Negotiation Preparation & Skills
PILPG has 30 years of experience training civilians, civil society, and other parties on the skills needed to most effectively represent their delegation’s interests in an international peace negotiation. This page offers many different resources to aid in preparing for a negotiation and sharpening the skills that are key to success. Scroll through the page to find: Guidelines & Best Practices, Educational Resources, Expert Insights & Interactive Tools.
Guidelines and Best Practices
All of us at one time or another must negotiate with others – adversaries, interested third parties, friends – to achieve our objectives. Each party to a negotiation has its own desires, goals, and prejudices. The key is for a party to understand these matters for itself and for all other parties to a negotiation. It takes advanced preparation, strategic-thinking, and a written, detailed plan for any party to successfully achieve its objectives. The International Negotiations Handbook: Success Through Preparation, Strategy, and Planning is designed to provide some tools and ideas to assist every party to a negotiation to be a more effective advocate for its interests and, as a result, to achieve successful negotiations overall.
Educational Material
The following materials include links to mini lessons on negotiation strategy and skills, and the PILPG Peace Negotiation Skills Series, consisting of short papers with accompanying audio components. The PILPG Peace Negotiation Skills Briefing Series was developed to provide tools and ideas to assist parties to peace negotiations to be more effectively prepared to advocate for its interests and, as a result, to achieve successful peace negotiations overall— as well as to anyone who is interested in learning more about the relevant skills for peace negotiations. The Series is based on PILPG’s 30 years of experience in peace negotiations and conflict mediation worldwide.
Mini Lessons:
Negotiation Skills Briefing Series:
Expert Insights
The following videos, including an hour long PILPG thought leadership roundtable, and a link to PILPG Founder Dr. Paul R. Williams’ Lawyering Peace podcast, offering accounts from practitioners on successes, failures, and lessons learned from their experience working on peace negotiations from around the world.
Interactive Tools and Resources
The following resources offer practical guidance for delegations as they prepare for negotiations. The decision trees offer guiding questions for essential aspects of negotiation preparation including: forming a delegation and assigning roles, building and maintaining cohesion within the delegation, red teaming, establishing rules and procedures for the delegation, managing logistics, delegation outreach strategies and designing a negotiation plan. You can also find a downloadable chart, which delegates can use to organize and plan their interests and positions.
Decision Trees:
Click on the image to view the entire decision trees.
