal advisor in the Israeli army to implement the Oslo Peace Accords in the Gaza Strip, and he’s recently written on his experience. This isn’t about high policy; it’s about the practical lessons Guiora learned about making peace work.

via KUER: 9/8/10: Implementing Peace (2010-09-07).