Content

Anthony Wanis-St.John [1]

A communication process involves a sender, a receiver and the mes­sage to be sent. External things might occur during this transfer, which could distort the message and prevent the receiver from receiving the original message that was meant by the sender. In addi­tion to these externalities, both the sender and the receiver do some­thing interest­ing. The senders do not just give a universal message that is under­standable by everybody. They encode it. They add certain things and state things in a certain way.

On the other side, the receiver of the message has to decode, to a certain extent, what the sender meant to say. As well as the words, this includes the tones and certain gestures and indications that are not ex­pressed verbally. This often results in distortion of the message. Our ex­pe­rience is part of this encoding-decoding process. It can affect the intention of the message sent, based on past experiences involving similar cases. The meaning the sender intends does not necessarily match the impact on the receiver. Therefore in conflict resolution, every single opportunity for conversation is also an opportunity for misunder­standing. Many times people tend to do the following:

·They fail to understand other people's intentions and the motivation behind their actions; thus they begin to respond in an inappropriate way based on this misunderstanding. There is also a tendency to always assume that the inten­tions of others are bad and to create stereotypes.

·People also often fail to understand the impact of their own words/actions. Even worse, in problematic relationships one believes that any action taken by his/her adversaries is based on the fact that they are bad people. When taking the same action, however, it is believed that one was forced to do it. People tend to discount information that disproves stereotypes, as they are very hard to break. Therefore they fail to integrate new and corrective information about others' intentions. Stereotypes are usually based on one grain of truth, but people then build a big castle based on this grain.

Good communication and negotiation skills rely on being able to be assertive and empathetic. You will practice this in the following role reversal exercise.

Exercise: Role Reversal [2]

Selecting a Case

To prepare for the Role Reversal Exercise, select you own negotiation case using the following guidelines:

1.A Real Case . The negotiation case that you select should not be fictitious. It should be a case that you are personally involved in. You will be asked to share the details of your case with only one person (of your choice), not the entire Working Group.

2.An Unresolved Case That Is Difficult To You . The case you se­lect should be unresolved negotiation (either current, or up­coming) that you feel is particularly difficult and challenging for you. In short, pick a negotiation that is non-trivial: one that hooks your doubts and fears about your own competence. The more difficult the case you choose, the more you will tend to get out of the exercise.

3.Two-Party, Not Multi-Party . Your negotiation case should in­volve only one other person directly (in other words, you should not select a negotiation where you are negotiating simultane­ously with more than one person).

4.Any Context Is Fine . Make your selection from any context you wish (e.g., business, professional, family, romantic, etc.).

This is not a writing assignment. In general, selecting a case should probably take no more than 10-15 minutes.

w Goals and learning effect of the above role reversal exercise:

·It helps develop understanding of another party's interests and positions;

·it facilitates clearer negotiation communication on the basis of knowing where true differences come from and through finding shared/complementary interests;

·it enables us to address some of the uncertainties in the ne­gotiation and to try alternative approaches;

·the goal is not to resolve the problem but to gain insight;

·is not meant to undermine your position, but to see how to achieve your goals once you understand your partner.