There is enough wisdom about difficult moments in negotiations. The tricky part is, understand and actually apply lie far apart. The Japanese martial art Aikido offers a solution, as international conflict resolution experts also write.

For my first Aikido session in negotiation training six years ago, I made a basic mistake that I often warn others about. I made an assumption beforehand about the how and Why. I assumed the session was intended as a bit of physical relaxation within an intensive multi-day negotiation training. To take a moment to breathe calmly and imitate a few movements from the master. After an hour, we would then continue refreshed with the ‘real’ program.

But Aikido within negotiation training is not re-energizer, no Icebreaker
or other workshop technique to bring people closer together. Aikido – the Japanese art of ensuring that everyone emerges from conflict better off – is the physical metaphor for the core of the Mutual Gains Approach to negotiation.

Outside of the Netherlands too, negotiation experts have discovered the power of Aikido and other soft martial arts for negotiation training. For example, Joel Lee (a law professor in Singapore) and James Shanahan (a crisis negotiator with the New York Police Department) wrote a great article* about it in The Negotiator's Desk Reference, the thick reference book for negotiation adepts. Both are active as negotiation and martial arts trainers. They explain how martial arts help themselves and their students to become better negotiators: maintaining balance, de-escalation, unity of body and mind, and using the strength and direction of your partner.

You can learn a lot about negotiation through theory and role-playing. But applying that knowledge is difficult in situations that are experienced as unusual, stressful, or threatening. Especially “at the table,” when things get serious, when others are watching, when hostility arises. The question of how to deal with difficult people (and for the sake of completeness, include yourself in that group…) is the core question that many participants are left with. I can be as constructive as possible, but what if the other person has a completely different conviction about how we can solve problems? What if the other person is approaching it in a positional, pushy, win-lose, stubborn, or condescending way? What if someone is emotional? Or pulls out all the tricks? Bookshelves full have been written about this, and the core of that wisdom is passed on in a training. The tricky part is, understand and apply lie far apart. The difference between knowledge on the one hand skill and consciousness to the other. The ‘fight or flight’ pattern is deeply ingrained in us. In conflict, physical and mental triggers take precedence in determining our behavior; only afterward can we rationally determine what could have been done better (“oh yes, my book/trainer/mentor/podcast had said so!”). Aikido helps, through a physical experience, to bridge the gap betweenunderstand and apply to be.

In Aikido, the goal is to enter a physical confrontation (an ‘encounter’) in such a way that both parties emerge better from the struggle. When I took my daughter to an Aikido class, the master summarized it very simply for a group of children: “In Aikido, you leave the other person whole.”.

On our in-depth training day about negotiation, my colleague Chantal Suissa and I will spend two and a half hours with master Aalt Aalten (indeed, a name as balanced as the art he practices). The group will physically experience the difference between truly making contact with someone and an encounter where that intention isn't fully present; how a broad perspective “see the other person and the world” enables you to remain standing with childlike ease against larger and physically stronger attackers. And how you can apply pressure and keep the other person whole: constructive conflict, therefore. In Aalt's lessons, the central focus is on how you next to the other may occur. When you read it, it might sound ‘soft’ to you: are you safe? Can you still serve your own interests then? The reality in Aikido is that you are least vulnerable when you literally next to your attacker It falters. In the practice of constructive negotiation, this translates, for example, to asking further questions about what the other person is so firmly putting on the table; first exploring that picture together, for instance, by first asking sincere open-ended questions about it: “What you really want, what does that look like in practice?”.

Negotiating is no different. Positional resistance is your pitfall. Because if the other party is stronger, counter-pressure doesn't help; instead, you need to make contact and bring them along. And if the other party is weaker, applying pressure without contact is fraught with risks: if you damage them, then what? You can understand this in training, but will you remember it in the stubborn everyday practice? And how do you apply the alternative and invite the other party to do so? Experiencing both physically offers a solution.

*Martian Arts and Conflict Resolution, Joel Lee and James Shanahan, in The Negotiator’s Desk Reference Volume 2, p. 355, Chris Honeyman and Andrea Kupfer Schneider, 2017.

Director

Stefan Szepesi