Beyond the BATNA: Negotiation Training for a Complex World

Abstract

Today’s world is more complex than ever before. Negotiations that were once focused on one or two isolated issues now encompass multiple sectors and an increasing number of parties. Negotiators must constantly make decisions based on uncertain and changing information –decisions that often have irreversible impacts on relationships and deal outcomes. Training policymakers, business leaders, and nonprofits to negotiate in an evolving 21st century has never been more important or challenging. Dragonfly Negotiations & Consulting is a client-based company that works with organizations in order to impart negotiation and leadership skills. Dragonfly provides training for clients that are focused on advancing social change within their respective fields –organizations that are often operating on the cutting edge of complicated social policies. Dragonfly, along with the vast majority of other negotiation consulting firms and academic negotiation courses, primarily relies on simulations to teach negotiation skills and lessons. Simulations, a form of experiential learning, are particularly prevalent in negotiation training given the important role that soft skills and social processes play in mastering the field. Yet despite the increase in complexity found in today’s real-world negotiations, simulations have failed to similarly evolve. This report seeks to answer how Dragonfly can best design and implement simulations that teach its clients to negotiate in an exceedingly complicated world. In order to do so, a gap-analysis of presently available simulations was performed, derived by creating a framework that isolated the architectural components found in different types of negotiation simulations. These findings indicate that though a substantial number of simulations involve multiple parties and nonscorable interests, very few simulations contain the dynamic complexity of real-world negotiations. To form recommendations for how Dragonfly can design future complex simulations, the unique features of real world negotiations were identified and combined with pedagogical theories deconstructed from existing simulations. Supplementing these recommendations, this report provides a proposed simulation example that incorporates a new, complex design, as well as potential criteria to evaluate the success of future simulations. To assist Dragonfly in implementing these recommendations, a barriers analysis was conducted to help overcome potential issues.