Goal Setting Parts 1 and 2

Goal Setting - Part 1

​Katie Hetherington: Hello and welcome to this module on goal setting. This module will shed light on the critical aspect of setting goals for negotiations. My name is Katie Hetherington and I am a Program Manager here at the Public International Law and Policy Group. I'm pleased to be joined today by Dr. Paul Williams, Founder and President of PILPG, and Professor Milena Stereo, Managing Director at PILPG. Welcome both. 

Milena Sterio: A pleasure to be here. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Thank you, Katie. It's a pleasure to be here. 

Why is goal setting important?

Katie Hetherington: Paul, let's begin with you. Why is goal setting important? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Katie, goal setting is important so that a delegation can mark its progress over the course of a negotiation, so that it can essentially stay on topic, and not be either intentionally or unintentionally distracted by the mediator or the other parties. And when it comes to the end of the negotiations, they have a sense whether they've achieved what they've come to achieve. 

And I'll just tell one quick little story. When I was the legal advisor for the Bosnian delegation during the Dayton peace negotiations, President Izbegovich and Foreign Minister Mo Sachebe sat me down the first afternoon and said here are our 14 goals that we would like to accomplish while we're here, write them down, and every evening, we're going to have a quick five minute meeting, and you're going to tell me how we're accomplishing those goals, to what degree we're accomplishing them. I was like, great, sure, I'm happy to do that, just curious, why have you tasked me with this important assignment? To that President Begovich said, because you're not a Bosnian and because you're a lawyer. We [Bosnians] are going to be sidetracked by all kinds of issues and it's going to be dynamic and chaotic. But every day, I want you to come back and put us back on the track of these 14 goals, and let us know what we're succeeding, let us know what we're failing at, and let us know what we need to address before the negotiations end. 

How is goal setting accomplished?

Katie Hetherington: Thanks, Paul. Milena, how is goal setting accomplished? 

Milena Sterio: Katie, the goal setting process is best accomplished if you can have a group of people meeting where everyone from your delegation gets together, preferably in person, and puts forth various ideas for discussion.

And this is really a brainstorming type of activity where you want to encourage all sorts of ideas. Once you have the pool of ideas, you want to write these down on a large board or use some kind of a medium which allows everybody to easily see what everybody's ideas are.

And then as a group, you want to then eliminate the ideas that are going to be least effective and remove those from the list. And you want to encourage, come to a consensus about the best ideas. Now, this type of a process requires a significant amount of preparation. Your delegation is going to have to plan to meet well in advance of the first negotiation session to have this kind of a group of brainstorming and goal setting activity. 

And this type of preparation may require several meetings of your group and is definitely going to require a substantial amount of time. And again, these are preferably going to be held in person in advance of your negotiation sessions.

Now you should definitely assume that your opponent, that the other side is holding similar kinds of preparation sessions, and you should always assume that they're going to come to the negotiation adequately prepared. 

How does a delegation determine what success looks like?

Katie Hetherington: Now, Paul, I assume that the delegation's definition of success will inform their strategy throughout the negotiations. So, how does a delegation decide what success will look like? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Katie, success is usually defined by achieving most, if not all of your goals. And this is why the goal setting process that Milena just laid out is so important. You want to do it before the negotiation, when you can be thoughtful and you can go through an inclusive process. 

Because in the hurly burly of the negotiations, you can lose sight of those goals, and then you lose sight of success. The way that the mind works is the parties will focus on the most recent success or failure on a particular goal, and then they'll start to think, okay, we're having success, but not realizing the dozen or so goals that they haven't gotten to, or they'll be thinking, this is completely failing because we're not at all achieving this goal, but it's only one of fourteen goals. 

One of the systems that we've used with our pro bono clients is to track the success of accomplishing these goals and to wait the goals, because some goals, you may actually surpass what you're trying to accomplish and others you may not get everything in that goal, but you might get enough or most of it.

And so when we were working with the Macedonian Albanians during the Lake Ohrid negotiations, every day we would do a chart about what they were accomplishing in terms of their goals, what they weren't accomplishing. And, we did a chart from what the other side's goals were, as much as we could deduce what their goals were, what they were accomplishing and what they weren't.

Because oftentimes, a party will say, ‘I haven't achieved all of my goals and therefore this is a failure’. And this was a little bit of the concern for the Macedonian Albanians, but this chart showed that the Macedonian Albanians were achieving sixty to seventy percent of what they wanted to achieve, and that the Macedonian government was also achieving sixty or seventy percent.

So you could look at it about the missing 30, or you could look at what you're achieving. Now, you have to be very cautious about this and stamp it confidential all the way to the top, because my client, Arvin Jafari, was so keen on this analysis that he shared it with the mediator, Jim Pardue. And he said, Jim, you're doing a good job. Our lawyer says you're getting both of us to do what we want to do. Keep up the good work. And I was like, oh, Arvin, you weren't supposed to share that with the mediator, but at least it showed that things were moving in the right direction.

So, success is all about meeting your goals and knowing how much and how many of your goals that you need to achieve in order to have success. 

How does the delegation balance short and long term goals?

Katie Hetherington: So, speaking of waiting goals, as Paul's mentioned in his previous answer, Milena, how does the delegation balance their short and long term goals?

Prof. Milena Sterio: Balancing short and long term goals is crucial. It's incredibly important because short term goals and long term goals don't always coincide. So for example, in a peace negotiation, maybe your short term goal is an immediate ceasefire, but your long term goal is going to be a comprehensive peace agreement.

The two are not necessarily completely compatible with each other. And so, once your delegation has identified a list of your short term goals and a list of your long term goals, you need to be able to know how to balance them. And this becomes particularly important if there is a specific event with immediate and sometimes dire consequences that have brought the parties to the negotiating table. 

And because of that, oftentimes meeting short term goals might appear more important, more crucial, more time pressing. With that, it's important for your delegation to always keep in mind what your long term goals are, and to make sure that you're appropriately reconciling your short term goals with your long term goals.

For example, ask yourself what it is that we're willing to concede in the short term in order to achieve our long term goals. If you're only focusing on your short term goals, you might not want to concede those same issues. But if you're at the same time focusing on your long term goals, you might realize, hey, I do need to concede X, Y, and Z in order to actually achieve my long term goals.

And then also ask yourself, what goals is my delegation willing to sacrifice in the long term in order to achieve any short term objectives. So again, if you're only focused on the long term, you might not be willing to sacrifice as much. But if you're keeping in mind your short term objectives, you might be able to tell yourself, in order to achieve my long term goals, I'm going to concede on points A, B, and C, because those are important for my short term goals.

So, always keep both in mind.  Always have a list of both your short term objectives and your long term objectives, and always work using both lists. That will be the best approach in terms of deciding for yourself what are the points that you're willing to compromise on. 

How to determine non-negotiable goals?

Katie Hetherington: And Paul, let's talk about non negotiable goals. How does a delegation decide which of its needs are non negotiable? 

Dr. Paul WIlliams: Katie, when you have that very first meeting that Milena has explained, where you get everyone together, and you say, what are our goals? Everyone on the delegation will think that every single goal is non negotiable. That's what's necessary in order for a durable peace.

And it's just human nature. If you're in a conflict, if you've been victimized by a conflict, or if you're in a state that's facing disintegration, your goals are non-negotiable. This is what we need, but you can't go into a negotiation ranking all of your goals as non negotiable because the other side is going to do the exact same thing, and you won't make any progress.

You won't move forward in the negotiation, and it's difficult because different constituencies of your party will have different goals. Each constituency within your delegation is going to identify their goals as non negotiable, as red lines. And if you have a dozen goals, and you pick four as red lines, and you excluded some of the constituencies, all of their goals as red lines, that's going to cause some tension within the delegation itself.

So, there needs to be a lot of consultation early on, and essentially a negotiation within a negotiation for the delegation to decide, okay, what are genuine red lines? It's also important to think about if there's different ways of getting to your goal, or partially getting to your goal, that is a red line goal.

For example, when we were working with the Kosovo Albanians during the Rambouillet negotiations, they said our red lines are independence, Milosevic standing trial for war crimes, and the Kosovo Liberation Army becoming the army of Kosovo. And they were red lines to a degree. They didn't get those. But they did get the Kosovo Liberation Army being transitioned into the Kosovo Protection Corps with the assistance of NATO. And okay, they accomplished their goal of keeping the KLA together in some type of structure, they had reference to war crimes and eventually Milosevic was tried, and they had this very complicated last paragraph, which talked about a review of final status subject to the will of the people after a period of three years. 

And that became part of the process for independence. So, if they had stuck to a black letter red line, they wouldn't have signed Rambouillet. But by looking at each of these three sorts of positions or pathways and being like that, that gets us to our red line, or at least preserves our red line for future implementation, then you can move forward with the agreement. And so, you need a lot of nimble thinking in how you hold to your red lines, but how you're flexible and how they're interpreted. 

How to approach non-negotiable goals in the negotiations?

Katie Hetherington: And Milena, can you say more on how to approach these non negotiables once the negotiations begin? 

Prof. Milena Sterio: Sure, so we talked just a few minutes ago about the various long term and short term goals and needs. What you need to do is evaluate your list of short term and long term objectives and goals, and then you should determine which of those short term or long term goals are going to be non-negotiable for your side. Now, there might be a whole range of goals of needs that you can group into different categories.

For example, you can have a category of goals that are completely non negotiable, and then you can have an intermediate category of goals that you would prefer not to negotiate, but where you're willing to negotiate under the right circumstances. And this type of a flexible approach can be very helpful because then you're not automatically going to group everything into non negotiable.

Instead, you're going to have some other intermediate categories where you say to yourself, this is non negotiable, but I am willing to look at this and negotiate under the right circumstances. The other thing to keep in mind is that sometimes you might have a goal or objective; that a single goal or objective is not going to be your breaking point, however, you are going to know for yourself that failure to achieve enough of these goals or needs may constitute a breaking point. 

And there might be a time where you might have to redirect the mediator and inform the mediator that you're not focusing on single non negotiable items but that instead of you failing to compromise on a whole range of items might actually lead you to a breaking point.

So, you should know for yourself, are there single issues that are breaking points for you, or is it a whole range of different issues all grouped all together that might constitute a breaking point for your own delegation? You should also always re-evaluate, re-examine, ask yourself, why are these issues non negotiable for me?

And then, are there circumstances, is there new information that I'm finding out, which can actually lead me to group these issues from non negotiable into maybe negotiable? In other words, maybe there's new information coming in, maybe there's some new circumstances that are going to lead me towards actually being able and willing to negotiate over some of these issues.

And so, being creative and being flexible is key to actually coming to an agreement with the other side. And being creative and being flexible is also going to help you with your overall goals and going to help you to achieve a number of both short term and long term goals. 

How to determine best alternatives?

Katie Hetherington: Thanks, Milena. And Paul, what about determining the best alternatives for the delegation?

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, Katie, I think it's important, as you indicate, before you go into a negotiation, determine your best alternatives to the negotiation or to a successful negotiation. Because sometimes. sorry, this will help you keep a perspective throughout the negotiation because once you're in the UN palace and in Geneva, once you're focusing on the negotiations, your perspective shrinks to just be twenty four-seven all about the negotiations, and either you could be over committed to these negotiations because you don't realize what the best alternative is, or you could be under committed because you're annoyed, you're not reaching all of your goals, you're being disrespected by the other party, the mediator seems to be biased enough. We're just going to go back to the field.

And Milena and I both had clients who at some point will say, let's just go back to the bush, it's easier to fight these guys in the field than it is to negotiate. So, what you want to do is literally put on paper and think through what is the best possible outcome if the negotiations fail. 

And in some instances, it may be, we're here because we're under some pressure, because there's a bit of a hurting stalemate. If these fail, the alternative is we go back to the conflict, which we were doing okay at, and we were able to be making some progress at, and it's okay for the negotiations. If not, it's okay as well. 

Or there could be a situation where you're facing dire consequences, and we were representing one party in the November negotiations, and their capital city and a number of other cities were under siege, and they were facing their third winter. And so, their best alternative to a negotiated resolution was to face yet another winter of siege and potential starvation of their population.

And although they didn't receive or achieve all of their goals, they still signed the agreement because a mediocre agreement was better than the best alternative of going through another winter of conflict, and the hardship that their civilians would face. But you need to know that before you go, after the first day, you're going to lose perspective and you're going to want to take it back out into the field, and know what that situation looks like before you go to the negotiations helps you keep that perspective and helps to move the negotiations forward. 

How to assess and anticipate the goals of other parties?

Katie Hetherington: Thanks, Paul. As a delegation is assessing its own successes and its own needs and goals, it also needs to consider as realistic as possible the strengths and the goals of the other parties. Milena, how does a delegation assess and anticipate the goals of the other parties? 

Prof. Milena Sterio: As much as you want to be well prepared and as much as you want to know your own short term and long term goals and breaking points and everything we've just discussed, you want to invest the same amount of time or even more time to understand the other side's point of view.

And so what you should do is you should try to put yourselves in the shoes of the other delegation, literally try to think as if you were one of them and identify what their short and long term goals might be, how they would define a successful or unsuccessful negotiation. What their own cultural context might be and how that cultural context might define how they approach the negotiation.

You want to also evaluate the other side's strengths and weaknesses. You also want to think about their own perception of their strengths and weaknesses and then you want to recognize that. The other side's goal setting and decision making might not be governed entirely by logic and that there are going to be other factors that are going to impact how they approach the negotiation, including things such as politics, regional politics, internal politics, geopolitics, emotional personal issues, their own willingness, for example, not to be perceived as weak, et cetera.

So there are lots of other not entirely objective and logical factors that might influence how the other side is going to approach negotiation and really the only way. that you can adequately prepare for that is if you spend significant time analyzing the negotiation from the other side's perspective.

So put yourself in their shoes and try to think the way that they would think about the negotiation, the various issues that are being negotiated. And Katie, I know that we will also talk about understanding the issues, strengths, and goals of other parties in this module session on preparing for negotiations.

How does red teaming apply here?

Katie Hetherington: Thanks, Milena. And Paul, where does red teaming fit into all of this?

Dr. Paul Williams: Kate, I think red teaming or negotiation simulations is the way to accomplish what Milena was just talking about in terms of putting yourself in the shoes of the opposing party or for a mediator to put herself in the shoes of both of the parties.

One reason why I'm really fond of negotiation simulations is you can talk all you want about, your party's position and the other party's position and our clients always oversimplify. Right. The other party's position, they create strong men arguments, and then they puncture them.

We were doing a simulation with the South Sudanese in Juba to prepare them for their state succession negotiations with Sudan– with Khartoum–  debts, assets, membership, and international organizations. And the group was just South Sudanese plus some internationals from the diplomatic community, and they ran this simulation.

At the end of the simulation, the chief negotiator for South Sudan, who was pretending to be Bashir, said, ‘whoa, the Sudanese won this negotiation. We are all South Sudanese. We're here in Juba, and we actually lost to ourselves in a simulated negotiation’. We are unprepared for these negotiations because they have a much more complex set of goals and a much more complex strategy than we say, but as we actually acted it out, we realized.

Even just pretending to be Khartoum, we were more effective at negotiating than actually being ourselves as the South Sudanese. And so this red teaming negotiation simulation was a real wake up call for the party that you have to really dive into because folks will listen to what Milena had just said.

And yeah, totally agree. We got to put ourselves in the shoes. We know what their view is, but you don't know until you actually put yourselves in their shoes, and then you'll be able to accomplish those objectives that Milena so thoughtfully outlined. 

Katie Hetherington: Thank you both.

This concludes part one of this session on goal setting, and we'll continue this conversation in part two. 

Goal Setting - Part 2

​Katie Hetherington: Hello and welcome to the second part of this session on goal setting. Let's get started and turn to you first, Milena. 

Should a delegation always expect to meet all of its goals?

Should a delegation always expect to meet all of its goals?

Prof. Milena Sterio: Katie, the short answer is no, it is not realistic to expect that you're always going to meet all of your goals.

And actually, it is realistic to expect that you might reach some of your goals and that you might reach some of your goals later in the process than what you expected. So, your delegation is going to have to consider and plan for as many different variables in planning for the negotiation. You're going to have to be flexible. You're going to have to expect that you're not going to be able to meet all of your goals, and you're most likely not going to be able to meet them early in the process. 

And so, when setbacks take place, for example, you fail to negotiate an agreeable solution on a given issue, you had to, from your perspective, compromise on too much, it is really important to manage your own expectations, to manage the expectations of your various team members, to make sure that you do not lose focus or commitment to your own goals and strategies, and to stay focused on the long term goals. I think most of the time when this happens, when there's a setback, it’s because you negotiate a short term issue and you, from your perspective, have to sort of give up too much.

It's important in that situation to not lose focus, to keep focusing on other issues, and to keep focusing on your long term goals and strategies. So don't walk away and try to do the best you can with the setback, try to refocus and approach the negotiation again, and try to work out the remaining issues and come to the best possible outcome for your side on all the remaining issues.

How does the delegation manage its expectations?

Katie Hetherington: Thanks, Milena. And Paul, how does the delegation need to manage its expectations when it comes to meeting its goals? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Well, Katie, I think it's important for a delegation to identify that there are a number of constituencies, so to speak, that will have expectations. You know, there's the members of the delegation once you form a team, once you form a delegation, there's an expectation of success. There's an expectation of accomplishing goals. You've done all this preliminary work that Milena and I have discussed, you expect to actually achieve success.

You also have your constituents who have sent you to those negotiations. You have your government, you have your voters, your populations, your citizens. If you're a non-state armed actor, you have a particular constituency if you're civil society. And you need to bear in mind what their expectations are for the outcome and then you have to manage those expectations.

You set your goals and then you say, we're going to try to accomplish enough of these goals to have a durable peace. So it's not getting to win. It's getting to a durable piece. It's also not just getting to yes, because you can get to yes and it is not durable. So, explaining how these goals fit into an overall strategy of getting to a durable piece, and then while you may have your goals written down in black and white, you want to articulate them in fairly generic terms. 

So instead of our goal, our expectation is independence of the sub state entity. The goal could be to realize our right of self determination and self governance because you may not get independence, you may get like Bougainville did, fourteen year process of shared sovereignty before a referendum on independence. You want to set those expectations of exercising our rights of self determination. Same thing with regime change. We want a democratic transition. We want to be bound by the rule of law. 

Now, again, your goal may be regime change, or regime preservation, depending on which side you're on, but you want to articulate them in a way that you can still claim victory. If you reach seventy percent of your goals or seventy percent of seventy percent of your goals.

So it's really important how you frame those goals and constant communication, constant transparency. Conspiracy theories abound during negotiations; there's always a worry that someone's going to be sold out, someone's going to get a bag of cash, something somewhere is going to happen. The more you're talking, the more you're sharing, the more you're bringing those expectations along. One of the problems is, you go in with a set of expectations, and then in a three week, four, five, six week negotiation process, those expectations are recalibrated, but your constituencies are still back on square one with those initial expectations. You need to bring them along as your expectations are evolving as well, and as you're learning more about what the international community will do to help, what the other side is willing to do to concede or to compromise, bring your constituents as well as your delegation along with transparency and communication. 

How to ensure goals are shared carefully?

Katie Hetherington: Thanks, Paul. Now, Milena, parties may be enthusiastic about their goals and sharing them with the other side. And do you have any tips for managing this anxiety? 

Prof. Milena Sterio: Katie, this is a great question. When it comes to communications, every single one of your communications should be well thought out and should be purposeful. So, before communicating anything, you should really sit back. 

Hopefully, you're conferring with your own communication and media team. And you should really think about whether it's a good idea to disclose certain information. So, sometimes it might be simply premature to share, disclose certain information.

In other cases, it might be a good idea to disclose as much information as possible. It just depends on the issue, and it depends on the relative advantages or disadvantages for your side in terms of disclosing or withholding information. You should also be ready for the fact that the other side might disclose information before you are willing and prepared to share that same information.

So you have to, as part of your communication media strategy, you should also be thinking about what should I do if the other side discloses X, even though we thought we weren't disclosing X until a later point in time? You also have to be ready and know that outside commentators, international news agencies, media might also be disclosing information, might be commenting on the process, might be sharing misinformation.

Your delegation needs to be able to take all of this into account and needs to have a strategy to be able to use all of this to its own advantage. And so in short, you should really know and manage your own delegations expectations, and you should really be able to manage the other sides, not just expectations, but the other side's disclosure, the other side's communication strategy, and you really need to be able to use all of that to your own advantage. 

How do goals change between one time vs. ongoing negotiations?

Katie Hetherington: Thank you, Milena. And Paul, let me turn to you for the final question of today's session. How do goals change between one time versus ongoing negotiations? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah. So Katie, I think it's important when a party is going into a negotiation that they know the timeframe, what the expectations are. Is this going to be a series of on again, off again, negotiations with pauses in between to rest and rethink, or is this, let's all go to an isolated venue and stay as long as we need to stay in order to get a complete agreement. It's important for the mediator to decide on the timing of the negotiations, and to make that timing clear to the parties, because the parties are going to want to not only prioritize their goals, but also sequence their goals.

And the mediators want to keep a really close eye on what goals and when are discussed and are moved forward for some type of agreement, and there's a couple of different dimensions to this. First of all, some issues are exceedingly difficult to negotiate. When the separation of Sudan and South Sudan were discussed, the question of the ownership of the oil came up and they decided that is an important goal. It is the very last thing we're going to discuss because once you've sorted self determination, power sharing, resource sharing, et cetera, the question of who owned the oil didn't really matter. 

That goal was no longer relevant, but if you would have started with that goal of who owns the oil, it would have been stuck on that for months on end, because that would have dictated a lot of the other outcomes.

So, the mediators flipped the sequencing of the goals around in order to be able to make progress. You can't just go and say, all right, let's start with the difficult issues. Or alternatively, you can't just start with the baby issues because then you negotiate for three months and you've reached agreement on a bunch of minor issues. What's our best alternative to a negotiation? Maybe we go back into the field and take it back into the conflict. 

The mediator is also going to want to make sure that each party is achieving its goals, so you're going to want to sequence it in a way that, it's effective and you can get to an agreement and get to a durable agreement, but if you look at it and realize, oh, okay, over the first six months, party A is going to get 3 goals met and party B's only going to get one goal met, you may not have a second round of negotiations. And so you're going to have, these are maybe two competing interests, a proper sequencing, but also an equitable sequencing as well.

And so you're going to want to think through how each side can come out of a round of negotiations and have been equally successful, or equally unsuccessful in achieving their goals, so that they can keep coming back on a level and an equitable playing field and develop a sense of fairness by the mediators.

Katie Hetherington: Thank you, Paul. Well, that brings us to the end of today's discussion. Thank you so much, Paul and Milena for your time and thank you to everyone watching this session. Thanks both.