Ted Feifer and Mike Lekson of the Professional Training Program conducted a fifth workshop on negotiating skills in multilateral diplomacy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna. There were 18 participants in the workshop: 8 diplomats from national delegations to the OSCE, 4 diplomats from OSCE External Partners for Cooperation (Morocco, Afghanistan and Israel), and 6 OSCE Secretariat staff members.

Workshop objectives were to explore the differences between multilateral and bilateral negotiations; strengthen participants’ analytical, problem solving, and negotiating skills; and increase their understanding of and ability to use the multilateral process to better achieve their objectives. The workshop also gave OSCE Secretariat staff and diplomats assigned to the OSCE the opportunity to work with and better understand each other’s perspectives.

This workshop focused on the use of core negotiation skills in bilateral and multilateral situations. Participants engaged in a two-person negotiation exercise, utilized a problem solving framework to work through a typical OSCE mission challenge, did self-assessments on negotiation skills and conflict styles, assessed the use of negotiation skills in emotional situations, and explored culture and conflict. They applied their lessons learned in multiparty negotiations with an OSCE Permanent Council scenario, and in a complex simulation based on the 1999 Horn of Africa conflict by the Organization of African Unity.

Some participants found the opportunities for self-awareness and self-development in negotiation and communication style the most valuable part of the workshop, while others derived the most from their interactions with other practitioners and the facilitated debriefing of the trainers following the exercises.