Horacio Falcão, Roderick Swaab, and Eric Luis Uhlmann, co-founders of INSEAD’s Negotiation and Conflict Management Collaborative, explore the growing importance of negotiation in an increasingly polarized world. They discuss how effective negotiation can transform conflicts into collaborative opportunities and highlight the need for sustainable strategies that expand a negotiation's value. Their insights extend to empowering marginalized groups and utilizing negotiation training to address global issues like poverty and inequality, fostering a more humane society one dialogue at a time.
Developing negotiation skills is crucial for transforming disagreements into collaborative opportunities, fostering tolerance and innovative solutions in polarized environments.
Structured negotiation training can empower marginalized groups, improving their conflict resolution abilities and addressing social inequalities through constructive dialogue.
Deep dives
The Importance of Negotiation in a Complex World
Negotiation is increasingly vital in our interconnected and polarized world, where disagreements are common due to diverse opinions and global communication channels. The ability to manage conflict respectfully and leverage disagreements can lead to innovative opportunities for collaboration and value creation. This not only helps individuals navigate interactions more effectively but also encourages enhanced tolerance and cooperation within larger groups. Understanding negotiation as a mechanism for conflict management is essential for fostering positive relationships and minimizing the risks associated with differences.
Developing Negotiation Skills through Deliberate Practice
Improving negotiation skills requires structured training, ongoing practice, and ample feedback to ensure effectiveness in real-world scenarios. Research indicates that traditional training methods may not predict actual performance well, as they often fail to account for practical application in workplace settings. To succeed, individuals should engage in deliberate practice, which involves repeated exercises and reflective debriefing, thereby progressively building competence in negotiation techniques. This approach emphasizes the importance of practicing until the skills become second nature, allowing negotiators to respond instinctively during high-pressure situations.
Addressing Inequality through Negotiation Training
Negotiation skills can serve as powerful tools for reducing social and economic inequalities, particularly among marginalized groups. Research has shown that structured negotiation training effectively benefits participants, including women and youth in low-income countries, leading to improved educational outcomes and enhanced conflict resolution capabilities. This empowerment through negotiation training prepares individuals to engage in constructive dialogues and find win-win solutions, thereby addressing issues like poverty and representation in various sectors. The goal is to democratize access to negotiation training so that diverse communities can benefit from these skills and create positive social change.
The world is becoming more interconnected. Digital platforms and social media are giving us a greater “voice” and more ways to group, which can increase the chances of disagreeing with one another. Unsurprisingly, we are seeing great polarisation and conflicts in many parts of the world.
In this podcast, INSEAD professors and the co-founders of INSEAD’s Negotiation and Conflict Management Collaborative (NCMC), Horacio Falcão, Roderick Swaab and Eric Luis Uhlmann, explain why negotiation and conflict management are ever more important in these times. They discuss what it means to go beyond just a one-time “win”, and the need for more constructive dialogues and sustainable negotiation strategies.
Developing negotiation skills will not only increase tolerance, but also help people transform disagreement into opportunities to work together and create value – in other words, expanding the pie instead of trying to expand their share of a “fixed pie”. Ultimately, if we learn to interact with others with a win-win mindset, we can build a more humane world – one negotiation at a time.
Get the Snipd podcast app
Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
AI-powered podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Share & Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
AI-powered podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode