Too Many People To Deal With
From Peacebuilding
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Activity: Too Many People To Deal With?
Contents |
Aim:
To explore and practise multi-party negotiation
Time:
At least 60 minutes
Participants:
Five or more. This role-play has been designed for groups of five people. When the size of the plenary is other than five, or multiples of five, you can ask some participants to act as observers or join in a role with someone else (e.g. a village with two representatives)
Materials:
- Flip charts
- Markers
- Handouts (see below)
- Paper and pencils for participants
Procedure:
I) Divide the plenary into sub-groups of five people.
II) Distribute the handouts. Make sure that every person in each group receives a different handout: there are five handouts for five different roles.
III) Allow sufficient time for reading and answer any clarification questions to ensure that the information provided in the handouts has been understood and participants are ready to role-play.
IV) Ask participants to reflect silently for three minutes and get ready to negotiate with the other “village representatives”.
V) Ask participants to start role-playing. Allot sufficient time.
VI) After role-playing, have a debriefing session.
Note:
Alternatives to this process include:
- The actual role-play can be divided into 5-minute sessions, with a break within each session. Ask participants to use these short breaks to reflect on what happened and fine-tune their strategy before starting the next session.
- To make the activity more difficult, you can increase each role’s bottom line. For example, from 30 to 35 points. In this case, make sure that reaching agreement doesn’t become impossible.
- To make it easier, you can decrease each role’s bottom line.
Debriefing:
How do you feel?
- How do you feel about this activity?
- How do you feel about your performance as a negotiator?
- How do you feel about the outcome, and specifically about what you obtained?
- How did you feel about the other role-players in your group?
- How do you feel about their performance as negotiators?
- How do you feel about the other groups?
- To what extent do you think the other parties understood you?
What happened?
- What happened during the negotiation?
- What happened when you saw other people’s performances?
- Who was more effective and why?
- Who was less effective and why?
- How did your behaviour change during your negotiation?
- How did you see your emotions playing a part in your negotiation? And what about the other parties’ emotions?
- What worked for you?
- What didn’t work?
What did you learn?
- What was the most important point you learned from this activity?
- What insights did you get into negotiation?
- How different is it negotiating with several parties rather than just one?
- To what extent were people detached from the problem, and interests rather than positions focused on, during the role-play?
- How can emotions play a part in negotiation?
- In general, how relevant is rationality in negotiation, and in this negotiation in particular?
- How do local culture and tradition influence or condition this kind of interaction?
How does it relate to you?
- How does this role-play relate to the kind of interactions you have in your everyday life?
- What kind of common interactions in your everyday environment might you consider to be negotiations and – more specifically – multi-party negotiations?
What if?
- What if you were to play another role in the group?
- What if you had more – or less – time?
- What if any of the other parties were much older than you?
- What if you could have had a mediator facilitating your interaction?
- What if you were much richer and more powerful than the other sides?
What next?
- What would happen if you could role-play the same negotiation again?
- What suggestion would you give to somebody who had to play your role?
- Considering what you have learned from this activity, how would you behave differently in your everyday life?
Source:
The framework for this simulation has been adapted and simplified from an activity originally designed by Negotiator Pro. Co. called “Dividing Grandma’s Things”. This activity can be downloaded from www.negotiatorpro.com. The original activity provides an excellent framework for practising multi-party negotiation with up to eight participants.
