An expert negotiator on the power of a reframed approach in resolving conflicts
“If you really care and you really listen, the approach works; you can figure it out together in most cases,” says Mieke van der Wansem, director of programs for the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy and Climate Policy Lab, of the mutual gains approach to negotiation.
‘We’re All in This Together’
My expertise is in negotiation for resource management and sustainable development. I've been teaching the mutual gains approach to negotiation (MGA) for many years. Mutual gains requires parties to talk about what the interests are—not what the positions are. You're actively listening to understand and to look together at the question: How do we address these challenges?
When teaching mutual gains, I often have participants engage in one or more simulations and have them take on roles they don't normally play. Assuming a role that, in real life, they’re often arguing against allows them to better understand where the other party’s coming from.
Another factor is personality: you don’t necessarily want to put highly dominant people in a role where they represent typically more dominant roles, like the government or the corporate sector. It works better to put them in the underdog role to see what they learn from playing people from a different background and with a different set of resources.
Sometimes people ask, ‘I’m using MGA, but the other people I'm negotiating with know nothing about the approach, and they're trying to bully me. How is this going to work?’ That's hard, but you need to model what you're trying to do. It may take time. With very large disputes, we often recommend a session beforehand with a credible facilitator, whom all parties respect, to talk about how mutual gains works, to set the guidelines around the engagement.
People are amazed how simply reframing your approach can make all the difference. If you really care and you really listen, the approach works; you can figure it out together in most cases. I'm not saying it’s always true, but from years spent teaching mutual gains around the world, I have a lot of heartwarming stories to help keep me going.
When it comes to natural resource management for addressing climate, collaboration is going to get you much further than competition. We're all in this together, and this is the way it’s going to get done: we need to figure it out together.
—Mieke van der Wansem, director of programs, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy and Climate Policy Lab, The Fletcher School
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