Improving Outcomes in Military Negotiations by Applying the Mutual Gains Approach

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CBI Practitioners:

Merrick Hoben
David Plumb
Patrick Field

Clients:

image of soldiers studying

 

Case Background
U.S. military negotiations—whether internal or external—can be complex and frequently complicated by conflicting aims and organizational hierarchy. After an inspiring meeting with CBI founder Lawrence Susskind, a Colonel of the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Washington, invited CBI to present customized negotiation training in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan in July 2009.

Fort Lewis is home to several Stryker brigades, which are multidisciplinary teams within the U.S. Army that conduct early engagement with enemies and with civilian counterparts. Within each Stryker brigade, individuals who provide input on issues such as governance, infrastructure, and civil affairs are organized into fusion cells. These small, hybrid groups, combining military and intelligence personnel of varying ranks, are designed to improve battlefield knowledge, intelligence, and decision-making.

In war and away from the battlefield, life-and-death outcomes literally hinge on the negotiations conducted by these fusion cell units. Naturally, their Colonel desired to improve the outcomes of these critical negotiations. In order to do so, CBI helped to customize a training program based the Mutual Gains Approach to Negotiation.


The CBI Approach
Through a series of extensive interviews with key staff and those with combat experience, CBI gained insight into the Stryker operational context and analyzed the types of problems typically faced by Stryker negotiators. The problems ranged from the mundane (managing conversations, planning, and decision making within and between units) to the exceptional (how to engage with civilian groups in Iraq and Afghanistan). In the case of engaging civilian groups, two primary situations dominated: 1) engaging enemies and building trust; and 2) engaging and collaborating with development agency counterparts in order to efficiently leverage resources and avoid working at cross-purposes. In all of these situations, ‘facilitative leaders’ are required to manage meetings, deal with vast quantities of data, set priorities, and take action.

Based on the assessment findings, CBI customized a curriculum that comprised three core subjects:

  1. Bread and butter of communication. What does effective communication look like? What does it look like to speak with integrity, to listen actively, to build trust? What does it look like to speak in terms that your counterpart can comprehend, and to make sure that you, yourself, have understood your counterpart? These basic elements of communication are essential but often underdeveloped in 20- to 30-year-old officers, many of whom have become hardened through combat experience and have developed habits of speaking in military jargon that is hard for civilians to comprehend.
  2. Facilitation and meeting management. How do you convene a group and foster a productive conversation? How do you prepare for meetings? Imagine that you’re a lieutenant and that your job is to hold biweekly meetings with 50-60 development experts. During your meetings you must solicit input as well as provide updates of on-the-ground military actions and priority targets. How will you avoid attacking sites where your development counterparts are digging wells? How can you complement the development work in your region? CBI developed a facilitation model that aided the military in the phases of preparation, conversation management, and follow-through in the context of development.
  3. Agreement building. How do you motivate Afghani civilians to collaborate in resisting the Taliban? How do you build agreements that parties are likely to respect and uphold? Based on interviews with Stryker team combat leaders and supplemental research, CBI produced an original training curriculum and role play simulations to help negotiators identify interests, recognize and test assumptions, generate options, and improve engagement strategies.

Outcomes
Stryker negotiators are beginning to implement these new ideas and skills in the field. Although maximizing the benefit of a Mutual Gains Approach will require further dissemination of best practices and much additional work, CBI anticipates that these initial efforts will help the Stryker Brigade negotiate more effectively and build wiser, more stable agreements with civilian and development counterparts in extremely challenging contexts. CBI is also currently exploring the potential for an online ‘negotiations portal’. By further sharing knowledge gained in the combat theater and on base, the portal would provide ongoing organizational learning opportunities for Stryker teams in the field.