Transforming the negotiator: The impact of critical learning on teaching and practicing negotiation

Abstract

A long-standing debate in the negotiation field is whether negotiators can actually change their styles. In this article I offer two contributions to the literature and its pedagogy by suggesting that we shift the focus of the debate. Instead of considering negotiator styles as fixed predispositions, I propose that we view them as actions resulting from learning. From this perspective, the conflict-negotiation dynamic can be conceived as a critical learning process and negotiators as critical learners. We can then trace and incorporate the impact of negative emotions on learning and on the action it informs. I offer a system dynamic model to account for the cyclical links between actual conflicts, defensiveness, learning, and negotiators’ habitual responses to conflicts. Pedagogically, the model can be used descriptively to help negotiators understand such responses to actual conflicts, and prescriptively to garner their potential to change and transform. I share the experience of using the model in my classes and provide examples from helping negotiators unsettle their frames of reference and the assumptions they hold.