Negotiations are starting. You sit down at the table. In front of other people. In diplomatic negotiations, the parties are states. On the table, the place is marked with a plate with the name of the country. But behind this sign there is always a living person – a fellow diplomat.
The guiding principle of a good negotiator is (as formulated by Fisher, Ury, and Patton in “Getting to Yes”): separate the problem from the people, attack the problem not the people .
I would add: separate yourself from the task you are doing. It doesn’t mean that you stop identifying with the task, that you don’t care. Business experts would advise you to try to convince yourself before starting negotiations that the outcome doesn’t matter: “You have to convince yourself that you absolutely don’t care what happens. If you don’t care, you’ve won. I absolutely promise you, in every serious negotiation, the man or woman who doesn’t care is going to win,” said Felix Dennis (British publisher and philanthropist). Maybe it works in business. In interstate negotiations, it does not work. We are overwhelmed by political responsibility.
What is important, however, is to be aware that the course of negotiations, words spoken and opinions shared cannot be taken personally, and failures cannot be translated into the assessment of one’s own abilities. Brian Koslow (businessman and negotiation coach) used to say: “During a negotiation, it would be wise not to take anything personally. If you leave personalities out of it, you will be able to see opportunities more objectively.” I once had a collaborator who, when he failed to get our position through in bargaining at the working level, would become deeply depressed, almost ready to jump out of the window. Do not try to identify yourself with the task in this way.
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Negotiating and getting along always comes with a living person. And a man is personality, character, emotions, knowledge, manners, and personal culture. Sometimes we meet with him/her for a short time – for a few hours. Sometimes for longer – for a few days or weeks. But sometimes it takes months or even years to reach an agreement together. And perhaps after some time fate will make us sit down again at the same table and negotiate a new agreement. This must never be forgotten. So behave in such a way that you can sit down to negotiate with the same people again after years still enjoying their confidence.
And people are different. Sitting down with them at the same table, it is good to have some knowledge about them beforehand. Whatever this knowledge tells, you need to find time during the negotiations to explore their personalities. Some are more introverted, others more extroverted. Some prefer to be silent and listen, others to speak and react.
Some have an analytical mind, they focus on the logic of the debate, they break it down (sometimes very slowly) into its prime factors. They can be meticulous, inquisitive, but slow. At the Council of Europe, I once observed a diplomat from one of the key Western European countries who notoriously wanted to speak when the discussion on a given item on the agenda had already been closed. Not to intentionally disrupt the proceedings. It just took him longer to think about whether he should speak up or not. Often, although he spoke after the time, he presented very pertinent remarks. But so what since no one wanted to listen to him anymore. I consistently say that conference diplomacy is not a place for people with slow reflexes.
There are often formalists. They only say what they have in the instructions. They want everything from others in writing. And if anything common emerges they want to pin it down as agreed. They watch over the observance of the rules of procedure more than over the substantive benefit of the action.
You can encounter at the negotiating table diplomats with leadership vocation, alpha diplomats. Sometimes there is a clear excess of them. They like to speak for publicity, they like to be quoted, they like to hear serial voices of support after their statements. They want to be recognized as the architects of compromise. They speak syntactically and catchy, even when they have nothing meaningful to say. They are always polite, friendly and helpful. They love to be the center of attention. For example, a distinguished EU official and diplomat, who was the head of the EU delegation in New York a few years ago, had all these features and many others not listed here. He impressed everyone with his leadership charm. Admittedly, I was however annoyed by his substantive banality, the lack of the slightest ability to formulate a bold thought.
Of course, there are aggressive, inaccessible, repulsive types. They usually speak short and brusquely. “Yes, yes”, “no, no”, “maybe”. They don’t show any sense of humour. They stare sharply at others and hold a poker face for hours. Sometimes behind this unapproachable exterior hides a surprisingly fragile personality. This may even apply to foreign ministers, because I once met one foreign diplomat in such a fragile situation, who later grew up to become an unapproachable minister.
There are, of course, diplomats operating “quietly”, inconspicuous, transparent, avoiding conflicts, avoiding polemics, walking their own, unknown ways. They like to be silent, and if they speak, they speak in whispers, preferably in the lobby. They often avoid an eye contact in conversations, although this does not necessarily mean that they are dishonest.
You can also meet easy-going personalities, even slackers. They give the impression that they do not care about anything, that they do not fully understand what the dispute is about. They radiate a smile, burst out with jokes, dwell on the taste of dishes served at diplomatic meals, and not on substantive matters that the host would like to discuss at such a meal. They beam with energy and negotiation optimism. They tell themselves and others that it is not worth worrying that it will all be fine.
I could go on and on with this personality parade. And give for each characterization examples of the names of people with whom I negotiated. The most important conclusion from these characteristics is that with each, depending on his/her temperament, mentality, vices and virtues, you have to deal differently. Our actions, especially in the tactical dimension, must be adapted to the psychological portraits of our partners in negotiations.
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It is impossible to conduct negotiations without building a personal relationship with partners. The relations between the negotiators and the working climate between them significantly affect the possibility of reaching a compromise. Experts on the subject advise that in order to establish good relations, one should show understanding for the interests of the other party, communicate with them in an open way, be honest and reliable (i.e. be someone you can rely on), use persuasion instead of threats, and take care of the well-being of the other party. Others add: one should show flexibility, sensitivity to the human factor, be understanding and patient, demonstrate ingenuity, also in the search for solutions that would satisfy the other party. Before we discuss in more detail the desirable qualities of a good negotiator, let us emphasize one thing: trust is the basis for everything.
Therefore, the basic advice I can give to ascending negotiators is: trust and get trusted. Trust is a fundamental value in diplomacy. As Secretary of State George Schultz, who died in 2021 (after over a hundred years of life), wrote: “Trust is the coin of the realm”.
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Apparently, the simplest recipe to build trust would be to prescribe a solid dose of oxytocin to negotiators every day. It will elevate trust to the necessary level. Women supposedly have more oxytocin genetically. Does that make them better negotiators? My experience shows that in some situations women cope better, and the progressing feminization of the diplomatic profession is a proof of this. In the course of my work in Strasbourg, it turned out at one point that the only male staff member of the British Permanent Representation to the Council of Europe was the ambassador’s driver.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was the first woman in history to be entrusted with the function of Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations in New York in 1981, when asked years later whether her gender was more of an asset or a burden, replied: “In the beginning, I think it was definetely a minus, I have no doubt that it was.” But over time, when the first shock of the masculinized company of foreign ambassadors passed, she began to see the advantages. “I probably profited as much from being a woman as I had ever suffered. I do believe that there are whole cultures in which men, like ambassadors and foreign ministers, and even heads of state, may find it a little easier to deal with a woman than with another man. I think in macho cultures, like both Latin and Arab – and somebody said African – they’re much less likely to regard a woman as a competitor. And I think women are generally, including me, trained to be good listeners.”
After Jeane Kirkpatrick, such outstanding diplomats as Madeleine Albright, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Nikki Haley, Kelly Craft and Linda Thomas-Greenfield were appointed as Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations in New York. Suffice it to say that from January 2009 to this day this function in American diplomacy has been held exclusively by women!
The feminization of diplomacy has serious consequences for the way international politics is conducted. But about it in a different format and in several months.
Today, a woman-negotiator is a phenomenon that diplomats are so used to that gender is no longer a handicap. Although in the work of female diplomats there may always be situations specific to being female. No Iranian diplomat will shake her hand today. Not only Iranian one. And there may be other situations where the male local society may discriminate against her on cultural and religious grounds.
Dame Audrey Glover, who went down in the history of the OSCE as the first woman to hold the function of head of one of the OSCE institutions (Office for Human Rights and Democratic Institutions), recalled how during a special OSCE mission in 1995, which was to investigate the situation in Chechnya, in one meeting with the clan elders, she was asked to join the women outside instead of sitting with the entire delegation. She thought to herself: “this is bloody stupid if I sit outside with the women…”. So she broke local protocol by declaring, “Excuse me, for the purpose of this meeting I’m a man.”
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Of course, it is very difficult to build trust between negotiators if there is not an inch of trust between the countries they represent. But this personal trust must be built. I started my diplomatic adventure at a time when trust between the East and the West (after Afghanistan, martial law in Poland, the mid-range missile crisis, the shooting down of a Korean passenger plane by the Soviets, etc.) reached, as Wojciech Łazarek, the greatest philosopher among football coaches used to say, ” mole level in Żuławy (depression land)”. But I saw then in Stockholm and Vienna endless efforts to break the ice between diplomats and military experts, I saw endless initiatives of lunches, dinners, social gatherings to create a normal bond between people who would strive to overcome the differences between their countries and find a way by agreement. It wasn’t even important about these contacts that friendships and sympathy were born (although they were born, even male-female relationships outside the block, and even more so within the block), but that they made diplomats trust each other in a decent way at least.
Because communication behind the negotiating table is always risky. “To believe him or not to believe?” “Is he tricking me or is he honest?” Negotiations are a constant state of uncertainty, and uncertainty breeds fear, and sometimes it can even paralyze. It cannot be overcome without elementary trust in the partner.
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How to inspire trust? Professional coaches often advise: make yourself liked. Enjoying sympathy undoubtedly helps. How to be liked at the bargaining table is a topic for a separate essay. Be polite? Be helpful? Be witty? Show distance to yourself? Show understanding? Be competent? All these features undoubtedly help.
The general rule of building a good image is: be firm in substantive matters, but gentle in form, approachable in manners, pleasant in conversation. In other words: suaviter in modo, fortiter in re.
Personally, I didn’t necessarily want to be liked. But respected, yes, and very much so. To this day, I believe that extending to negotiation partners exaggerated feelings (positive or negative) always hides a trap. After all, personal sympathy can always be used for emotional blackmail. There may be embarrassing requests and exhortations: “Please do this for me”, “Please don’t turn down my proposal, because if I don’t push through it, there will be unpleasant consequences”, “Help me, or it will break my career.” I don’t wish similar situations on anyone. Similarly, excessive antipathy can make it difficult to correctly assess the negotiation situation.
Arthur Goldberg, who was the American ambassador to the UN and headed the US delegation to the Belgrade meeting of the CSCE in 1978, categorically stated in his memoir interview: “In diplomacy one does not have friends (…) There are no diplomatic friendships.” In fact, he himself was said to have behaved as if he did not care about the friendly feelings of others. Because, despite what he said, you can win friends through diplomacy, but you must always remember that even friendship must have its limits.
Therefore, sympathy (and antipathy) should be squeezed in a strict framework. So a better guide in building relationships should be the principle of empathy. It means the ability to put oneself in the role of a partner, to put oneself in his/her shoes, to understand the motives of his/her behaviour, to understand his/her reasoning, to listen to him/her, to speak to him/her in a way that will be emotionally understandable to him/her, to show concern for the impact of negotiated solutions on the other party’s situation.
Quite often in my practice, even when I heard proposals that had no chance of my acceptance, I approved the author’s intentions, showed understanding for the purpose for which they were submitted, and asked for additional explanations to avoid misinterpreting them.
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Every adept of diplomacy knows that at the negotiating table, the dignity of the participating countries and the honour of the partners are a particularly protected good. We know that we must refrain from insulting, humiliating, disgracing and ridiculing the states (governments) represented at the table, even if we are in the deepest disagreement with them. But we should also remember that special caution in expressing opinions about the countries (nations) with whom we are negotiating should also include our statements outside the meeting room, posts in social media and other public activities. A Polish politician expressing opinions insulting to the Germans or the French, or a Ukrainian diplomat known for his polonophobic forays, will be unreliable partners in negotiations with the countries they sling mud at. A politician who called the convention of the Council of Europe “a convention for the wild people” may become a minister and be forced to represent Poland in this role at a meeting in Strasbourg. Of course, no one in the Council of Europe will remind him of this “wild people”, but one will remember it. Just like in the case of a politician who called the officers of the European Commission “blackmailers”, “thieves”, or called the flag of the European Union “rag”, no one will prohibit him a visit to Brussels, but appropriate conclusions will be drawn. In the digital age, once uttered xenophobic stupidity can haunt you for years. A politician can afford it (and some Polish politicians even today talk about Negroes as a symbol of backwardness, and Asians as a symbol of barbarism), but a diplomat should bite his tongue at such temptations from an early age. Even in times when “ruski” has already widely displaced the correct adjective “rosyjski” in the Polish language to express contempt for what Putin is doing.
We must always take into account the personal dignity of our negotiating partners. We should not call them liars outright, even if we have caught them lying, we should not call them cheats, even if they have broken their promises, we should not label them idiots, even if they show symptoms of oligophrenia.
Above all, we must always remember that it is our duty (regardless of the outcome of the negotiations) to always help our partner save his/her face. He/she should not leave the negotiating room in humiliation. He/she shouldn’t feel defeated. We should care more about him/her than he/she about us if we get want we wanted.
Well, above all else, we should be patient. Nothing teaches patience like negotiations, especially multilateral ones. Partners can be extremely fussy. They will hover around one issue endlessly, repeating the same arguments, the same phrases, the same positions, as if nothing else was going on in the negotiations. They may ask long and tedious series of questions that make no sense. And respond to all proposals with a refusal. Apparently, no one could bring the art of whining, boredom and immobility to such heights as the famous Mister Nyet, i.e. the Soviet minister Gromyko. I met such Gromykos at lower levels, at least a few. And I was learning how to preserve patience.
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An essential feature of a negotiator is undoubtedly perseverance and consistency. Don’t be put off by the first reactions. They can only be used to test the strength of your beliefs. They can only be a test. Partners can often play just tricks. The first word from the other side of the table is never the last word.
And negotiations can become a test of purely physical endurance. That is why they are so often conducted at night (see, for example, the way the European Council works), when the negotiators’ eyes are glued together and their heads drop from exhaustion. Then, the inexperienced negotiatotor can compromise just for peace of his/her mind. In the history of diplomacy, there are politicians who loved to tire their partners. The Syrian leader Hafez el-Assad, who was prone to having long talks at night, earned the nickname “a bladder tester” among US diplomats. He kept the interlocutors in the room for several hours without the slightest interruption. Thomas Pickering recalled: “You had to be careful what you drank before meeting him.”
For me, the real first test of physical perseverance was the negotiation of the several-page declaratory part of the final document of the CSCE summit in Helsinki in 1992. Finnish diplomat Ambassador Aarno Karhilo chaired these negotiations. He impressed with his sturdy and static posture. In our delegation, we baptized him in the Indian way as “Sitting Bull”. He kept the negotiators up at night for more than two weeks, even though it was only a declarative part (decisions were negotiated under the guidance of other mediators, including myself). He gave the impression that he would like the delegates to simply wear themselves to death with their endless and sometimes even idiotic polemics. No one died of exhaustion, but the universally shared signs of fatigue were unmistakable. I dealt with fatigue as follows. I asked the receptionist at the hotel where I was staying, which was only 200 meters from the conference room, to warm up my sauna at 2am. I took advantage of the break and popped into the sauna for half an hour. I would come back fresh and energetic when others were starting to prop up their eyelids with matches. Of course, at four or five in the morning I had a piled up “switch off”, but by then the meeting was interrupted, and I fell into a good night’s sleep (although my brain would like to run the conference thoughts again and again).
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It is impossible to build trust with partners if you do not have the appropriate level of knowledge about the subject of negotiations. An incompetent negotiator will always be suspected that he/she does not know what he/she is talking about, especially in informal, behind-the-scenes contacts, which are often a laboratory for the crystallization of compromises, that he/she does not understand what is said to him/her, and therefore that the impression of reaching an agreement may be wrong, and he/her himself/herself may be disavowed by his/her expert advisors or by the HQ supervising the negotiations. And then what? Instead of an agreement, we have the reversal and messages from the partner – “Sorry, but I think I was misunderstood”, or “Sorry, but I think I misunderstood you”. After such a dictum, trust inevitably evaporates. Later, we will always take into account his/her cognitive gap in contacts with the partner.
Unlike diplomats, politicians enjoy the privilege of incompetence. They have the right to make gaffes in negotiations, they have the right to talk nonsense. Trouble if they come across a political partner whose competence will gain an obvious advantage in the conversation. But there are ways around that too.
In the history of diplomacy, there are many examples of gaffes and incompetence of politicians. For example, the one associated with Lloyd George during the negotiations on the Treaty of Versailles. He mistook “Silesie” for “Cilicie” and could not understand why these insolent Poles wanted to take control of this area, thus establishing for themselves access to the Mediterranean Sea, because Cilicia is located in south-eastern Anatolia, as Lloyd George knew perfectly well. And that in French it was possible to confuse it with Silesia, it was just bad luck. At the beginning of the 1990s, at the CSCE forum, I heard a polician of a Western state who, when Yugoslavia was falling apart, mistaken Slavonia for Slovenia (thankfully not for Slovakia). I was afraid that he would next confuse Kraina with Ukraine.
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Another useful feature at work is undoubtedly having acting skills. The negotiator must be a good actor. Acting talent can come in handy in at least three situations.
First, in feigning emotions. One of the basic rules of a good negotiator is: if you want to reveal emotions at the negotiating table, they must be feigned emotions. Natural emotion can be detrimental. The intermediate school claims that you can succumb to your own emotions, but in a controlled way. I have always believed that showing emotions at the table will always be considered a sign of weakness. It is a well-known tactic, especially in the so-called the positional phase of negotiations, to try to throw us off balance. The partner is just waiting for us to get angry, give in to indignation, lose our temper.
And it is certainly not appropriate to show joy from success in negotiations. The famous “yes, yes, yes” of Prime Minister Marcinkiewicz gesticulated in Brussels in December 2005 is a reaction that should not be on display before the return to the country.
Secondly, acting is obviously useful when telling lies, and even white lies. Well, because if you are going to lie, you must ensure that the lie sound credible in every respect. But about when and how to lie in negotiations another time.
Thirdly, acting is useful when you need to hide fatigue, indisposition, impatience and any other signs that may indicate personal weakness, including personal problems. Then you have to play freshness, curiosity, vigor, energy and tenacity. I remember vividly, when at the final stage of negotiations on the 1990 Vienna Document on confidence- and security-building measures, after several hard nights of deliberations in the Hofburg Teesalon, a Soviet delegate, who had not been seen for several days, entered with a smile on his face and declared: “Do you want to drag this out? You want to torment us? Look at me: I am rested and fresh. You are pale and exhausted. Do you still want to tease us? Well, you’re not going to make me tired.” I knew that he wasn’t rested at all, that he was already tired, though not in front of the Western negotiators. Nevertheless, he played the freshness first-class.
A good trick that requires acting skills is the so-called behavioural immitation. Verbal matching consists in assimilating one’s own style of speech to that of the partner. He likes to ask rhetorical questions, so I will ask them too. He demands confirmation by ending his sentences with “isn’t it?”, and I will use that phrase as well. He throws in macaronic verses, and I will show off using them as well.
Even more effective is non-verbal immitation, i.e. adopting a pose, way of sitting, gesticulation, facial expressions of the partner. By becoming similar to the partner, we increase the chances of arousing sympathy, because the partner, seeing someone similar to himself, will feel more comfortable, he will subconsciously treat us as a close person.
And acting skills are so necessary in these situations because a badly played similarity can be read as an attempt to ridicule the partner, mocking his speech style and behaviour. And that can ruin your chances of gaining any trust.
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However, negotiators do not always manage to control emotions, especially the so-called bad emotions, like anger, rage, aggression. What to do in such situations? Certainly not contribute to their escalation. In such moments ask for an adjournment. I’ve had several situations like this. On the blog, I even described a brawl at the negotiating table that I witnessed. I met a negotiator whose moods were so volatile that I suspected him of having bipolar disorder.
Negotiators are only human. They have the right to have their moods, especially if they are politicians, used to being allowed more. It’s hard to negotiate with moody people. Alexander I was said to be extremely moody at the Congress of Vienna. People complained that everything about him depended on the mood in which he started the day. Which made him very unpredictable. And predictability is one of the desirable features of a negotiator.
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Sometimes acting behaviour is directed not so much towards negotiating partners as towards superiors at the headquarters. The American ambassador Vest told how, during the final battle of the first phase of the CSCE negotiations in Helsinki in the summer of 1973, he was approached by the Soviet negotiator Lev Mendelevich, widely respected among Western diplomats (by the way, supposedly the only Soviet diplomat in the 1970s and 1980s who had the courage to write “Jew” in the “nationality” column in personal questionnaires). Mendelevich honestly announced to him: “I am going to be very angry for two weeks and I am going to have to make a lot of speeches and threats for two weeks.” After which he was to go to Moscow and bring a package of concessions.
For two weeks, Mendelevich attacked Western diplomats with unprecedented passion. And he dragged into it unsuspecting allies who even wanted to surpass the champion in their attacks on the West. Vest reacted calmly (believing in the honesty of Mendelewicz’s promises). He turned the performances of the socialist camp into a joke. Once he boasted of knowing the Latin poetry of Decimius Juvenal and quoted him: “To hear the same thing said over and over calls for the bowels of iron.” We all now have bowls of iron.” He amused the negotiators with these “bowels of iron”. And his restraint earned him the gratitude of neutral countries. Because they were afraid that the CSCE process would quickly degenerate into another US-Soviet “shouting match”.
After two weeks, Mendelevich, as he announced, left for Moscow, then returned and, as promised, brought compromise solutions.
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It can be seen from the above that negotiating requires a lot of imagination, related to predicting the behaviour of partners. When taking any action at the negotiating table, you need to be able to anticipate the behaviour of people with whom you are negotiating.
And these reactions should be meticulously noted. It’s not enough just to take good notes of what your partners say. Sometimes facial expressions say more than words. There should always be someone in the delegation who follows the non-verbal reactions, watches how the head of the delegation communicates with its members, how the members of the delegation behave. Because sometimes, if the boss is at odds with the members of his team, if the delegation is not very well-coordinated, it always gives a chance to exploit these cracks.
A negotiator doesn’t have to be a born psychologist, but I’ve always believed that every diplomat should have basic psychology training. During my studies, I completed two semesters of psychology and a semester of social psychology, which may not have helped me much in my acting, but it certainly gave me a lot to understand the mental states of partners and human teams.
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Diplomacy is a profession that involves establishing contacts with people. In negotiating diplomacy, networking skills are particularly useful. Especially in multilateral negotiations, one of the important aspects is building a network, gathering a group of people around you who will be willing to share information and support. People with a closed personality, not to mention people with asocial tendencies, have nothing to look for at the negotiating table.
As a rule, there is little less going on outside the conference room than inside the room. You need to be able to function well in this world of talks full of gossip, provocative opinions, trial balloons. Once, in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland, a very distinguished diplomat was appointed the head of the Polish delegation to an important conference. The problem was that not only did he seem to suffer from agoraphobia and avoided parties and cocktails, which are usually occasions for exchanging information and ideas, but he was generally uncomfortable around people. After his dismissal, stacks of French newspapers were found in the residence of the head of delegation, read by underlining each line, column by column from page one to page last (except for obituaries and classifieds). This is how he spent his afternoons and evenings. Instead of meeting people.
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Diplomats are people with oversized egos. Always. Perhaps the fact of representing the majesty of the state, being the envoy of the head of state, perhaps the whole protocol status of work causes that the ego does not shrink over the course of a career, and in some cases it even grows caricatured. Even the greatest diplomats succumbed to the pernicious influence of their own egos. A good example is Metternich, whose greatly inflated pride and self-esteem often obscured his view of matters during the work of the Congress of Vienna. His Prussian counterpart August von Hardenberg was no better in this respect. His abrupt take-it-or-leave-it style of making proposals made him a reportedly ineffective negotiator.
It was even worse with politicians. Ego fueled Chamberlain’s actions against Hitler on the eve of World War II. Historians often refer to his quest for peace at all costs as an “egotrip”. He was so blinded by his mission that he did not consult the Foreign Office at all, went to meetings with Hitler without strategy, without tactics, did not use any “position papers”, acted impulsively, when e.g. suddenly proposing to Hitler a declaration of renouncing war in mutual relations . Most leaders cannot tame their ego. Churchill was an egotist, despite the fact that he was extraordinarily brave, he suffered from a lack of patience, and he could also fall into depression. Stalin suffered from a hunger for power, he was vindictive, unforgiving, he loved to manipulate people. As a negotiator, Khrushchev was aggressive and ruthless. Nixon’s Achilles heel was jealousy. Kissinger was characterized as egotistical, arrogant, fond of acting underhandedly. De Gaulle was extremely unforgiving and paralyzed by delusions of grandeur. Brezhnev, on the other hand, was extremely vain (and nervous). But Reagan, for example, in the memoirs of several American diplomats, commands respect as a politician who effectively excluded his own ego from the decisions he made.
Describing today’s leaders and their egos (Trump!) will have to wait a little bit.
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Diplomats’ inflated egos show up very often, if not always, during negotiations. A special term has even been coined: “egotiation”, when negotiators’ egos begin to complicate the workflow.
Ego is usually revealed in situations where the negotiator has a lot of freedom in defining the position, and the subject of the dispute is politically or materially irrelevant. At one of the CSCE meetings, the extremely ambitious head of the host country’s delegation, who was also the head of the relevant department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and thus wrote his own instructions, emphasized a different view on many even petty matters. He insisted on adopting his formulas. He resisted joining a consensus around majority views. He could even question agreements made at a lower level and accepted by his subordinates. And at that time, the so-called principle of “consensus minus one” (in very specific cases, the position of one state could be omitted) was newly established. The negotiators, tired of the ego activity of this head of delegation, very quickly coined a new edition of this principle in the description of the negotiation situation: consensus minus Martin (because Martin was his name).
Another anecdote. At the CSCE review meeting in Helsinki in 1992, it was quickly agreed to set up a working body at ambassador level in Vienna in the form of a committee. Its mandate was established. But for four long days it was impossible to agree on what adjective to put in the name of this committee. Should the committee be “standing”, “permanent”, “executive”, “political”, “main”, “general”, “ambassadorial”, or “coordinating”. Everyone stuck to its own preference and no agreemnet was in sight. I did not participate in this discussion. I asked for the floor only on the fourth day with a request that, taking into account the possible associations that the name may evoke in the countries of the former Soviet bloc, at least the adjective “central” should be rejected.
Sometimes the egos of negotiators are consciously aroused on marginal issues in order to distract them from the really essential issues. I could not resist this impression when, in 2005-2010, I was a member of the Governing Board of the Council of Europe Development Bank. It seemed to me that the Governor was deliberately throwing in front of its members artificial dilemmas, knowing that they would ignite personal emotions in this respectable group. And long hours were spent extinguishing them, until finally there was not enough time to take up issues of a strategic dimension.
Unfortunately, negotiators’ oversized egos can complicate any negotiation. Appealing to turn it off or to control it is, in my experience, an extremely empty job.
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Intuitively, we will always value tough negotiators more. What does it mean to be a tough negotiator? A tough person uses techniques considered to be tough, believes that the end justifies the means, and does not shy away from resorting to ethically dubious methods, including lies, blackmail, and threats. He attacks, ruthlessly destroys the other side’s arguments. He does not give in, and firmly demands concessions from his partners. He shows the strength of his will. The problem, of course, is if there is no less tough negotiator on the other side. Then the negotiation becomes a struggle for the immovability of the will.
The soft negotiator never says „no” outright. He relieves the tension with a joke. Changes the subject when confronted. He thinks aloud, making hypotheses. He looks for solutions that also satisfy the other party.
Sometimes in negotiating delegations there is a conscious division of roles, as in the “good” and “bad” policeman formula. I saw this at the CSCE review meeting in Vienna 1986-1989. The “good policeman” was the head of the Soviet delegation Yuri Kashlev. He was full of humour, optimism and wit. But he had a deputy for a thankless role who shouted into the microphone, scolded the West, rejected the West’s proposals in disgust, accused the West of provocative action.
British diplomat Sir Paul Lever, whose negotiating skills I had the opportunity to watch closely in Vienna in 1990-1992, was critical of the style of British negotiators in EU Brussels in the 1980s. Lever was then (in 1981-1985) the head of the office of the Vice-President of the European Commission, Christopher Tugendhat. He looked from the side at the ineffective efforts of his Foreign Office colleagues in the budget negotiations. They tried to imitate the hard and uncompromising style of negotiation of their boss, Margaret Thatcher. What looks like an effective style for a politician, however, may turn out to be a dead end for a diplomat whose task is to work out a compromise. Lever noted: “…you don’t necessarily get your way by needlessly irritating or humiliating the people you’re negotiating with. You are more likely to get your way if you can find an outcome which can represent as satisfactory from their point of view as well.”
You can be tough and even brutal, but you have to remember that even after very sharp disputes, the negotiating parties should like to come back with hope for the next session of talks to negotiate with you.
Excessive tenacity always carries the risk of being excluded from the decisive game. The first textbook case of excluding difficult diplomats from the process of seeking a compromise was the negotiations over the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. They turned out to be the Dutch, who did not show any inclination to make concessions. As the envoy of the French king told the Dutch at that time: “We will deal with you – about you – and without you”. Peace was made behind their backs.
According to experts, differences in negotiation styles are more important in international business negotiations than in diplomacy. And their general conclusion is as follows: the negotiation style has a negligible impact on the final effect, but the negotiating skills and qualifications of a diplomat do.
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We have briefly described the catalog of the most important desirable features of a diplomatic negotiator. Does anyone verify these features with diplomats before selecting the team that is to go to the negotiations? Of course not. I am not familiar with such cases in Polish diplomacy. Of course, sometimes when expecting hard negotiations, one looks for a personality that would signal tenacity even by posture or voice timbre. Such an impression was made by, for example, the unforgettable American ambassador Stephen Ledogar, who was supposed to prepare, among others, new negotiations on conventional disarmament in 1989. But experienced negotiators won’t be impressed by physical externality.
In some diplomatic services, job candidates undergo a detailed psychological examination. This also happened in the Polish service in the past. Three times I sat on the panel qualifying for the diplomatic and consular training at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Opinions of psychologists usually differed from the impression made by the candidates in a direct conversation. And they were completely unable to predict how the personality of a young man with years of work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would evolve. One of the very nice trainees selected at the time, whom I just remembered, turned out to be capable of morally very stinking HR (staff) decisions after a dozen or so years, for example. Did he already have such potential back then?
Negotiators are usually selected on the basis of formal efficiency, substantive specialization, and trust of superiors. By no means based on all the features I described above. But an ambitious negotiator, aware of his/her shortcomings and limitations, can work on these features by himself/herself. I can only encourage it.
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My conclusion can be only one – be true to yourself, do not pretend to be someone you are not. Personality is the most important thing in the work of a diplomat, and a negotiator, in particular. Work skills and knowledge is only half of the success. Success is determined primarily by personality, i.e. horizons, passions, emotional balance. Work and develop not only your working skills, but also your personality.
Next post on 22 May 2023.
